A road unexpectedly travelled has become an absorbing path with many exciting challenges.
When the banking 2007/8 crisis struck, many of my supporters and funders lost significant funds themselves, which then impacted severely on my art practice. I knew I had to change my work to be more independent and thus more commercial. For six months I analysed everything, including what I needed and my skill set, with an outcome that now fulfils my life.
Launching Utopia: The Unexpected Gallery was a big step, although at the time it just seemed logical and a practical solution. I didn’t want to compromise my stance on ethical values and sustainable living, so reinvention needed to include not creating ‘more stuff’ for an already over-stuffed world. Harnessing antiques and vintage finds to act as the starting point for the transformation into lighting, was key and remains true today. Quality of design, materials and making was also a cornerstone, to support our remit that what we made had to last – the anthesis of the usual business mantra where cyclical replacement is built into the design. Our aim is to produce well crafted pieces that will endure.
Today, the business has grown significantly and is thriving. Interest and demand for what we design and create has exceeded our expectations. My husband joined the company when his own furniture making business became affected by the banking crisis. His main focus now is on lighting design and creation, whilst I concentrate on fine art.
I have always drawn and painted, so utilising this passion to create pictures to sell, seemed a natural progression. I need to draw in layers – building 2D forms similar to building a sculpture. The pen and ink studies, where I layer shapes in millions of monotone marks, fulfils this. I wanted a contemporary approach to drawing and fortunately, clients appreciate what I draw.
A lifetime of layering different materials to build and excavate has led to multiple creative approaches. The current fascination with encaustic art has evolved over many years of experimentation, to source a painting medium that embraced all that I needed to execute the energies within. In these natural materials I have found a voice that speaks my mother tongue.
The Space Between
15 October – 20 December 2015 Post Mortem.
Rommelaere Building, University of Ghent, Belgium.
Fabrica Vitae is a series of exhibitions highlighting and exploring the perception of the human body by scientists and artists. ‘Post Mortem’ is the culmination of this four year project conceived by Pascale Pollier and curated by her, her sister Chantal Pollier and Marjan Doom from the Univeristy of Ghent. The exhibition explores death and how we understand what that means through examination of artefacts from the forensic laboratories and artistic responses.
http://www.postmortem.ugent.be/tentoonstelling.html
A Space Between by Jac Scott
The lack of knowledge of both the mental and physical dimensions of death provides a plethora of unanswerable questions. Those who are left behind meditate upon the concept of the divergence of the corporeal existence and spirit – the human condition reflects an emotive response that leads to yet more uncertainties. Yes we come from nature and are all homeward bound, but where do our minds go or are they buried/burned too? What happens – is there a departure?
Death seen and unseen.
“A thing is not seen because it is visible, but conversely visible because it is seen.” Socrates
How do we comprehend the inevitable end in our conscious being whilst spiked with the knowledge that our unconscious self has a part to play? This duality of being nurtures a quest for expansion to the physical and metaphysical worlds that we inhabit, but how to move forward?
John Berger, in his dispatch on survival and resistance, Hold Everything Dear, (2007) writes, “Man is the only creature who lives within at least two time scales: the biological one of his body and the one of his consciousness.” The paradox of coexistence purported by Berger, against a more holistic way of being, reflects our propensity to dissect life and extricate our corporeal from our spiritual selves. The notion of gaps as an essential part of life is a common thread in philosophical doctrine;
“…as the thought process slows you will be able to see gaps. Between two thoughts there is an interval – in that interval is consciousness.” Hsin, Hsin, Ming; The Book of Nothing: Discourses on Sosan’s Verses on the Faith-Mind, Osho (1996)
Imagining the visual quality of a gap is appealing. Can a gap between two voids be emptiness? Does this eulogised space, possibly a refuge, where we reside when the mind and body release their hold on each other, have passage or is it suspended animation of our sense of being? What kind of definition can we assign this space, this gap – is it nothingness or something more profound? Believing, as in science that nothingness does not exist, that there is always something, then is it another room for dwelling? The familiarity of a notion of a room, instead of space, provides valuable comfort, as there is little insight into this transition station. Is a room projected by the mind defined by walls – a mausoleum as departure lounge – or does it possess a diaphanous dominion?
