Welcome to Issue 6, The Play Issue.
/pleɪ/
"To engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose." But isn't the creation of art always an enjoyable process? What if it's not? Is play always fun or does it have a darker side? These artists are creating work in a playful way, having fun and a damned good belly laugh pushing materials and processes to the limit, juggling and tickling the underside of serious concepts, turning them on their head and making us think? While some are toying with the concept of play, miserable as they work. And what about satire and irony? We have really enjoyed seeing their work, thoughts and ideas.
Enjoy.
Jenna and Nichola
Artist name: Angelica Guerrero
Title: Family Portrait I & II
Media: Printed Puzzles
Description: This piece is the result of two photographs, one with my baby and myself, and the other with my husband. These two images became puzzles that were later assembled and then deconstructed to create two Family Portraits.
The reason was to get a nice family portrait of us during this quarantine, taken by us with the resources we had.
The obstacles were to find a place to print the puzzles then finding the time to put them together with a baby boy.
Instagram: @angelica.guerrero.art
Artist name: Katie Maria Francis
Title: In Loving Memory of Playtime
Media: Photography
Description: During an era in which we began breaking down barriers, removing restrictions and making change, we now find ourselves in a situation in direct contrast to that. The pandemic claimed our normalities and routines; it claimed the joy of playtime, and the lives of my dearest Grandparents. I have many happy memories of childhood playtime with them, most of them here, where play can no longer take place.
Instagram: katie_francis_art
Artist name: Ally zlatar
Title: Bubble Boy
Media: Acrylic on print
Description: The boy is enjoying blowing bubbles. I feel this painting serves as a metaphor for adolescence and youth. The bubble bursts for all of us, our youth disappears and we can no longer play. I made this piece to explore my challenges with grappling with my age.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allycardone/
Artist name: Lloyd Houston
Title: Pink jacket
Media: Acrylic on gesso board
Description: The work began as a sketchbook semi-life/doodle on the underground. A few years later, when flicking through sketchbooks for inspiration, it struck me as an image that might have growing relevance, with the head in the clouds happiness that phones seem to bring us. For me, the entire process from sketch to finished piece is the play-with few to none ideas beyond those mentioned being behind the work, and only an abstract idea of what the finished piece is going to look like.
So the play involved in figuring out the final image, and technique along the way is the enjoyment I experience from the piece. I find it quite hard to articulate much more than this, and this much has been a struggle in itself- I believe quite strongly in letting work speak for itself, and I, judging by the reactions of the people that I show it to, feel that this is quite a playful image.
Instagram: @lazyloddy
Artist name: Jeremy Wolf
Title: Untitled.
Media: oil stick on canvas
Description: Conflict is everywhere these days. I can't tell if living through the current era magnifies this phenomena or if we really are suffering through new levels of social division, but the fear and uncertainty are exhausting. This piece reflects the reality that these combative attitudes permeate every layer of society, from the safest spaces we can dream up to the most innocuous. The challenge is to not beat the audience over the head with negativity, but to repackage these ideas in a way that allows people to consider them over again with a fresh perspective.
Instagram: @ewwwjerms
Artist Name: Michaela Hall
Title: Disco
Description: Disco' is an exploration of material play, the work explores what fusions of colour and texture can be achieved by using thin and gloopy enamel, iridescent varnishes, glitter, beading, thick acrylic and vibrant gouache paints. This work was made with a spontaneous approach, playing with unfamiliar materials that may not normally work together in harmony to achieve this technicolour composition of disco and rhythmic activity. The materials led the way in this work, with the others reacting to them as and when they decided to drip, bleed, thicken and fuse.
Instagram: Michaela Hall Artist
Artist name: Milicent Fambrough
Title: Chattering teeth
Media: Digital art photography
Description: Simple windup toys make me smile. I find joy in the little things. Chattering bouncing silliness.
Instagram: @milicent210
Artist name: Lou Kiewicz
Title: Doña Prouhèze Head
Media: Plaster Sculpture & oil painting
Description: This piece was part of a larger work focusing about the women in Paul Claudel's theater, and how I could play with his play "Satin Slipper". I had a lot of fun trying to find a way to broke the mask in a pleasant way ; the most important part of the work was not to create it, but rather the way I could decompose the woman's figure.
