Digital Portfolio
Statement
What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. ” ~ John Updike
My art deals with fragments of autobiographical narratives that convey qualities of universal human emotion and existence. Although sometimes sombre in nature, it often contains elements of humour and joy.
Founding myths, the metaphysical and existential concerns are my playground of thought. The feeling I’ve often had of being “in between” has led me to look into the mysterious and the peripheral states - the twilight, the dreaming, the absurd and entangled temporalities. Like Proust, I believe in a circular notion of time whereby everything resurges in some form or another. This probably explains why mandalas are a recurring theme within my artwork, as are experiments with silhouettes, juxtapositions, layerings and polarities.
My love of poetry, which I view as an essential creative principle, along with literature and philosophy, also informs my practice. My background as a linguist and a library worker could explain why my production sometimes has a sequential feel in which the written and the spoken word may feature.
My practice spans a breadth of media, including 3D, collage, painting, photography, video, artist books and soundscapes.
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
- Acrylic and floorpaint on plywood - 51 cm diameter
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
An example of the ‘local’ artwork I have been attempting to develop, this picture belongs to a series of 8 photographs taken at night or during twilight. With this body of work, my aim was to offer a different view of the place where I live – namely South Tottenham. I wanted to convey a slightly fairytale, meditative and disconcerting version of what can at times be seen as a worrying place. I was also interested in exploring the way the mind can sometimes be tricked into seeing things under certain lights, in this case an animal whose presence although not entirely impossible is nonetheless unlikely.
Roland
In Kowloon, just a couple of miles from the Chinese border, a lonesome Westerner has wandered in a ‘typical’ commuter village. He is tired and does not want to go any further. He has stumbled upon this derelict ‘piazza’, where the villagers sometimes meet for a chat. There is no one around now and anyway the Westerner only speaks a few words of Chinese, so he would find it difficult to strike even the simplest of conversations. So he just sits there, thinking of absent friends and family, and of the next border, always so appealing.
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com © All rights reserved
WHO DO WE THINK WE ARE? or The Anthropology of Garbage – 4 inkjet prints on paper – 46 X 68 cm each
In our ‘First World’, plastic waste is a huge problem that we do not deal with directly. We might ease our conscience by depositing the plastic we use in recycle bins but what happens to it afterwards is not very clear and anyway the information is far from readily available. It appears only a small percentage of this plastic is recycled in our countries, whereas the rest is sent abroad in bulk, to be sorted out by some other people with a much lower standard of living. Very often, the plastic ends up either in landfills abroad or in great patches of floating garbage in the oceans. What does it say about us? About me? What is my role in this global disaster? Each piece represents one month of plastic I would have normally put in my recycle bin. I created parcels with it, reminiscent of cargo bulks and postal packages. When I photographed the parcels some strange effigies appeared naturally, the way a hidden meaning might. In the anthropology of garbage, you are what you throw away, and art of course can be a way of recycling the wreckage of our existence. After a while it seems each parcel came to symbolise a fragment of my life and identity. It has been said that what is concealed is often revelatory and although left to the interpretation of the viewer, in the end, these effigies could be read as the unsettled ‘self-image’ of a single individual in a consumer-driven society.
Winner of the Lowes Dickinson Prize, 2012
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com © All rights reserved
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Videos
Video channels: https://www.youtube.com/user/celinesamson https://vimeo.com/user7982003/videos
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com © All rights reserved
Stills from “Last Lap” (4:56) https://vimeo.com/120185717
‘Last Lap’ is a meditative take on Ayrton Senna’s final moments before his fatal crash at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994 The original footage was captured by the camera placed inside Senna's cockpit. At normal speed the film is already impressive enough. You think "these are the last things he saw" and the fact that it might be an advertising billboard gives the whole thing a feeling of absurdity. I have modified the footage to a 10th of its original speed and added an animation based on flowers that have been associated with death in various cultures. Bit by bit the racing car starts to resemble a hearse as it becomes saturated with flowers. Senna died a death that was sudden, violent and very public. With this animation, I wanted to 'slow things down' for him so to speak, and to give him the experience of privacy and solemnity he should have had.
Still from “The In-Between” (4:11) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB-soc5czjQ
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Still from “At The End of the Road” (3:30) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3TDncCpV3Q
Transcription of a painting by Giavonni di Paolo that reexplores the myth of St John the Baptist retiring the desert
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Still from “Un crépuscule au mois d’octobre sur la colline aux cerfs-volants ” (24:11) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnZPtcsq60
“In a silhouette there is only one line, no motion, no light, no colour, no height, no depth, no eye, no ear, no nostril, no cheek, only a very little part of the lip - and in spite of it, how decisively significant it is…”
Johann Caspar Larater (1741-1801) scientist, theorist and authority on physiognomy.
