“I believe that the anxiety of our era has to fundamentally with space.” Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias, 1984.
Boundaries - physical or mental? Chosen or enforced? Are they used as a form of protection or as a way to keep things out, or as a social construct and how do we identify ourselves and ensure our physical and mental protection? What are the political, social, and economic definitions, and are they a necessary part of life? How are boundaries approached by different cultures and by the neurodiverse? Are the boundaries we are set by an authority set to protect or bind us? One word that has so many meanings and connotations. Here is the creative response for this month’s theme.
Artist: Gulbin Ozdamar Akarcay
Instagram: @gozdamarakarcay
Description: Boundaries are man-made as well as nature-made. Neither is insurmountable. The insurmountable obstacles are prejudices and hatred.
Artist: Finlay Mackay
Instagram: @fjm.art5
Description: Title: Night time routine. Highlighting the multiple boundaries we have sent between ourselves and others through our over-dependence on technology and social media. In this huge new technological era, where connection is within a touch of a button, many people seem more isolated than ever, and are left to endless scroll through other peoples lives. This self portrait depicts one of those late night social media searches.
Artist; Shane Bradford
Instagram: @shanebradfordstudio
Description: For the last several years I've been using road traffic barriers (and other street furniture) to mono-print onto canvas, making flat, patterned, grid-like surfaces that reshape the hidden municipal lexicon of the city. This language and technique evolve from static image/painting (image 1) into an active performance viewed as a live event, as a video (see vimeo link), The Rights (and wrongs) Of Passage, sees a barrier painting breached from behind by dancers from The Ensemble Project, who form shapes and movements in unison with the painted imagery.
Artist: Vinay Hathi
Instagram: @vinayhathi
Description: “Errorism - Stop and Search” (2009) - Feel Free to Take Photos - "Male seen taking photographs of CCTV camera in ILFORD asked to account for actions, stated he is taking photos for his own interest. Satisfactory stop." Given for taking photos (Under terrorism act 2000 Section 44), me and my rucksack was searched, they looked through all photos on the camera. If I refused I would be taken to the police station. European Court of Human Rights ruled that section 44 was unlawful, after 10 years in use.
Artist name: Pink and grAy (Sylvia Causer and Andrea Freeman).
Instagram: @Sylviaandandrea
Description:Pink and grAy are tethered together. Wandering without destination means that they have difficulties going in the same direction at the same pace. Physical boundaries are blurred by the presence of a rope. They have to learn how to stroll together, but uselessly struggle to exert individual will upon their progress. (With a nod to Beckett.)
Artist: Duncan Mckellar
Instagram: @duncanmckellarsunshine
See the video here:
https://www.duncanmckellar.com/ray-of-hope
Description: A one kilometre line of people wearing mirrored masks spanning the U.S/Mexico border. Each participant's mask reflects the sun to create a 1000m line of dazzling light bisecting the border wall.
Artist: Emma Clifton-Brown
Instagram: @emmacliftonbrownarts
Description: Inspired by the book by Todd Miller, a journalist dedicated to documenting the borderlands of Mexico and the US. My work considers the moments of space between one border and another whether it is just before a word is spoken or a moment before you cross over a threshold into an unknown place. This piece is a combination of places that have taken me off guard causing me to stop and reflect, noticing the way the light and the lines of architecture can invite me to discover its borders.
Artist name: Darren Clarke
Instagram: @dpicto_
Description: Boundaries aren't always clear. Some can be implied. Some can be enforced. Some are self-inflicted. Boundaries can protect and boundaries can harm. Boundaries can be broken through trespass and boundaries can be breached through innovation or ambition. Boundaries mean nothing without the inertia of resistance or the resistance to attention.
Artist: Mark Parkinson
Instagram: @markeparkinson
Description: These three drawings mark boundaries between Preston and South Ribble, and explore real and metaphysical boundaries associated with childhood memories, referencing early life on social housing estates and boundaries and no-go areas and the markers that separate one estate from another though these boundaries are usually physical roads bridges rivers etc they sometimes only exist as an idea or a wall in the head.
Artist: Felicity Truscott
Instagram: @felicitytruscott
Description: I am researching internal and external boundaries; what they represent, protect, and serve, on discovering skin theory and skin ego through the writings of Esther Bick and Didier Anzieu, I am considering the skin as a boundary between inner and outer worlds, acting as the container. My cast, 'cradle of the soul' represents a psychic second skin containing feelings, thoughts, and memories, but externally symbolizes whatever the viewer brings from their own cultural lived experience ‘The skin is the interface between internal and external worlds' Didier Anzieu. Tape boundaries are temporary works made on and around physical boundaries such as walls or windows, where they hover between inner and outer states.
Artist: Jane Sarre
Instagram: @janesarreceramics
Description: Tracepoint is an installation of 12 large-scale ceramic sculptures. Placed in alignment they delineate the borders of historic land boundaries, yet they are open for the viewer to move within and freely cross those boundaries.
