JANET PARKER SMITH

Exploring ideas of mortality and identity, this current body of work evocatively investigates relationships between earthly things and the permanence of change. These ideas are approached with a tactile and playful curiosity through collage, printmaking, embroidery, and the use of found materials. Using historic and contemporary imagery, both found and self-created the work looks at the human encounter with nature in a changing landscape. Transformations emerge through the act of making. The making itself is a repair, a physical conversation with memory and change. The work doesn’t try to fix anything in place but instead leans into the truth that nothing holds forever.

Looking at what was once tangible but now only visible through photographs and memories and recognising that absence and presence have become parallels existing at the same time in the void shows the corporeality of this work in its finality exploring identities and the permanence of change. Through complex layering the images and materials form ambiguities and contradictions that create new narratives and dialogues.

I like to investigate the way materials can behave together, initially feeling chaotic but through layering and process, a harmony distils.