#Jasmir Creed

[shreyaajmani]

Bonhams presents 'The Asia Edit: Contemporary Art from the South Asian Diaspora'

Bonhams is pleased to present 'The Asia Edit: Contemporary Art from the South Asian Diaspora', an auction uniting artists from mesmerising pockets of South Asia. From New Delhi to Dhaka to Bhutan, it features some of the most sensational names from the subcontinent, including Avijit Halder, Ayesha Kamal Khan, geetha thurairajah, Jasmir Creed, Kirthana Selvaraj, Md Tokon, Meena Hasan, Preetika Rajgariah, Vikram Kushwah, and Zimbiri. Through themes that reclaim one's identity, champion self-acceptance, and seek refuge in daydreams amidst a perpetually transient existence, the works encapsulate the inner conviction that eventually surfaces when one feels like an anomaly within their surroundings. Through personalised interviews and essays, the edit strives to provide each participating artist with the ability to weave a cohesive narrative of their distinct perspective and practice.

Shreya Ajmani, a writer who explores the global impact of art from South Asia and its diaspora has curated this auction for Bonhams. She previously led 'The Trailblazers' project for Bonhams and has selected ten artists with whom she has conducted interviews. 

[contemporarythoughts]

How Freud, Baudelaire and Foucault can be gathered together within one urban space? Jasmir Creed’s paintings bring up many historical connections at once. Consequently, her art gives us a sneak peak of her extensive knowledge in other humanistic fields of study, besides the artistic practise, such as philosophy, literature, psychology or sociology, which enriches quality of her work even more by adding a sense of cultural depth to it. Psycho-geography of cities, where “psycho” refers to emotions/feelings of human’s mind and “geography” referring to social & cultural position of spaces, is a type of narrative within Creed’s works, which examines the relation and tension between element A, being an individual person or a group of them already existing within the city space and point B, being a concept the space represents, such as ubiquitous consumerism or the barrage of information a 21st century city habitant experiences. Reality is viewed trough lenses of Charles Baudelaire’s concept of flaneur, which previously inspired many artists, including creating a Parisienne world of boulevards and cafes, Edward Manet and defined as the objects we can spot and interact with in the area of every city. The “urban anxieties” start when you realise that city is human’s antagonist, both closing and opening itself on people, according to the artist in a “spider-like” manner as a symbol of capitalism. Space is depicted as creative and full of possibilities, but after all rather pessimistic, being additionally deepened by dirty colour palette and often use of ink as medium. It leads us to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and the power of dreams, which is further inspected in “Pool of Life” painting, inspired by Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung’s, dream about Liverpool. The painting’s composition was divided into pieces, separate moments, telling different and yet the same story. Creed is using his concept of analytical psychology and makes the reference twice, using both formal and more conceptual measures to achieve this effect. The composition itself resembles a broken mirror, puzzle pieces seemingly mismatched, but it’s only a starting point for further examination.   I found her works referring to Venetian Renaissance colourists such as Titian or Bellini. She is frequently showing reflections of the city, different types of architectural features etc. in the water, giving romantic undertone to them just as the old masters did, except Creed’s work do not include colorito (colour) and disegno (drawing) practise or technique. I feel like it was commuted for a conceptual idea of distortion of the truth of a city to be depicted and globalised.

[charlottehalsallart]

Trip to the Victoria Gallery & Museum collection

The Victoria Gallery & Museum collection opened in 1892, built by Alfred Waterhouse in a Gothic style, particularly new to the Era. Initially built to be part of the University of Liverpool. The building has only recently become a gallery space, just ten years ago in 2008. Since, it has been open on the University of Liverpool campus, open to the public, and exhibiting a range of both artistic and scientific exhibitions.

Amanda Draper

When visiting the Victoria Gallery, we were lucky enough to have a talk first hand by curator Amanda Draper, surrounding her work curating an exhibition following Eleanor Rathbone and the Suffragist movement, and a special exhibition celebrating women artists. I felt that displaying such an important exhibition for Eleanor Rathbone was crucial in maintaining her legacy. The careful placement of the empowering work included how the women of the Holt family- whom helped fund the building, created a special wing for women, to ensure they were safe whist studying at the university; the ground-breaking introduction of the Family Allowance; and her intuitive suspicion surrounding Hitler, which she wrote various letters to Winston Churchill himself about.  This iconic woman and the movement which she upheld politically felt ideally placed in relation to the exhibition in the following room, surrounding contemporary women artists.