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Still from “As above so below » (6:32) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfB04oit2AY
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Still from “Neige” (2:32) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h3etTNgxes
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com © All rights reserved
Proposed installation in Southwark Cathedral with soundspcape https://soundcloud.com/celinesamson/soundscape-proposed-for-forest
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
All rights
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
∞/ Out of Time (4:09)
Installation and soundscape https://soundcloud.com/celinesamson/out-of-time-4-09
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
All rights
The Ghost Diner – 17 plaster casts – Edition of 1
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
This piece shows a dismantled telephone whose reassembled pieces are displayed on a black wooden board according to size, colour, shape, etc. It is a meditation on lines of communication at their most broken. A futile and somehow pathetic attempt has been made to keep all the pieces and reconnect them in some way (with the wires). But there is no point. The phone will never work again and the communication will never be restored. All one can do is maybe examine analytically all the pieces of the puzzle and derive some artistic inspiration from it.
Fɶtalized - 3 frame boxes (mixed media) 20 X 27 X 3.5 cm
This piece is centred upon the body as a component of the environment/landscape with which it appears to blend. It also tackles the natural condition of our spiritual and physical being and questions the cycle of life as well as the possibility of reincarnation. Using the recurrent view of one of the most basic body positions integrated into various landscapes, a variety of powerful emotions and experiences are addressed: foetal development, birth, pregnancy, grief, self-protection, deep sleep, the passage of time, death, burial rites, etc. The museum specimen aspect of the piece is intended to encourage the viewer to further meditate in a detached and analytical manner upon the universality of the subject.
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
Me, myself and I – Showtime! – Mixed media, 35 X 26 X16 cm
The product of a lucky find, this revisited magic box which in the past might have concealed white rabbits (giant or not) has been used as a tool of self-exploration. Inspired by toy theatres, dolls’ houses and Joseph Cornell's assemblages, the box has become a kind of trophy room where I put on display some psychologically charged objects evoking usually concealed themes such as the lure of the macabre, distortion, fragmentation, death and rebirth, to mention just a few! The box is lit up and illustrated by a spare and dreamy soundscape which invites the viewer to further to further questioning and observation.
Link to the soundscape https://soundcloud.com/celinesamson/i-do-not-know-who-i-am
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com © All rights reserved
Tough Medicine
Artist book - 21 X 21 X 3 cm
Presented in a sleeve of gauze adorned with surgical tape and an embroidered red cross, this clinicallooking artist book was thought of as a unique emergency toolkit for a rich and decadent hedonist in order to cope with the various predicaments of a ‘work hard play hard’ lifestyle. After visiting the High Society exhibition at the Wellcome Collection I was pondering on how easy it was in the 19th century to get hold of mindaltering substances by just visiting the chemist, hence the Victorian illustrations on the left side. On the right side, the hedonist will find the right pill for seven kinds of predicaments. The pills are unadorned and there is no clue as to what their active substances might be. It is a gamble. The hedonist will have to trust that the artist has his/her best interest at heart.
Tough Medicine (continued)
Céline Samson - https://celinesamson-art.weebly.com - celinesamson@hotmail.com
ART EDUCATION
2015 BA Fine Art – Middlesex University (Hendon) – First Class Honours Degree – Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence
2013 Foundation Degree in Art and Design Professional Practice - Working Men’s College, London - Distinction
2009 Access to HE Diploma (Art and Design) - Working Men’s College, London
2007 One- year course studying Abstract Painting - Mary Ward Centre, London
2006 One-year course studying ‘Painting and Drawing from the imagination’ – Working Men’s College, London
2002 Crash course in web design (Dreamweaver) - King's College London
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Currently working as a freelance artist and as a translator/proofreader. Between 2000 and 2013, I worked as a library assistant for King’s College London.
GROUP AND SOLO EXHITIONS
2015 “Factory 15” Graduation Show – Middlesex University, Hendon and Truman Brewery, London
2014 Video Installation - Middlesex University, Hendon
2013 FdA Degree show exhibition (“Room 603”) - Working Men’s college, London
2012 Lowes Dickenson Prize exhibition, Ruskin Gallery - Working Men’s college, London
2012 Part of the "Points of Contact" group exhibition - Crypt gallery, London
2011 Site based intervention on top of Parliament Hill - London
2009 Part of the ‘Mind the Gap’ exhibition organised for the Women’s Art Movement (WAM) - Crypt Gallery, London
2009 Solo Exhibition - Bernie Grant Art Centre, London
2009 Access Show - Working Men’s College, London