14 June - 7 July

Jodie Wingham is an artist, predominantly based within the field of printmaking, where her work seeks to challenge the constructs of the medium itself through an investigation into the nature of looking. Since graduating her work has been selected for shows across the United Kingdom, recently she was selected to take part in the UKYA take over in Nottingham. She has also exhibited internationally where her joint proposal was selected for a group show at the Terrault Gallery in Baltimore, USA.

Jodie’s work combines printmaking with non traditional methods of display to create artworks that playfully distort images, where images are turned into sculptural forms. Inspired by the act of observing others and the audience’s enjoyment of this process she focuses on the viewers desire to look and gain information, often using imagery with voyeuristic tendencies.

Themes surrounding the pleasure taken by human beings in the act of ‘looking’ underpin Jodie’s work, what satisfaction we receive when an image is presented to us that reveals something not usually seen, a glimpse into the hidden. This can take the form of an open button on a man’s shirt in her large screen print Unbuttoned (2016), or the embrace of couples featured in the ongoing series of Untitled Intimacy (2016-present); both creating conversations surrounding intimacy not just between the people within the work but between the viewer and the work. Playing with our desire to understand the information provided within an image or in this case missing from the images there is a greater need required from the audience to fill in the gaps in order to explore the act of looking and the roles of viewer and ‘voyeur’ in the work.

An email conversation between Jade Jamean Lees and Jodie Wingham.

Jade Jamean Lees: The whole process of creating your work seems to be a continuation of extending the viewing of something you shouldn’t be looking at. By using multiple processes to manipulate a moment, until its placed into a new distant unreachable form. A form that seems to be a private moment between the subject and you, the ‘voyeur’. Do you feel that it is a private moment?

Jodie Wingham: I feel that any interaction between a viewer and a piece of art can be a private moment as this act of looking and being involved with the work is a personal encounter. With my work I try and extend the viewing time a person spends looking at the piece by using these multiple processes to manipulate a moment, as well as using imagery that prompts a closer look. By having to delve a little deeper to understand what is going on the viewer, or ‘voyeur’ needs to engage with the work to receive something in return. I feel that if someone takes the time to be drawn into the work, unravel the image and form their own narrative then this is a private moment between the subject and viewer. However, this is only possible by how much the viewer wants to be involved.

JJL: Could you talk a little bit about the process you go through to select the private moments to document? And how do you decide what form the print will be presented in?

JW: I usually start with visual research, this can take the form of seeing something in the street that may catch my eye, magazines, internet, books, visiting galleries and use this interaction/moment as a frame work to create an image. When something draws my attention I try and figure out what this was and consider how to use this to create a new image or something similar that identifies the moment that first caught my attention. In the past I have also used certain quotes from reading to initiate imagery seen in my series Unbuttoned, where the idea of a gap between items of clothing is seen as seductive according to Roland Barthes and something I chose to document in the work.

Once I know the image I want to work with and capture this using photography, I consider the best printing method to use in relation to how I want it to be presented. This idea of presentation usually is considered from the beginning, knowing I want a specific interaction from the viewer with the piece. I often consider the use of a fold, or cut to create a physical interaction with the print, allowing the piece to be sculptural, creating its own space that the viewer must enter and be a part of.

JJL: Why do you think as humans we receive pleasure out of seeing things that we are not meant to see?

JW: I think inherently we are nosey, we like to look at what others are doing and take interest in the actions of others. This is based on a mixture of personal interest and research undertaken in psychological ideas on the nature of sight being important to drive our desires. As an individual I find moments which you're not meant to witness or pay attention to within the public sphere interesting, you are allowed into a narrative which you have to embellish to make sense, much like a television set however, in life this is real (or presumably real in the fact it is not scripted). The act of revealing is not yet ended, it is not fully revealed therefore it always remains in this state of suspense which I believe is far more interesting than the end result. The idea of what is about to happen, or what is being revealed is often far more satisfying than what you may want to know or see and this is because your imagination has to work to fill in the gaps. It is this moment that exists ‘on the cusp’ that I like to play with and because it doesn't give everything away, you as a viewer have to be involved to develop the image/idea. We as a society have information readily available, images are explicitly shown in media, billboards etc we no longer think and take notice-not really. Therefore when something is shown to us that isn't expected or private we tend to be more interested as it isn't a normal occurrence and therefore gain pleasure from witnessing the event taking place.

JJL: What is it the cusp of?

JW: Cusp refers to the point of transition between two things, it is a state of in-between, not quite one thing nor the other. I see this as a description of the work on display, I take photographs, or maybe use photographs is a better description, that are manipulated/edited to produce prints that are in-turn printed onto alternative materials. The works remain in a state of flux between being an image, a print and having a sculptural nature therefore crossing over into different disciplines but never being fully situated into one category.

The show title CUSP is specifically named after one piece of the same name which sculpturally mimics the intersection of two curves-what is known as the cusp. The image used depicts a man and woman sitting close, the woman’s legs cross over slightly touching the man’s, the moment captures a private interaction between the two in the image. It is a moment before something could happen between the couple or not? It is left open to question referring very much to the idea of being on the cusp itself. By using photographs to work with I see these as being a type of cusp themselves, frozen in time they suggest a moment that happened but also what will happen yet only hinted at.