Leah Burgess-Smith BA (Hons) Interactive Arts 2020

During my 4 years at university I have been able to develop and refine my practice. I apply an experimental approach to working with materials, testing and developing overlooked or waste objects through different processes with the aim of repurposing to demonstrate their diverse properties. While continuing to develop my practice, I am involved with the community working with others to provide support for those less fortunate and using art as a tool to improve their well-being.

The experimentation stage of my practice holds as much importance as the final work. This project has three individual pieces and 2 smaller series, which work as one to display the development and range of each material used. We are in a world where new products are being produced just as quickly as others are being disposed of. As an artist I consider it important to use and challenge my creativity to work with objects that others see as unusable. I begin with a material, I then test and challenge the form in which it appears, using a range of different processes and tools to which I then add another material, and begin the process again.

This work was produced by testing the material utilising manipulative verbs. Working through the same selection of verbs for each material enabled a sense of regularity and comparison, which then formed into a selection of sculptural pieces.