Visual Arts
Meghann Wilson
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
This work is concerned with the transcendence of the banality and triviality of daily life into art. It explores and experiments with both spontaneous and laborious approaches to art, as influenced by ‘non-artistic’ process, media and subject matter. Working with humble, everyday materials and employing practices that are simple and direct, has allowed me to develop a personal language through art.Early in our lives people make patterns and representations with anything that comes to hand. It is an unconscious act that allows us to explore the bounds of space with the objects we arrange and depict. There is a desire to make images and to communicate something of the otherwise unsayable. In an attempt to reach an ‘honesty’ of expression many artists turn to less formalistic, spontaneous or ‘low’ approaches to art in order to reach a similar experience to that which is reached in childhood.
Craft has the ability to prompt questions about the nature of individual self-expression, authenticity and the boundaries of artistic creativity. It is a somewhat autobiographical process, especially in the tradition of quilt making, where remnants of materials from discarded clothes or other materials, are placed together in one eclectic piece. The enduring languages of the stitch, the needle and the thread are both public and private. The crafted piece is a reflection of a slow accumulation of experience and an expression of the daily moods of the maker during its creation.
My handicraft skills are those of a novice, but it is for this reason that the process is so enjoyable. Without exact knowledge of the techniques that I employ I am unable to subject it to a formalistic analysis. This then allows me to explore an expressive language and process latent in domestic objects and ways of handling them to talk about complex and usually hidden subjects of daily life.
BIO
Meg is currently studying a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) at the South Australian School of Art (University of South Australia), specialising in painting and drawing. Meg was placed on the University of South Australia Chancellor’s Merit List in 2003 and 2005, and the Dean’s Merit List in 2003, 2004 and 2005. She has exhibited in various group shows, most recently including: If You Wanted the Sky, Liverpool Street Gallery, Adelaide (2005), Make Your Mark, Student Lounge Gallery (UniSA), Adelaide (2005), and the South Australian School of Art Graduate Exhibition, Adelaide (2005).
Meghann has exhibited as part of Carclew's Fifth Floor project.
