Arctic voyage This month sees a new exhibition Scenes from a Virtual Journal at Leytonstone’s Stone Space Gallery. Here the artist Rose Parker tells of her grandmother’s remarkable adventure that became the inspiration for her work for the show. Scenes from a Virtual Journal is a series of paintings based on language collected from the Facebook posts of my grandmother’s travels in the Arctic Circle. I was intrigued by what she wrote because it was an atypical use of social media; for the most part, people use photos and captions when posting about their travels. My grandmother was unable to do this, as she felt that her camera was repeatedly failing to produce the images she wanted to create. She therefore had to resort to language in order to convey, not just what she saw, but her emotional responses. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if I could become a substitute for her camera and turn her descriptions into a visual representation of her experiences. In these works I have created typography from words found within the original source text. I wanted there to be a tangible link between my grandmother’s writing and my final paintings. Rose Parker is a young artist living in Waltham Forest. She graduated from Wimbledon College of Art in 2015 and has exhibited extensively in the UK and Europe. She has been sponsored for the show by The Cygnus Trust, an East London charity which supports organisations in the local community through the provision of grants and donations. See cygnustrust.org
Scenes from a Virtual Journal by Rose Parker 9 March to 2 April 2017 The Stone Space 6 Church Lane, Leytonstone E11 1HQ Thurs-Fri 2-6pm, Sat 12-5pm, Sun 12-4pm
To advertise your business contact ads@theelist.co.uk 25