Instagram: @loukiewicz
Artist: Bella Bradford
Title: Legs Go All The Way Up Griffin, 2020
Media: Cardboard, Paper, Textiles, and Plastic Sculpture
Description: This green, bow-legged guy sets to explore the differences between human and creaturely presences within sculpture. His material body bleeds playfulness in terms of his honest making. Legs Go All The Way Up Griffin’s awkward and humorous existence highlights the ridiculous aspects of humankind, juxtaposed with the seriousness of life itself.
Instagram: @bellamjbradford
Artist name: Einat Lev Ari
Title: The last play
Media: Acrylic
Description: The last play 100 X 40 - These days, the State of Israel is headed by a "prime minister" with three indictments who "plays" an entire country for his personal needs in order to escape the terror of the law. So the cards are gone, the Jokers will not help .. This is the last play.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/einat_lev_ari/
Artist name: Jess Kidd
Title: My Cliffe Castle Thing
Media: Mixed Media, acrylic, oil, cold wax medium on board.
Description: Inspired by CBT, I've been striving to challenge negative thoughts and enjoy the moment whilst I create. Thinking about this field in my local park, where I use to play as a child, helped me truly let go and play with my materials. I hope to also challenge people's opinion of where I live, Keighley. If a place is constantly put down, how will this effect the people who live there?
Instagram: @jesskiddart
Artist name: Rosanna Frith-Salem
Title: Make Space For Us: Virtual Performance
Media: Video Performance Piece
Description: Video: https://youtu.be/e0VbkYBuRyY
Shorter Version and Screenshots: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12rMQrJfcTLLMsnpx0F-Rz8NuvXXuVRXT?usp=sharing
My practice relies heavily on ‘play’, as I capture the dynamic movement of football and futsal through line, text, performance and poetry. As much as my work is playful and fun I also hope it encourages change in female sport. Due to the Coronavirus my final year degree show did not go ahead and I was unable to perform my work live. Instead, I created this video piece by overlaying match audio, reactive drawings, poetry and futsal movement to convey my frustrations as a female player. I aim to ‘make space for’ and empower other women and non-binary athletes in the UK and beyond.
Instagram: Rosannafs_art
Artist name: Adonia Hirst
Title: Boundaries
Media: Photography
Description: I have been trying to understand how soft sculpture can invoke a personal and intimate space for connection. Boundaries captures the intimate moment of playful exploration, interaction and movement between the body and sculpture. I have used the presence of a body to make sense of touch, texture and volume of the sculpture, due to the lack of interaction allowed today.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adoniahirstart/
Artist name: Arron Hansford
Title: 70 Birthdays if you're Lucky
Media: Oil Paint on Board
Description: This is an image painted in oils, this started out as a serious oil painting of my 3 month old daughter, however somewhere along the process I began enjoying the process and the treatment of the oils on the board, the image came through as a dark playful reflection of the start of our human clock, a realisation that the race has began from the second of birth!
https://www.instagram.com/arronhansford/
Artist name: Ffion Evans
Title: Material Play
Media: Textiles and Craft
Description: Material Play revolves around tactility, playfulness and wellbeing, focusing on benefiting people suffering from mental health issues through playful textiles. This artwork and others in the Material Play collection were created in response to the rising anxiety and stress due to the covid-19 pandemic. An obstacle I overcame was creating the collection within my flat during lockdown with limited resources, which is why a mixture of second hand and biodegradable materials are used to create the artworks.
Instagram: ffionevanstextiles
Artist name: Lewis
Title: Swing Time
Media: Digital Black & White photography
Description: The concept was to show the young person at her most relaxed to represent the freedom of play. I made the piece as part of a series called "Culture of our times(nature vs nurture), in studying children at play I was retracing the freedom of my own childhood. I had to visit the child at random points over six month, so she would be used to me as at first she was very nervous in company.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/photographybylewis/
Artist name: Betsy Bradley
Title: Summer Camp
Media: Acrylic on canvas, wood, rope and steel
Description: A playful challenge of the clinical nature of artwork in a gallery- proposing a sculptural, utilitarian notion of painting.
