NEITHER TRANSLUCENT NOR OPAQUE

“Neither Translucent Nor Opaque” is a series of vessels that have significant textural qualities, the creation of which have acted as a form of healing and which the process of making has enabled trauma, memory and loss to be repaired. Wall panels that echo the story that this trauma has enabled. This body of work was designed from a range of digital drawings and hand drawn designs that allows me to play with the idea of revocation – particularly in relation to the promise of safety is explored in this work. The vessel thus can be seen as a talisman of that experience. I hope this work helps to translate, visually, and connect with the viewer’s own experience of varying mental states. I want to express a sense of ‘translutional emotion’ where the work is neither transparent nor opaque, hidden nor clearly expressed and where the term ‘translutional’ plays on the relationship between these two states and also references the condition of translucence. 

By bringing this aspect into my work I will be using a resin mixed with scale in the bases of these vessels which will indicate this idea of “translutional emotion” further. In my work this tension is represented through the textures which can be seen and felt thus representing the way in which we can see something but not understand the entirety of it without a deeper engagement with that object or way of being.  One of my implicit intentions is for my work to comment on the shared human experience.  Adamson comments  ‘… craft is intrinsic to what it is to be human.’’ (Adamson:2013: xii) (Adamson, G (2013) The Invention of Craft, Bloomsbury, London) 

© 2022 Frances Alexandra