The exhibition, titled ‘She’s Electric’ encourages the audience to absorb a range of contemporary wok, following the mid 20th century all the way to the 21st . Consisting of women artists of the VG&M collection, the collection works well to involve a range of dynamic works of contemporary art. When looking at this collection, I saw how key including such an exhibition would be to display such talent by these women artists. I particularly liked the piece titled ‘Nest in a goats Beard’ 1970 by Carmen Garcia for its simplistic design, and links to surrealism. I also loved a piece by Liliane Lijn titled ‘Koan-Cuts II’ 1971. This piece struck me as interesting with the use of forms included, almost looking as figures, or even women.  I then decided to think critically about the impact of women creating such new types of art in the 1970’s, a time where women still felt widely oppressed by a male dominance in the workplace. I though more into how difficult it must have been for all the women in the collection to put themselves forward and find a place in the art world. Making mine, and anyone elses appreciation of the work, ever more important.

Jasmir Creed

Whilst at the Gallery, we looked at an exhibition of Jasmir creeds work, capturing her envision of a ‘dystopolis’. She’s painted numerous works on canvas using oil, which focus on busy spaces and architecture. After exploring her work first hand, we were lucky enough to receive a presentation by Creed herself describing her work.  

Creed focuses on 'psyco-geographical art’, choosing colour intentionally to portray a theme, e.g. in her piece titled ‘smog’ 2015 she involves grey and a dirty yellow tone, yellow representing the chemicals in the smog. She uses multiple artists as inspiration for her work, looking at psycho- geographical scenes. ‘Shadow’ 2016 explores the cultivation of space, including multiple viewpoints to increase the feeling of isolation. She also includes monochromatic colour schemes to represent this. The inclusion of architecture in Creed’s paintings are carefully thought out. For example, she wanted to include St. Pauls Cathedral at night to show a new perspective. She also forms the building in cohesion with the surrounding painting- in fragments. Creed talks of how fragmentation's represent fragmented memories people have. Therefore, the purposefully misshapen sharp point of the Cathedral in Creed’s painting would introduce a greater understanding of the place, building, and memories there.  

Creed involves a link with surrealist artists such as Salvador Dali, or Rene Magritte, with her style of painting. She creates montages from images of contrasting environments, such as a landscape of greenery, or waterlilies in a pond- such as in ‘Aquatank’ 2017, and city scenes. Creed encapsulates her work with urban life. Fixating on the juxtaposition against natural, organic forms and urban, artificial structures.  

After listening to Creed’s presentation and learning more about how to juxtapose landscape, I had to think of the impact of her pieces and her personal influences on social understanding.  Her pieces may also be a great stepping stone for creating political art. If Creed included the same distorted, fractured style in her work, against urban life, she could argue the destruction of nature. Using an angle of environmental change and the impact that the result of it is having on our earth, such as ‘Smog’. Though Creed did not include this angle in her presentation, she can easily include the aspect in her work by description; as to me, they already tell a story of confusion, and a battle to survive. My initial depiction of the collection was one highlighting a conflict to coexist, between the two very different worlds. Creed paints the two worlds as a somewhat fantasy, exaggerating features such as Lilly pads, and an over layer of people as to enforce the connotations of urgency. Though to some this may take away the links to reality, I feel it was intentional in fulfilling Creeds brief of including both psychology and geography to create an entirely new concept, one Personal to Jasmir Creed.  

[jmwoodruff76-blog]

Dystopolis, Victoria Gallery & Museum / “The Pool Of Life” by Jasmir Creed

a painting created by visualising and painting everything around the artist.

[shannonsfineart]

6/2/19 VL Jasmir Creed + Q&A + Dystopolis Exhibition Visit

I found Creed’s psychogeographical paintings remarkable and interesting. They’re based on cityscapes and its interaction/relationship with nature - or what once was - I interpreted the works as a form of revival or revenge; as if Creed was predicting the decay of urban environments, mimicking their natural counterparts. Her pieces feature a vivid use of colour, particular her more nature-driven ones, using it as a tool to capture the organic and the manufactured. Her work is a very literal example of Creed’s fascination with juxtaposition. Creed’s work is all site-specific, using a strict methodology of painting from a photo montage of her chosen city which she never deviates from.