“The chiasm of the body and of the world exposes exposure to itself—and with it, the impossibility to finally bring the world to the spirit, and bring meaning to significance. The body is a strangeness which is not preceded by familiarity.” Jean Luc Nancy, “Strange Foreign Bodies.” 2008 (translated by Liz Wendelbo)
Inevitably, this leads to the concept of death being a journey – mode of transportation and destination unknown – but always movement. A transition period evokes enquiry into altered states and metamorphosis. The dust may settle in the wake, but the decaying of the flesh does not reveal the ticket for the spirit. Neither does the contemplation of a life lived and mourned – the anthropocentric compass is devoid of direction. The gulf in our understanding presents a conundrum – could the unknown process of departure counterbalance the known fear of death? And what of deliverance? So, refuge is sought in wrestling with the inevitable, it will happen, but cradled by the ignorance of when. The enigma of our existence and hence our death is an opportunity for adventure. There are no absolutes, except death, and whilst theorists and theologians present their speculations, there is also space for the individual to dance in the gap. This solace, invites a celebration of the space and its shadows and hence an acceptance of the uncertainty of what happens next, means that we are liberated in life.
“Death is no more than passing from one room into another”. Helen Keller
A Secret Windermere Project commission by Friends of the Lake District 2013
265 divers arrived from all corners of the country to dive into the murky, dark depths of Lake Windermere, Cumbria, to highlight issues of water pollution by retrieving rubbish that people had abandoned in the water.
The charity Friends of the Lake District commissioned a response to the event through the creation of three sculptures: Dereliction – a personal conceptual response and two suspended creations in the form of diseased fish, developed with the assistance of two local primary schools.
The sculpture commission formed part of the finale for the major three-year project Secret Windermere.
Dereliction
An antique bottle lies as a dead fish, floating in its own watery grave inside the damaged buoy, trapped on a lake of broken glass. Resurrected from the Lake’s polluted depths the shards signify danger juxtaposed against the sanctuary of the float. Symbolising the degrading planet, in its form and condition, the buoy lies silent and still.
Materials salvaged debris from the bottom of Lake Windermere: broken pick-up buoy and smashed old glass bottles embedded in polyester resin
Dimensions: 35 x 35 x 35cm
Flying Fish Sculptures and School Workshops
FLD Amanda McCLeery led an informative session on the pollution issues affecting Lake Windermere. Jac Scott then invited the children to imagine that they were under the water looking for fish. Initially the school pupils made collages of healthy, but endangered, Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) to try and understand the value of biodiversity and ecological balance. The following day the children built on these making skills and created three-dimensional unhealthy fish from waste materials. These workshops inspired the Flying Fish sculptures created from debris retrieved from Lake Windermere.
Langdale CE Primary School inspired Flying Fish: Sunglasses
Materials: salvaged debris from the bottom of Lake Windermere
Dimensions: 120 x 70 x 18 cm plus suspension line
Hawkshead Esthwaite Primary School inspired Flying Fish: Headless Rider
Materials: salvaged debris from the bottom of Lake Windermere
Dimensions: 100 x 50 x 17 cm plus suspension line.
Many thanks to Photography by Ward for the photographs of the sculptures.
http://www.photographybyward.co.uk/
Alternative Perspectives Collection 2013
Digital photomontages harnessing the creative potential of the scanning electron microscope at the University of Central Lancashire to create highly magnified images of everyday objects, plants and creatures. The photographs form a foundation layer that is manipulated with the juxtaposing of additional imagery to make social commentary about the way we live and our relationship to the earth.
Part of the Beautiful Dystopias Project founded during Jac Scott’s sixteen-month artist-in-residence position at University of Central Lancashire.
Alternative Perspectives: Genius Loci (fly)
This digital photomontage takes the image of a fly’s compound eye magnified 150 times, photographed using a scanning electron microscope, as its foundation. Inserted ‘inside’ the eye is a window of an old farm building that, intrigued by its dark interior and a small rectangle of light on the opposite wall, insinuated an image of hope – but what do you see?
Alternative Perspectives: Preoccupation (moss)
To communicate is to be alive, to be active, in relation with others…For communication is essentially an interchange, a question and a reply, an action and a reaction between an individual and the environment in which he lives.
Maurice Fabre A History of Communications
Our preoccupation with computer technology creates a symbiotic relationship that endorses a dependence on staying in touch by harnessing electronic media as the vehicle – but is this preference an opt-out or opt-in for meaningful dialogue? Text messaging, emails, blogging, social networking using Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc all require writing and yet our literacy standards are going down – is the power of the written word changing to mere elemental levels?
Does the sequestration of technology limit our ability to communicate with our environment and therefore inhibit our understanding of the natural and untamed?
The image below was taken of a fragment of moss using a scanning electron microscope at the University of Central Lancashire during the residency. The digital montage features computer mice collaged onto the photograph to mimic seedpods growing out of the plant.
