Natasha Ferguson

Statement

Artist's Statment

Both my main interest and my artistic practice lies in questioning reality, existing precariously between familiarity and the unknown. Mostly through sculptural work and video, I aim to distort the view of the world around us through manipulating small details of objects or movements that may already exist or be recognisable to us, in an attempt to create a simulation of reality thrusting viewers into a state of not knowing.

I am interested in our sensory encounter with an art work and so aim to appeal to the senses, relying on a more tacit knowledge where work does not have to necessarily be assimilated into our brains through language to be understood, but through experience and feeling. Therefore, how we encounter objects, and the truth in this encounter, is hugely important in my sculptural practice. Yet how the objects meet their environment is almost more significant. Inspired by Tim Ingold’s theories concerning surfaces and how they act as interfaces for communication between the materiality of a thing and it’s surrounding environment, I work a lot with surfaces and aim to test how much of a boundary (both physical and conceptual) they can present within a piece of art work. In the same way a fantasy writer will create boundaries within their made up reality in order for it to relatable to an audience in this realm, I hope to work in the same way. The boundaries that are explored in my work are mostly concerned with weight and gravity. I then, use these aspects to test how the pieces hang in the world.

I hope that the physical encounter with the work in this way can perhaps then overtake logic; challenging what we think we already know something to be and changing the associations of objects in our world.