Exhibition: Eventually Everything Connects

Eventually Everything Connects (2015)
Can new artwork be produced through a reflective and critical conversation between two artists? How do we identify and value a collaborative practice of critical discursive reflection as part of the creative process or innovation? Can we use this process to disrupt the history of singular narrative (as linked to power relations) in photography?

Using a collaborative critical discursive and reflective methodology between the artists over a period of eight years. The aim has been to forge new ways of encountering the photographic image to critique the use of lens as a tool in the construction of singular narratives (as and questioning our relationship, as women, to the camera, the history of photography and the printed image itself.

Through the using action research methodology in the studio and collaborative critical reflection, the artists have experimented with a range of approaches, utilising collage, video and installation to create a fragmentary and multiple point narratives. The process of producing the work for the exhibition makes visible a working practice between artists, whose dialogue enables them to develop new avenues of production in response to each other’s practice and critical questioning. It aims to question and value the role of critical dialogue in relation to the production of new artwork and gives credit to the role of critical dialogue in innovation.

Over the period of 8 years, this process of critical dialogue has seen the artists’ practice shift from a reading of photographs through the status of the privileged singular image, to an overlapping of interrupted scenes and forms. The viewer might reflect on how the works sit alongside each other independently, whilst strategies of making and disparate narratives inherent in the works begin to echo and respond to each other.

The contribution of the authors of this work included:
- a discursive collaborative blog through which the artists discussed the research question around the lens and its role in constructing and representing human perception of reality http://connectseverything.tumblr.com/
- a collaborative curatorial process to design and shape the exhibition of works
- the production of individual artworks in the exhibition attributed to each of the artists
-the collaborative writing and production of a short text publication alongside the exhibition
-artist talks with members of the public and students from Southampton Solent University.

• Jandrell produced three new artworks in response to the research question:
'Vibration 1975': An interactive installation of mirrors, a projector and acetate collage
'Let the Children Boogie': Clear Vinyl collage installed on the windows of the gallery (2m x 3m)
'Spooky Action': A large scale layered vinyl collage installed on free standing wall (2m x 5m)

• http://connectseverything.tumblr.com/