Alternative Perspectives: Heart of Darkness (granite)
Hidden remains break the surface to reveal the many lives lost whilst extracting precious metals and rare earth elements to feed our insatiable appetite for the new technology. Mining of these valuable minerals has an allure for the profiteer to pay scant attention to the health and welfare of its workforce. Whilst the poor peoples ignore safety in preference to eking out a living, by digging with their rudimentary equipment, to find a few nuggets that will mean food on their tables. Society pays little heed to the highly dangerous practices experienced by the miners, instead electing to pay a nominal price whilst ruminating on the latest gadget or item of jewellery to purchase.
Alternative Perspectives: Infatuation (lichen)
Deep inside a minute piece of lichen, evidence of our infatuation with the electronic screen is compounded with a family of historical figurines absorbed in the wonders of the pictorial rectangle.
Alternative Perspectives: Hive (vinyl flotex carpet)
Digital photomontage created from a photograph of flotex carpet magnified 100 times using a scanning electron microscope at uclan – images of real bees and actual gas masks.
The work above was created in response to the research investigating the decline in bee population and its possible causes. The alarming news that bee decline has reached 30% in the western world has made the issue become mainstream news. The value of this insect to us is difficult to estimate, in 2005 the figure £130 billion was made, as it is vital for pollinating our crops. 90% of the world’s food focuses on a hundred crop species and over 70 of these rely on bees to pollinate them.
Scientists have shown that the grave reduction in bee numbers is due to air pollution, intensive farming, over-cropping, loss of flowering plants, decline in beekeepers, a lethal pinhead-sized parasite that has been wiping out colonies in the last 30 years (Varroa destructor) and most importantly the increased use of pesticides and herbicides.
The insecticide neonicotinoid has negative affects on the bee colonies – it has been shown to scramble their navigation systems so they get lost. Sold since 1994 the insecticide forms a coat on the seeds which is then absorbed into the growing plant where some is ingested by the bees. The latest thinking is to ban these chemicals but some scientists and beekeepers are still unconvinced that the replacements will fair better with the insect.
Home: 3 Bed semi 2013
Home.
What and where is home?
Is our home a place of refuge from the outside world?
But what if the world was our home, where is the refuge then?
‘A home does not simply specify where you live; it can also signify who you are (socially, economically, sexually, ethnically) and where you ‘belong’ (geographically, culturally). And a house or a dwelling is full of the occupant’s corporeality, of sleeping, eating, loving: of its existence as a home. Moreover, a house contains evidence of the intimate relationship between space and time. While the space of the constructed building may shelter people or families over long periods of time, the evidence of more transitory individual lives is visible in traces in and on the building and its furniture. These ‘traces’ may take the form of damage, dirt, dust, decorations, scratches, repairs and so on.’
(Extract from Gill Perry ‘Dream houses: installations and the home’ in Gill Perry and Paul Wood (eds.), Themes in Contemporary Art, Yale University Press in association with the Open University, New Haven and London, 2004)
Applying this idea of home, as described above in ‘Dream Houses: Installations and the Home’, but to the Earth, rather than a building, invites a new perspective on our custodial duties.
The Earth is home not only to us but also to many other organisms – it provides the right elements: atmosphere, temperature, sustenance and time, for us to prosper. Sustaining a world with a sense of equilibrium towards these fundamentals and appreciating the interconnectedness of them all is vital for our home to flourish.
Home: 3 Bed semi is created from three discarded beds I found washed up on the beach. The waves had ravaged the upholstery leaving a tangled web of rusting and flaking metal armatures. Salvaged, the beds were crushed and compacted into a cuboid by a baling machine normally used for condensing old metal cans into bales ready for recycling. The spirit of the springs, now largely tamed, was further restrained to prevent the metal’s memory returning.
Five fragile birds nests rescued from local hedges in mid-winter adorn the ‘bed’ and remind us that a shelter is temporary if not nurtured.
The home should be the treasure chest of living. Le Corbusier
Dimensions: 50 x 65 x 60 cm
Materials: 3 discarded rusty mattresses and 5 abandoned bird’s nests
Created during the Beautiful Dystopias Project at University of Central Lancashire where Jac Scott was artist-in-residence in School of Built and Natural Environment for sixteen months.
Many thanks to Rob Fraser for the photographs http://www.robfraser-photographer.co.uk/
Beautiful Dystopia 2013
A dystopia is an illusionary perfect world where the Authority maintains its totalitarianism through systematic discrimination that is geared to enforce its doctrine. Political oppression supersedes personal freedoms and blatant bias is inflicted on the basis of: sex or age or race or faith or intelligence or ability or some or all of these. A fear of the outside world and a mistrust of the natural is instilled in the dystopian society to control dissent and individuality – there is constant surveillance to keep each citizen in a dehumanised state. A dystopian society is considered a futuristic notion – is it?
