Julia Bamber

I'm glad to say I've finally finished the painting.  I'm rather surprised at myself as the lava person ended up a bit cheesier than I expected: with a lava heart. Nevertheless, the more I look at it, the more complete it seems to me. With pink, red, and the flower of a rose being a traditional symbol of love, exposing the heart of the lava man creates traces of a narrative for the viewer to embellish with their own imagination.  Furthermore, in making the background to the lava man and rose, I came to the realization that what had made the initial white and black background so good was its clear unblurry black and white lines that I was redefining with the white Gelly Roll gel pen. Ergo, I could preserve the high level of polish achieved with the gelly roll pen and the divide that my youngest sister liked so much, by redefining the black lines with a black pen on the other side, instead of filling in the gaps with a white gelly roll. It's also worth noting that I replac...

As an ardent collager and poet, I find myself often contemplating  Ugo Carrega's words from his manifesto on concrete poetry "Everthing is language [...] Language is everything" . I often imagine that everything in my bedroom and studio is language, and following this what kind of poem could be read from it.  The most prominant feature of my room are the walls. They are painted in a titanium white; this serves a dual purpose of allowing me to use my room as a flexible exhibtion space, whilst also serving as a neutral background for all of the collaging and art materials I store on it. In essence, these walls and my room are similtaneously my biggest collage and a womb from which new artworks are created. To clarify, the interior of my room are constantly changing and in flux, as myself, my youngest sister and one of her friends remove items from the wall to make their own artworks. In the spaces that are left behind, I put up new materials I (and sometimes others) have ma...