I truly admire her method of exploring themes of alienation, constant change and regeneration. I see her work as a criticism of these metropolitan areas she depicts; the effect cities have on our planet and the capitalist systems they represent.

Unfortunately I don’t enjoy all aspects of Creed’s work. At no point does she consider or even acknowledge the audience (perhaps in a ‘fuck you you’re apart of the problem’ way). Nor how a gallery space can effect the context and perspective of a piece, her work could even be interpreted as hypocritical - she’s displaying in one of these pollution-riddled urban jungles i.e. Dystopolis at the Victoria Gallery.

Notes:

- “She paints because materiality persists - she’s solving a puzzle” - her personal experience, cities are dense environments of familiar and unfamiliar.

- Poetism of the unknown, stories of people you’ll never know

[coldhandswarmh-art]

Jasmir Creed

I was lucky enough to have had prior knowledge of Jasmir before she gave us a lecture about her work (over Zoom because the world is ending *it isn’t, I’m just being over-dramatic because I’ve been stuck inside for days and I hate being by myself all the time*). In fact my first ever exhibition review was for her show Dystopolis in the Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, it was the first time I’d looked at an exhibition with my new Art History eyes on and truly understood the choices that were being made. It just added to the whole experience being able to hear directly from Jasmir the way she works and the way she curates her work.

Psycho-geography seems like a namby-pamby pseudo-science and I would usually agree, but in this context it is not meant to be science its meant to be an artistic tool for exploring your surroundings. By walking your familiar streets and actually looking at your surroundings instead of walking throug everyday blinkered to what is actually there. As we all do, I am especially guilty of putting my head phones in and completely ignoring everything until I reach my goal, by taking the time to actually experience the architecture or landscape you walk through it could be really inspirational, especially if your artwork is based in landscape.

[thewhitemaliceshadowproject]

Jasmir Creed

Based in Manchester - reading off paper - not much interaction? Hard to listen to - monotone - almost like she doesn't like her work

Can't really focus on her because she sounds disinterested - whether it's talking about her work or just her work in general - seems like she's just reading an essay rather than being passionate about her work like the other lecturers.  

Kathy Prenderghast - city drawings  

Julie Mehetru - city monuments  

((She's showing other artists that have inspired her))

Used ink for simplicity of mark making  

Represents capitalism in London

Making the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.  

Yellow ink shows pollution - called Smog because London issued a warning a few weeks about smog.

Angel of the North?

She's all about shapes and mark makings, displaying good technical skills. I am more drawn to interaction and the emotions felt by artists, instead I listened to a monotone voice, which took away any interest I may have felt. It could have been improved by more interaction and eye contact, after all she is responsible for inspiring us, through her own art.  

Sometimes lost - walking away and closer to the viewer at the same time???  

Smell of human presence - urine?? Painting of an abandoned painting that says: ruined site  

Watchers - big brother reference? Cameras everywhere, they're watching us. Reminds me of Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell

She make montage out of photographs and draws them - uses a lot of shapes like triangle and circles.  

Metaphors??  

Urban forest: solo exhibition at the gallery at delta house studios in London

Delivery

I thought her palette was very beautiful, as the contrast of colours stood out and caught my eye. Her mark making has a lot of depth, layers upon layers.

Honestly her work has interesting colours and there are some aesthetic visuals to it but how she speaks about them is just frustrating, it's like she isn't passionate about her work.  It felt like she did not want to be there. She could improve by being more engaging and use interaction with the audience. It's not the usual aesthetic, but an old urban beauty . She speaks in a monotone voice and it makes it hard to listen and actually pay attention to what she is saying. Despite her delivery, I did observe her paint techniques and was inspired enough to consider trying ink mark making, perhaps on a canvas or  M O I S T  piece of paper. I was not sure about the process she used for her paint techniques but liked the brush strokes in the paintings. I wanted to try mark making techniques, which are now evidenced in my portrait painting.

I could not invest in an art presentation delivered in such a sterile way, without audience engagement, so early in the morning.

A lot of inspiration from a variety of artists

City environments and people's perspective of her work

Her envision of different urban environment - people from Liverpool can identify with the metropolitan cathedral  

Q&A

H E C K  

Shannon speaks  

Made any drastic changes with your paintings?

Never works out how you think it's gonna work out  

Doesn't think of corridors as spaces - she ignore spaces that she doesn't consider a 'space' for her work

Says it's good to take your work out of your studio so you can see what you've got up to

Unique colour pallet - not broad. How would you approach painting his (guy who owns the blackest colour?) buildings?

