ART Habens
Nikkita Morgan
heavy to understand in any other form apart from art.
plan to create artworks referring to religious conflict but also a one of piece to represent the 100 years commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. This will be one of the most important artworks I will create so far in my career as the 100 years is widely commemorated and celebrated and with the opportunity to create and hopefully exhibit this piece in Ireland.
Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Nikkita. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work with stainless steel evolving in the future?
With my new and future artworks I aim to be able to show my understanding of destructive and futile, yet incredibly human conflicts within the contexts of textiles bringing political questions and answers to an art and non-art audience.
Thank you for the opportunity in sharing my thoughts with your readers. My future projects will continue to focus on the North of Ireland political troubles, although focussing more in-depth on the religious aspect of the conflict, researching the boundaries/borderlines of division between the two rival groups (Catholic/Protestant) in the North. I will look at whether religion is the main cause of the conflict in the North, understanding and comparing the perception of social, national and geographical boundaries. I will also try to relate, represent and link other conflicting countries such as Palestine (Irish-Palestine connection). With this concept for future projects I intend to incorporate array of processes and techniques as well as materials to create largescale 2D/3D works. This will include further works using stainless steel, fabric and embroidery and using new materials such as wood, as I feel these materials best represent my concept as suggested beforehand.
Title: An Embroidered Story 2 Date: 2015 Size: 150 X 80 cm Format: Mixed-media: embroidery, fabric and acetate Details on the nature of the work: This piece is a collage of imagery relating to the past and present conflict in the North of Ireland. Imagery and text are key elements used within my work to represent different aspects of the conflict, referencing key historic/contemporary events, slogans, words and images relating to the part of the story I am telling. Fabric was used as the main material as this symbolises a personal item relating to the idea of personal, private and public emotions of the conflict being exposed to an audience. I used the cut through method as a representation of bullet holes (past and present) and how they are still visible today; seen in walls and still in people’s minds. This refers to the idea that the conflict has no end in sight and that it keeps occurring (by going round in circles). In this piece I also reference the idea that there are at least two sides to every story if not more by exposing both sides of the fabric to the audience. Title: A Troubled Landscape Date: 2015 Size: 200 X 130 cm Format: Mixed-media: embroidery, fabric, acetate and plastic (soldiers) Details on the nature of the work: This piece is a collage of imagery relating to the past and present conflict in the North of Ireland. Imagery and text are key elements used within my work to represent different aspects of the conflict, referencing key historic/contemporary events, slogans, words and images relating to the part of the story I am telling. This piece consists of four separate collages joined into one large image representing all aspects of the North’s Troubled Landscape.
In the future I see my work developing a lot with stainless steel. I plan to incorporate new techniques to create new and innovative sculptures. An idea I have so far is to create human figure stories/collages, plasma cutting imagery, text and designs into the steel. Steel has also been a material interest of mine, as it represents my concept due to the material but it also has many functions, whether it be to embroider, screenprint or plasma cut, there’s so much I can use it for. In September I will be starting a 12-month artist residency in the textiles department at the Edinburgh College of Art. Where I will have the opportunity to use the colleges art faculties, which I can develop my creative practice further using arrange of materials. During this residency I
Summer 2015
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