Our featured artist this week is Jacob Carter.
"I am a British artist currently living and working in Birmingham. I create performances,soundatmospheres,handmadeinstrumentsaswellasfacilitating participatory projects through workshops. My recent projects have explored how developing a community of artists can help construct contemporary and radical ways of performing sound within virtual spaces. This has involved creating workshops such as The Art of Mimicry, where participants used their voices and domestic objects to create background noise in response to online appropriated videos. I am interested in iterative ways of working, approaching research and making from an exploration of materiality. Through experimentation with the aesthetic qualities of pattern and materials, I am currently engaged in identifying what constitutes a culturally significant object, and how we can build fictional histories and importance to the art object."
Selected artwork:
Artworks in order:
Civilisation Seeping Through (landscape), 2020, Installation.
"This installation presents a parallel between two worlds. The plaster casts are an exploration of what can be considered a culturally significant object. Referencing historic objects that are preserved in plaster, these sculptures sit uncomfortably within an urban landscape, appearing lost and displaced. It explores two worlds colliding, the historic and the present."
Civilisation Seeping Through (Trio), 2020, Installation.
"A similar installation depicts the broken pieces of plaster within a structured pattern. These textured pieces allude to broken and discarded fragments, perhaps from a lost artifact, a demolished building, or broken debris from a warzone. The public intervention creates a dialogue between the art object and the surrounding environment, creating a sense of abandonment for the sculpture."
Crazy Paving, 2020, Digital Print.
"This print explores the aesthetic qualities of broken concrete and the textural pattern of its surface. The form of the concrete is exaggerated by removing all background, alluding to traditional sculpture catalogues. The positive and negative space is exploited to create a focus on the jagged form of the object, exploring ideas of found objects and ready-mades."
The Language of Pattern No.2, 2020, Engraved Concrete.
"The title of this sculpture is a direct reference to Keith Albarn’s book of the same name which explores Islamic decorative patterns and shows how the most complex patterns are built from simple basic structures. The engraved design is taken from one of these images, depicting a series of 9 numbered diagrams which create a sequence. The engraved concrete createsan intriguing line that is difficult tounderstand how it is processed. This leads to a sense of confusion trying to place the context of the object. Is this an old found object or a recently machined object made to look old?"
Tongue Drum, 2020, Sound sculpture.
"This instrument was handmade as part of a collaborative project Participatory Sound Making, which involved workshops that I facilitated over numerous weeks. These explored concepts of sound and collaborative sound making. This led to independent work where I createdmy own instruments, influenced bytraditionalAfrican tribal instruments. The process of making was created into a documentary film exploring the process of instrument making as a work of art in itself. This instrument can lead to future collaborative opportunities, where viewers can be invited to play and create their own compositions."
https://www.instagram.com/jacobcarter_art/