She paints them in bright colours?

Celebrating positive aspect of London with 2012 Olympics  

Considers herself as an expressionist  

She doesn’t consider the audience in her work? What could they add - to the perspective of the audience  

Writes statements without being asked to write them?

[angryhearthideout]

46. Jasmir Creed, Other Home.

66. Michelle Topping, Evade.

87. David Hoyle, Funnily Enough!!

97. Ailsa Johnson, Mystical Black Cat.

120. Janet Brady, Surfacing.

201. John Cooper, 1. Distance - A comic strip daily about life during Covid.

202. John Cooper, 2. Distance - A comic strip daily about life during Covid.

[for-the-love-of-art-history-blog]

Jasmir Creed

‘Unheard Voices’ oil on canvas 2016 150cmx120cm

Last week in my ‘Collaboration With Contemporary Art’ class we had a guest lecturer come in called Jasmir Creed who gave a talk on psychogeography and the art that can be produced from it. Initially, I was reluctant towards the idea of learning about psychogeography because it was something I had never really heard of and wasn’t interested in, however after the lecture I found myself wanting to know more.

Psychogeography is the exploration of urban environments in an expressive way. One studies the social, cultural and personal study of places and how perspective can change in response to this. It very much echoes the concept of the 19th century French ‘flaneur’, someone who saunters around cities and towns taking in their surroundings. During her lecture Creed touched upon the idea of flaneur being of a masculine descendant, and that there is an element of paranoia, uncertainty and the feeling of being watched when you are a female flaneur (a flaneuse). Lauren Elkin furthered this discourse of disparity between the male and female flaneur, she states that ‘it feels like the urban landscape is not built at the height of a woman, but at the height of a man’ (Elkin 2017). Is this because the origin and structure of most cities are from the mind of a man? Or because urban society doesn’t offer a safe space for women to wander without a there being an element of fear? I believe both.

Creed’s lecture and artwork resonated with me because she incorporates themes of light, texture, time, environment and sense whilst simultaneously tackling the issue of being a female in the overwhelming domain that is the city.

The female flaneur is a subject I want to delve into further; I want to know why the male and female flaneur differ so much. A few weeks ago I was reading some work by Sylvia Plath and one quote of her’s really resonated with me. Plath stated that ‘there is an ignorance surrounding this in that these boys never seem to comprehend just how fortunate they are that strange people and unfamiliar places and the dark of cities and night are not their enemies but rather exciting, promising things’ (Plath 1982). I felt this quote reflected the ideology of psychogeography, that the notion of being able to explore urban landscapes is somewhat restricted if done by a female. 

Overall the lecture and artwork presented by Creed sparked an interest in a subject I originally thought would be boring and a waste of time. if you ever have the time I highly recommend checking out Creed’s work, her website can be accessed here. 

Bibliography:

Elkin, L (2017) A tribute to female flâneurs: the women who reclaimed our city streets [onlline] Available at: 

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/03/reclaiming-the-cityscape-for-women/517629/

Plath, S (1982) The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. England: Anchor Books 

[my-artyavocado-me]

Jasmir Creed

Jasmir Creed is a Manchester-based artist who is concerned with painting, drawing, and photography, in particular, photo montage. She began studying her MA at Wimbledon College in London; Her research and work are concerned with the relationship between people and their spaces. 

Inspired by JG Ballard, Gustave Le Bon, Marc Auge, and Italo Calvino these are just a few of the key themes and Ideas Jasmir likes to incorporate into her work:

How do I use my own practice in a psychogeographical way?

Reflecting on the concept and ideas derived from being a Flaneur.

Exploring ways in which she can incorporate her own work into art history and contemporary art.

Jasmir has collaborated with the likes of Tate Collective and in 2016 had the opportunity to exhibit her first solo exhibition ‘Urban Forest’ at Delta House Studios.

So what exactly is psychogeography?

Psychogeography is an exploration of urban environments that emphasize the idea of “drifting”, created in 1955 by Marxist theorist Guy Debord it was inspired by the 19th-century poet and writer Charles Baudelaire and his concept of art. However, in terms of creating art itself, psychogeography is not only drifting through towns and cities but documenting this process, your thoughts and feelings and creating beautiful geographical pieces of art. 