Dimensions: 125 x 130 x 50 cm
Materials: polymer plaster, recycled glass, found metal rod and pipe, abandoned bird nest, paint
Created during the Beautiful Dystopias Project at University of Central Lancashire where Jac Scott was artist-in-residence in School of Built and Natural Environment for sixteen months.
Many thanks to Rob Fraser for the photographs http://www.robfraser-photographer.co.uk/
Bio Myopia 2013
Biodiversity is threatened today by the increase in monoculture, overfishing, habitat loss, pollution and climate change. The Earth has experienced five episodes of mass extinction previously, and now we are in the sixth. Experts estimate that 50% of food varieties and around 8000 types of livestock have disappeared in the last century. There are 1600 species either extinct or currently endangered. Biodiversity is important because it spreads risk, whilst adopting monocultures heightens risk. When disease, climate change or natural disasters decimate a species monoculture offers limited options to find alternatives. Nurturing a bio-diverse ecosystem means that there are a bigger variety of strains of species available to select from when the unexpected happens.
Dimensions: 38 x 23 x 19 cm
Materials: found road tar, discarded metal rod, glass test tube, seabird skull
Created during the Beautiful Dystopias Project at University of Central Lancashire where Jac Scott was artist-in-residence in School of Built and Natural Environment for sixteen months.
Many thanks to Rob Fraser for the photographs http://www.robfraser-photographer.co.uk/
Book of Revelations 2012-14
A series of wall based sculptures.
The work silently contemplates a fractured reality: the relationship between contaminated environs and the anthropocentric compass – a dishevelled mourning. The peeling layers invite a meditation on the narrative exposed, whilst the found objects transpose and complicate the space from painting towards sculpture – settling in neither. The brooding degradation is juxtaposed against the unsettling extravagance of the golden frame.
Our view is framed. The duality of being is that we seek the security of frameworks in our lives whilst remaining curious about the wider world. Science and art informs and nurtures our quest for expansion to the physical and metaphysical worlds we inhabit. The magnitude and monumental narrative of the planet ignite wonder yet conversely endow a sense of insignificance to mortal man.
Harnessing the redundant golden frame as a symbolic border, one that demarcates the contents as worthy of being luxuriously wrapped, the sculptures present artefacts dislodged from our focus of possession. The discarded, retrieved and redefined objects are imbued with metaphor and meaning.
The damaged frame, holding fragmented spaces whilst clinging to the precious cargo, defies the loss and reveres its ostentatious past. Metaphorically, the frame highlights the paradoxical interconnectedness between destruction and renewal, past and present, consumption and disposal. The fractured structure signals the frailty of the framework as an illusion of security.
Please avoid cleaning; dust, filth and deterioration will enhance this work.
Many thanks to Rob Fraser for the photographs http://www.robfraser-photographer.co.uk/
Home and Away 2013
Part of the Home series created in response to the notion that our perception of the planet needs reconfiguring to that of our home – not just a resource to be plundered.
Floor-based sculpture with additional wall mounted facet and either spray-painted stencilled birds between elements or a projection of flying swallows.
Dimensions: floor sculpture 175 x 60 x 60 cm, wall sculpture 65 x 25 x 25 cm, projection dimensions/painted birds -variable
Materials: found rusty mattress, antique mahogany floor lamp, antique brass birdcage, spray paint stencilled birds on wall/projection
Created during the Beautiful Dystopias Project at University of Central Lancashire where Jac Scott was artist-in-residence in School of Built and Natural Environment for sixteen months.
Many thanks to Rob Fraser for the photographs http://www.robfraser-photographer.co.uk/
Fundamental Access 2013
Elemental – a door ajar
Dimensions: 30 x 26 x 11 cm
Materials: old picture frame, found rusty door latch, badger skull, drift wood
Created during the Beautiful Dystopias Project at University of Central Lancashire where Jac Scott was artist-in-residence in School of Built and Natural Environment for sixteen months.
Many thanks to Rob Fraser for the photographs http://www.robfraser-photographer.co.uk/
Atomic Equilibrium 2013
Everything is made of atoms – finding the balance – an eternal quest
Dimensions: 20 x 36 x 16 cm
Materials: old wooden picture frame, found discarded door lock, hand forged nail
Created during the Beautiful Dystopias Project at University of Central Lancashire where Jac Scott was artist-in-residence in School of Built and Natural Environment for sixteen months.
