Vanessa Maurice-Williams
Artist Statement
My practice is an exploration of urban and rural landscapes that concentrate on the physical or illusionary entrance to a space. The works take their wonky shapes from the origins of thresholds – using motifs such as bridges, gateways, stairways, portals etc that act to delineate spatial zones. I use industrial materials, which are appropriated for their plasticity, saturated bright colour and temporariness. The installations are invariably cordoned off, creating spaces that are disrupted in a buoyant yet contained manner. In cutting short the viewer's interaction by a divide, similar in value to the horizon in a painting or a fence in a field, I am creating suspense: an expectation of a performance, leading the viewer to be trapped in an in-between movement of time. My three-dimensional approach to painting contributes to current debates on the "extended field of painting", in which space, time and performance play defining roles.