(Paris Street; Rainy Day, Gustave Caillebotte, 1877, oil painting, Art Institution of Chicago Building)

“In novels and writings about Paris in the 1920s, Surrealists like André Breton and Louis Aragon wrote about the relationship between Paris as a city in which they were living and their internal emotions and mental states.” Simon Sadler, Professor of Architectural and Urban History at the University of California

Jasmir Creed is an exceptional urban drifter and flaneur, who intuitively ameliorates her work to reflect movements and responses to various cities.  

[carmen-theartist]

Visiting Artists 4106FA

Blogs - 4106FA – Criticality 2- Sem 2  6th Feb- Jasmir Creed  Jasmir Creed has been a professional artist since 2015. Her practice is one I find very similar to my own, creating pieces with texture, expressiveness and mark-making. Within my own work I find myself using expressiveness to create most of my pieces while using my interest in architecture and buildings such as Jasmir uses cityscapes to influence her work creating paintings of London, her hometown of Manchester or Liverpool. I myself find I use the places I have lived along with my hometown to inspire me. She uses psycho-geographic city journeys looking at the architecture and people in the environment. This is another similarity I see within my own work as since moving to Liverpool find myself walking around the city taking many photographs that greatly inspire me. Jasmir Creed is the first artist out of all of the lecture who I relate mostly in my work and who’s work I enjoy the most. The many similarities within our work is with the materials she uses, her influences and the way she finds them and her subject matter. 13th Feb- Tom Railton Tom Railton is an artist, lecturer, tutor, consultant and instructor in sculpture. Born in Coventry, England he now works in London, his work mainly consists of sculptures and he has a multidisciplinary practice. Railton describes his own work within this quote “Using a conceptual approach to sculptural materials and methods, I examine the processes behind making, replication and exhibition. I combine a joy for experimentation and open-ended enquiry with the possibilities of engagement with information. My work is enlivened by activity and exists as a result of an audience’s interaction. At its core is a dissemination and interpretation of knowledge made manifest. Acknowledging processes without overt display, a space is left for an audience’s own puzzlement and belief to fill the gaps.” Railton tells us how even though his work is researched based his concept or subject matter within his work is revealed later on and he will start a project without knowing where he is going and will let the piece explain itself as he goes through making. He also has quite a comedic style to his work by naming them unusual names such as one piece he named in Chinese which he could not understand. One piece by Tom Railton I like is “Simply Black” as for me it looks perfect but at the same time unperfect. The piece represented the new I phone 7 and fits perfectly as many of us today smash our phone screens. 20th Feb- Louise Giovanelli Louise’s practice is mainly influenced by ways of looking and perceiving. I personally like the way she views art in a very different way. Her work is not autobiographical or about herself, her work is more about making people or the viewer notice the different texture and want to touch the piece when they cannot. Her work is more about sensorial possibilities mainly visual. I like how for Louise her work is not about subject matter or visually representing something from an object of image but from feelings and making the audience feel something from the piece as well. She likes the audience to see inside the painting as well as outside. Shown in her piece “Two Grooves II,2019” within this piece you can see shapes in blue inside the piece and on the surface are white lines as if they are outside of the piece. 27th Feb- Dana Munro Dana Munro works in Brussels and London with her work being displayed and exhibited internationally. Her practice is mostly videography. In one of her pieces you can see she likes her videos to be living pictures rather than full moving videos. You can see this as the subject matter within the work consist of a camera and birds, the camera is still while the birds fly around and the video moves and uses angles as if the viewer is in the room using their own eyes. I personally like how she uses video in a different and unique way to most others.

[magill98blr-blog]

Jasmir Creed, I thought her work was pretty cool and I love that colours that she used. However, I didn’t actually find her very interesting. This is because she didn’t really seem interested in her work. Seemed like it was a task for her to have to talk about it.

[frankyhughes-art-blog]

The Wednesday Lecture: Jasmir Creed (06/02/2019)

Creed is an artist who works in the form of painting, drawing and montaging, she says that she explores the psycho-geography of cities focusing on the artchitecture and crowds based on her experiences making her way through cities. The cities she seems to focus on are her hometown of Manchester, London and recently Liverpool too.

