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Formation 2by Abbi Torrance | |
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I am interested in how drawings can work conceptually to convey an idea but also allowing the artists hand and the mistake to play a part in the final work. Drawing for me strips down an idea to the bare essentials.
I am interested in the primacy of structure or agency in human behaviour, I look at systems and structures that control us and make drawings to represent this. In capitalist societies the individual is regarded as a self-conscious responsible agent, whose actions can be explained by his or her beliefs and thoughts. This is acquired within the structure of established social practices, which impose on the individual. However, we have learnt from early psychology experiments that we are easily manipulated by authority and even lie to ourselves to fit in with the crowd. Today, we live our lives to a predetermined formula prescribed by powerful global companies.
I appropriate choreographed formations to represent human communication and control. A social landscape is built up by combining the formations in diagrams on large scale paper which mimics the way that large corporations see us as data, markets and demographics. These abstract mappings of social networking diagrams and other systems such as feedback systems link the formation drawings to each other, in such we are reduced to a pattern.
CONTACT abbitorrance@hotmail.com EDUCATION
2009-2011 MA Wimbledon College of Art, London
1997-2000 BA (Hons) 2.1 Fine Art, Middlesex University, London
1995-1997 Art & Design, Shepperton Art School, London
1993-1995 Photography & darkroom techniques, Hommerton Arts, London
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2012 Bread & Roses, Motorcade/FlashParade, Bristol.
2012 Form vs Form, Bearspace Gallery, London
2011 Hung, Drawn and Altered: Drawn In, Karin Janssen Project Space, London.
2011 MA show Wimbledon School of Art, London
2011 Futura Bold Futura Oblique, Nunnery, London
2010 Monster, 242 Gallery, Cambridge Heath Rd, London
2010 By Appointmant at the ICA, London
2010 I swore I sore , Nunnery, London
2009 National Open Competition, Chicester
2009 Change, Art’s complex, Edinburgh Art Festival
2009 The Living Swamp, Quartair Art Gallery, The Hague, Holland
2008 Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London
2008 Awopbopaloobop, Transition Gallery, London
2007 New Dawn, Isle of sheppy
2006 Emerging Artists, The Copplesten Centre, Peckam
2005 May Fete with a twist, Cecil Sharpe House, Camden
2005 Healthy Air, Stoke Health, Stowmarket
2004 Mesh, Seven Seven, Broadway Market
2003 Reduced, Century Gallery, London
2003 Women’s Work, Fairfields Art Centre, Basingstoke
2003 Mutiny at the Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, London
2002 Face 2002, The gallery Cork Street
2001 Generate – living with disability, Ferens Art gallery, Hull
2001 dna – looking at perception of and reactions to voyeurism and
2001 surveillance, Spitz Gallery, London
PUBLICATIONS
2006 artist profile, Dazed and Confused magazine
PRIZES
2009 Teddy Smith Award National Open Competition
RESIDENCIES
2005 Stacked Wonky dance co. one month, site-specific works for Cecil Sharpe House, English Folk Dance and Song Society.
GRANTS
2002 Commissions East for intervention projects
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