Daisy Chains by Ruth Parker
Friday 4th October - Friday 17th January
Opening night: Thursday 3rd October 4-7pm
Throughout the past year Ruth Parker has been Leeds City College’s Artist in Residence, during this time she has been researching projects that explore our sense of (dis)connection. Material exploration is central to her practice, particularly how material qualities can be used to create a psychophysical response. Shifting the materials between handmade and digital states to explore our complex relationships with technology, nature and our sense of belonging.
In BLANK_, Ruth uses found organic matter alongside mass produced packaging, waste products and handcrafted interventions to create the outlines of a space. An imperfect wireframe room in which we might be invited to explore the messy process of considering who we are and where we fit. Chains and wires link flowers that are transformed from their natural state into copper, plastic sheets rescued from waste disposal are adorned with gold leaf to create emergency blankets and shimmering backdrops. Existing in dichotomy as natural and synthetic materials mould together to blur the boundaries between human and non-human, physical and digital. Clashing materiality forms, heritage techniques alongside new mediums, invite us to explore the systematic ways in which we determine worth.
Advancements in technology have seen our interfaces and process of connecting rapidly change. Ruth is interested in how we navigate these new spaces and procedures, whilst retaining our sense of self and wider community. Screens and devices multiply the possibilities we might have to connect but do we create a lack of touch? Are the possibilities to leave a mark so endless that we risk leaving none, a series of linked but passive participants, doom scrolling to an undefined end. Or can we negotiate alternate spaces to connect.
Throughout the exhibition Ruth will also be showcasing a collaborative project created with Level 3 Games Development students in the School of Creative Arts at Leeds City College entitled ‘Reflect’. The group explored whether it was possible to make games or VR spaces that could have a therapeutic quality. A selection of the project work is exhibited in a specially designed VR gallery created by students Uni Gill-Carey, Larissa Radka and Ivan Deriabin. A special thanks to Course leader Jamie Mooney for supporting the project.
Right image: credited to Judita Kuniskye