To lie in a hammock in a gallery- yes please! Why not? Get over the serious and false-intellectual mask we all wear in galleries.
Getting the interactivity to actually happen.
Instagram: @betsy_bradley
Artist name: Felicity Swan
Title: Orange Passion
Media: Acrylic & coloured pencil & graphite on card
Description: Getting off canvas and expensive paper to let go and play again with 10-45ish minute small drawings. Working intuitively, it's about colour, line and mark making - using fingers, brushes, sticks, and collage to loosen up again and find new combinations, let go and have fun. It's could become a regular habit.
Instagram: @felicityswanartist
Artist name: Janet Stafford
Title: Couple
Media: oil on canvas
Description: Couple, which is 122 x 244 cm, can be described as a depiction of two people engaged in the activity of wrestling. It can be thought of as play. Couple is one of my most beautiful paintings.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/staffja2/
Artist name: Ursula Troche
Title: Shell in urban shelter
Media: Assemblage / installation
Description: I made this when lockdown was looming , and felt life becoming 'interior', and play could help to express this. I found that even a traffic cone had been placed in an interior: in my local bus shelter. I went there with a found empty shell, and stuffed it with yarn, then placed it on top of the cone, near incoming light, as a playful, 'interior provocatidaon' of absurd times to come.
Instagram:
@trocheursula
Artist name: Arale BenArieh
Title: The Goat from Jerusalem
Media: Environmental Sculptures
Description: The statue was built in 2001 in the city of Hoyer in southern Jutland, Denmark.
Materials: "Oak and metal. Dimensions: length 2 m. On the edge of the Atlantic I wanted them to play with the heavy idea that usually comes from Jerusalem, a local goat without the slightest hint of holiness and sublime ideas. Let them turn and laugh and move their ears / horns. And they turned and laughed with me .
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arale_ben_arieh/
Artist name: Felicity Swan
Title: Munck's Covi-Diary 2020 (II image)
Media: IPhone photos of 1970s straw & felt monkey, edited on laptop
Description: Lockdown spring fun with old straw monkey, which started with tying red apples into apple blossom for self-entertainment. Monkey became Munck and reflected my attitude to Lockdown I really was playing with an idea. There are 15 photos of Munck.
Instagram: @felicityswanartist
Artist name: Alexandra Francis
Title: Pop a Balloon
Media: Sculpture installation
Description: Pop a Balloon (2018) was an audience participation installation that instructed members of the public to pop a balloon, filled with various coloured sands, in order to release and decorate the space below. I wanted to create an installation that encouraged the public to work with one another in order to help the artwork fluctuate over a period of time. As this was an audience interactive art installation, I had to trust that the public would follow the written instructions exhibited in the space beside the installation, in order for the installation to be a success.
Instagram: Colourcatcher.cre
Artist name: Zucinni-chan
Title: Ode to Garda Kencana Joker
Media: Digital Drawing
Description: I always curious about this particular joker card from a playing card company in my country (Indonesia) named "Garda Kencana", they didn't make their own joker as the usual joker. The "joker" is a girl with red dress with white polkadot and red hat, she have butterfly in her hand, and flowers in the background. It's makes me curious why they make the joker like this. I searched on the internet about the illustrator, but I didn't found who's the joker card illustrator.
Instagram: @zucin_ni
Artist name: Susan Williams MRSS
Title: Spin again
Media: installation
Description: Pegs attached to invisible stands appear to spin round like a fairground ride or flying saucer, playful and light, appearing to grip thin air but from some views read as a roulette wheel or the minutes/markers on a clock, the pegs clinging on against centrifugal force.
I attached the pegs as markers on the invisible shoe stands so I wouldn’t tread on them by mistake and accidentally made the work.
The issues were/are to recognize that this accident could be an artwork and then think how this might be developed now and in the future.
Instagram: @susanwilliamsart
