Artist talk with Jennifer Anable

Denison’s Studio Art program welcomes Jennifer Anable presenting an artist talk.

Artist Statement

My work is the confluence of architectural environments and personal strategies involving place and space. I am interested in identity and our connections to objects and learned dwelling habits. My everyday circumstances are a source of inspiration, as I create alternative agendas for my objects, one that alters expectations and exposes a sense of the uncanny. Most of my work starts in reality; a found object or a piece of fabric is gathered, then in the studio a conversation unravels. Deconstruction and reconstruction begin as I play with actions and find gestures that can open the work and draw out something new and familiar yet fictional.

Influenced by the methodologies of post-modern artists and the change of perception Duchamp created, in presenting his ready-mades. I see my practice as a means of examining the prevailing ideologies of today in an attempt to understand and confirm a time and place in the world. I ask myself how does one add insight and offer new experiences through objects of art?

In reaction to the question above, the materials and processes I choose vary greatly and afford me a large field of emotional connections and inherent meanings to work with. Mold making, for example, is a continuous exploration to me, creating a language of containment and an energy of release and transformation that gets projected through actions. Showing the marks of the hand and misfortunes of production give my sculptures a sense of honesty and vulnerability that I can share.

The sculptures may hold narrative meanings that we can see and understand but are stretched and abstracted away from a direct referent. Often in my studio, choices of the hand and the head are pulled between emotions of humor and seriousness. For me it’s about making the real, strange or dysfunctional and turning things inside out through visual and spatial means. In so doing the work presents ideas of absurdity and uncertainty creating a mental as well as a physical encounter with the viewer. There is a self-awareness to the work and in the end the sculptures knowingly flip between being the object and the subject of my questioning.