Many thanks to Rob Fraser for the photographs http://www.robfraser-photographer.co.uk/
Inertia 2013
Are you sitting comfortably?
It isn’t so much as what’s on the table that matters as what’s on the chairs.
William S. Gilbert
Dimensions: 86 x 65 x 24 cm
Materials: found broken, wooden chair, hand crafted flies, concealed metal fixings
Created during the Beautiful Dystopias Project at University of Central Lancashire where Jac Scott was artist-in-residence in School of Built and Natural Environment for sixteen months.
Many thanks to Rob Fraser for the photographs http://www.robfraser-photographer.co.uk/
Witness 2012
The discarded figurines, stripped off the honour of witness on the mantelpiece, lay their whimsical role aside to adopt a sinister foreboding of the chemical warfare in our homes. Voyeurs of our mundane psychodramas, the ornaments, mindful of the contaminated air, are adorned with Chinese medicine glass cups. The cups, traditionally used for fire cupping now worn as protective helmets, shield them from the satanic dust that blackens their garb and contaminates our earth.
Assembled in the fragmented landscape, the community of hybrid creatures seek the elusive purified space. Mimicking human attributes and frailties, the silent witnesses rest on disintegrating worlds.
Created during the Beautiful Dystopias Project at University of Central Lancashire where Jac Scott was artist-in-residence in School of Built and Natural Environment for sixteen months.
Dimensions: variable
Materials: discarded figurines, polymer and plaster bases, Chinese glass cups, resin, paint
The Witness Collection comprises of nearly 30 sculptures – a selection are shown here.
Witness The Proposal
Witness The Chosen One
Witness Last Dance
Witness Last Lullaby
Witness Diet
Witness The Choice
Witness Reminiscing
Witness Finale
Witness Conspiracy
Witness Gameplay
Witness Fallen
Many thanks to Rob Fraser for the interior photographs of the collection http://www.robfraser-photographer.co.uk/
Lifeline 2011
We are all locked into the grid.
Materials: discarded electric cable from old electrical appliances
Dimensions: 75cm diameter
Lifeline miniatures 2011
Materials: discarded fine gauge black cable from hand appliances
Dimensions: approximately 7 cm diameter each
Transformation commission 2010-12
Jac Scott worked with the science department in Ulverston Victoria High School, Cumbria to transform the bland extensive corridors into an animated new media intersection that reflected the school’s dynamic relationship with the subject. First phase focused on bringing the staff and students together to explore what science was and how it affected our lives.
Outputs included;:
- a walk through ‘cinema’ showing science films including those made by the students
- the formation of a science film club to sustain interest
- a collection of wall-mounted, giant digital photomontages created from photographs capturing the essence of laboratory experiments printed on aluminium
- a collection of staff and student’s photographs printed onto aluminium and wall mounted
- key scientific words cut from mirrored acrylic and displayed amongst the photographs
Phase two concentrated the enquiry on a new way of depicting scientific formulas through the creation of a visual language.
Commissioned by Creative Partnerships and Ulverston Victoria High School.
Pail 2011
Extraordinary weather conditions are causing unprecedented natural disasters across the world. What are we thinking about and what are we doing to minimise more climatic changes?
Materials: galvanised steel
Dimensions: 192 x 106 x 42 cm
Pail formed a focal point for the Inside Change Project, commissioned by Arts Council England and Copeland Borough Council, as part of a research installation about climate change issues in an empty shop in Egremont, Cumbria. The project was launched in January 2011 on the coast at St. Bees where visitors were asked a series of questions and asked to post their replies in buckets along the promenade. The research enquiry continued inside the shop and at local primary schools. To act as a catalyst for debate Pail was complemented by Life, (a miniature installation in a tableau format, in a three metre long box 17 x 18 x 300 cm) that highlighted in tiny vignettes some of the issues raised by climate change.
Question 2009-10
Two commissions from Pennington Primary School, Ulverston, one for a giant, outdoor steel sculpture inspired by scientific findings discovered by the children around the school site. Laser cut silhouettes of flora and fauna, taken from pupil’s drawings, formed windows cut into the horizontal question mark form – these create moving shadows. A seat curves into the top of the question mark providing a safe haven for play. The sculpture was painted red to complement the school uniform.
Fabrication and installion by Chris Brammall Ltd.
Second commission required two wall based ‘poetic mirrors’ to be designed utilising children’s writing made into reflective playground enhancements. Fabricated by Chris Brammall Ltd.
Commissioners – Arts Awards for All and Pennington School.