This artist’s work is honestly not to my taste, but there is many elements of her work I can truly admire. I chose the picture above becuase I think it’s got a great sense of atmosphere, and outside of all of that finer detail in the center of the painting it reels off into a distortion of light in what looks to me like a train station tunnel. I think this particular painting and a few others I saw had such pleasing texture to me, this effect is from using oil paints, and I really like the result from it. I found some of the other more gestural charcoal and ink pieces just not to my taste, although I enjoyed the distortion and almost dystopian vibe she was achieving with the way she was playing with perspective, that reminded me of a lot of surrealist work, I just wished it had been a little cleaner and more detailed, however that is just my own preference. some of the work is just a little too dark for me and busy for me, although the ones where she uses accents of colours I do really like as it just helps to add some focal points and highlight different things in the paintings.

[sophieoliviab-blog]

Wednesday Lecture - Louise Giovanelli

Louise Giovanili studied fine art in Manchester school of art where she currently has a solo show in Workplace Foundation in Gateshead. Before the lecture I like to research the artist before hand where on her website she states ‘My practice is informed by ways of looking and perceiving, with the act  of looking itself as a kind of content. I employ found and generated  images, cultural references and excerpts from other art forms to  investigate the languages and histories of painting’. Her practice is very useful to me in my current semester of my painting project.

In her presentation Louise goes through each relevant painting she's created and her idea behind it where for example she states she just wanted to start with simple subject matter things she just had lying around. It was important to her because she just wanted to get to grips with painting but as she started taking the photographs she became interested in the way figures can relate to new objects. Louise then began to get models holding the objects to take photographs and these would be the source images for the paintings she made. After Louise made that comment of ‘source images for the paintings’ it reminded me of a previous artist Jasmir Creed who also didn't use her imagery as artwork on its own right. 

Louise mainly used things around the house that didnt have a permanence  such as party poppers and balloons she wanted to create permanence through her paintings. what I think she was interested in was the transformation of materials to the idea of the materials was very transient for her oil paints but also how paint can transform these objects. The subject matter actually complimented the process itself so the figures in these paintings are manipulating the objects making them into something else such as ‘paper into a paper swan’ Louise described. Louise Is interested in colour, life,  form, surfaces and arrangement which are significant in painting and in art itself. 

She made a comment how she likes to keep repeating her paintings by taking photos and paint the same image 4-5x. I understand why she would repeat her artwork over and over to see the outcome however I like artwork that was done in a moment and what you see if what you get by chance rather than studied. Louise did a great presentation because I left the lecture actually wanting to know more about her work which I found out she was shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize as well as he Beep Wales Painting Prize. i thought she gave a confident presentation that well well thought out and could tell she's either done this before or just knows the ins and outs of her work in detail which is lovely to see. 

[jgoffart2]

Jasmir Creed

The actual work presented by Jasmir was actually not too bad, I’m not usually a fan of this kind of work but aesthetically it was well executed, the crowd scenes were really detailed whilst feeling like a ‘hive’, and the experimentation with perspective and size was fairly disorienting. That said, the presentation itself reached new heights of dull. Being an artist doesn’t de facto mean you have a whole lot to say or that you have the speaking skills needed to do so. So a talk like this was just reeling off artists and philosophical ideas which have been influences in a way that made the whole thing come off a little like an A-level student presenting research. People talking about stuff like being a Flaneur, or referencing painters from 50 years ago without matching them in terms of conceptual or technical depth does kind of irritate me, like that stuff has been done, it’s been explored, we’re living in an era where things have accelerated more than any other generation and you’re unable to find fresh ideas or influence, or even to develop those from over 50 years ago. Not everyone who makes art will be breaking ground, and that’s fine but being an exhibiting artist with such redundant influences doesn’t really inspire me at all. 

[just-a-fine-art-student]

Jasmir Creed: Dystropolis Exhibition Review- 6/02

I went to this exhibition as I was unable to attend the lecture she gave. Jasmir Creed currently has an exhibition at the Victoria Gallery and Museum: Dystropolis.

I found Creed’s painting very interesting. I liked the contrasts in the natural aspects and city aspects within the paintings. I thought that the way that she used and matched colour in each aspect of the painting. I believe that her use of colour helped evoke the sense of alienation and disorientation of cities that she feels. 

I also liked how in the paintings you couldn’t tell whether the nature or the city was taking over or being taken over. I liked how this ambiguity shows both the nightmare of the city taking over, but also the beauty of nature reclaiming urban spaces. 

I really admire Creed’s use of colour to really give the aspects of the paintings the atmosphere Creed wants. I want to try to mimic this expressive use of colour in my own work.