Ruby Watson

I am interested in landscapes, places, people – the things that connect us. This project aims to consider these themes.

My idea evolved from a song lyric that I listened to many times through the last lockdown period. It speaks of birth and the turbulent journey we all take into the world, at a time when life and death become inextricable. I felt it was poignant in its message at a time when the world and its communities share an uncertain journey through a time of pandemic with the endpoint unknown.

Throughout the last year of my studies, continual in my work is my interest in a world where we are always connected yet somehow disconnected. More and more, we exist as data which is becoming prevalent in defining human identity. I am therefore interested in how new landscapes might form, where human presence and contact has eroded.

I have experimented with video and moving image. While the film was made with a mobile phone, depicting moving text of the aforementioned song, that overlaps and merges becoming abstract and undefined, it was made with photocopies on acetate, overlayed and moved by hand. I used an old magnifying lens which I filmed through to distort the moving image. I intended to use manual techniques but present them through the use of modern technology. In doing so I consider a world making leaps in technological advances and the place of traditional hand made mediums, reflecting what the future might hold for these.

My work aims to juxtapose traditional modes of art practice, whereby a painting shifts from 2 to 3 dimensions, in effect becoming sculptural. While my ideas have been inspired by many different artists who work in different mediums, I am particularly inspired by the work of artist Angela de la Cruz.

My outcome uses found and discarded everyday waste that is familiar and common to most people. Yet by removing labels and colour, by building and constructing on a canvas format, I wanted to form something different. Again, I use the theme of human connection, yet seek to make the familiar somehow unrecognisable.

I have experimented with spray paint, working in colour and then removing it by turning the pieces black. I used plaster-based filler to stick the containers onto wood panels, which made them heavy. When thinking about how I might display the work had there been a typical exhibition, I wondered how I could attach them to a wall or if they would work as floor-based pieces.

My work, in the end, was photographed, switching a 3D construction into 2D images, in different settings, both inside and outdoors. But ultimately, I ask the viewer to look into an unknown, dystopian, empty territory that perhaps reflects current times or possibly a glimpse into the future where a different kind of connectedness now prevails.