ANGELA EAMES

FLUX MELTDOWN, 2021, Angela Eames

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I make still and moving pictures but whether still or time-based, I am always asking the question: what if? What if I could see differently?

Working with concepts of duality, as intrinsic to our visual world and opposition, as vital to innovation is at the heart of what I do. I am interested in visual collision and unanticipated visual consequence wherein one might realise and retrieve something unknown as opposed to relying on conditioning or habit. When drawing, I am like the scientist, exploring, searching, discovering – something I have not yet seen … I explore the ambivalent nature of our experience of reality. The infinivids allow myself and the viewer to reflect on what is being seen in the moment. Infinite loops enable a viewer to come and go, to look and leave and to encounter sameness and difference – as and when. The infinivids exist in a time-frame but play forever! They are drawings in the present continuous, drawings which may be viewed in entirety or not …

In FLUX | MELTDOWN … not a moment to spare, a silent ‘infinivid’ work, drawn line gives way to flickering form – flowing lava – forwards and backwards, growth and shrinkage, shifting shapes, lava-flow encircled, strangely familiar, but not. The viewer observes two separate circular images simultaneously. The images are distinctly different but interrelated - their substance having derived from the same initial raw footage.

When using my pen on screen to draw the BLUE MICROBE and BLUE NUCLEUS pieces, I place dots with an active integrated bevel and am reminded of watercolour painting. Just as pigment surges into wetness on paper, so the dots merge into ‘maggots’ as tracery progresses. The similarities are a little unnerving! These are works that reflect on anthropogenic factors, our culpability for environmental imbalance and our ever-readiness to believe that we are in control. In essence they are about looking, giving the time to look and perhaps more importantly, allowing time for reflection. They underline our sense of urgency ‘to move on to the next’ without really acknowledging what we might have just witnessed in our everyday lives. My work’s focus has for some years been on membrane, particularly membrane as mediator between two viewing aspects; in front of and behind, revealed and hidden, seen and unseen, known and unknown. Marks come and go as with graphite and eraser but in screen-space, membranes of visual information might and do unexpectedly reveal or obscure previous membranes. Hovering somewhere between opacity and transparency, between still and moving or between recall and prescience, the works evoke the fragility and irrevocability of biological balance, our dependency on this balance and the principle of self-regulation.

BIOGRAPHY

Angela Eames studied at Bath Academy of Art, Slade School of Art, Middlesex University (CASCAAD). Her Doctorate in Drawing in relation to Technology was awarded from Wimbledon School of Art and Surrey University. She produces both series and independent still and moving image works and exhibits internationally. In 2020 she won the Alpine Fellowship Visual Art Prize and was longlisted for the Lumen Prize for a second time. During 2021/22 her films were selected for several film festivals, including Still Voices FF Ireland, Hastings/London/Brighton Rocks FFs, Best Shorts FF California, Alternative FF Toronto and Red Movie Awards, Reims, France.