Room 103

A peer reviewed exhibition whereby artists were selected in response to their ability to illustrate or interrogate aspects of society that George Orwell would have recognised as being relevant to Orwellian themes. The exhibition was reported on in the George Orwell studies magazine and the works selected for exhibition were mentioned in the review by Glen Ibbotson. This exhibition allowed me to present aspects of practice that were more focused on the development of imagery that was designed to have a more ‘mythic’ presence. Images derived initially from conversations with people about society, were taken through a process of simplification through drawing and were then pushed back into the subconscious by losing and then rediscovering the image. The selected images were extracted from an iterative process that produced several drawings all related to the theme of surveillance. Working in charcoal on hand made paper also allowed the images to develop a more materially focused message, the deep blacks and rough surface texture suggestive of an almost animal or animist presence, these imaginative drawings being derived from drawings that were in their first manifestation objective drawings of rocks