A statement from the artist.

This is the most up to date copy of my statement of intent completed on the 17/10/2010. Despite several other tries and attempts to write specifically what i'm interested in i still feel this rather formal attempt best describes my current practise.

Joseph Cerski
Second year Statement of intent.

My area of exploration is vagueness and ambiguity, although my specific interests lie in ‘removing contexts’. My practise centrally involves mark making in the freest sense possible, I aim to remove the context from drawings and images by erasing, crossing out and destroying certain aspects of the images; to me the act of removing information, written or visual, is a physical manifestation of ‘removing context’. I consider the words erasing and crossing out to be quite loose themselves, ’crossing out’ doesn’t have to be with a line, but perhaps another image or word. Previously my practise revolved around drawing faces then erasing parts, sometimes all of the face. These images have no ‘hidden‘ narratives or back story, their significance lies in how successfully these drawings can inflict a sense of obscurity and doubt. For me, eliminating recognisable elements of an image or device constitutes as removing context. The result often leads to the viewer having to work to make sense of what’s in front of them, whether it be an incomplete drawing or dictionary with the words blocked out leaving only the definitions. The act of removing context lends itself towards creating a vague and ambiguous environment for the viewer

The skills I intend on utilising during my continuing exploration of the unknown lie in two sections. Having an organised professional attitude to experimental work and deadlines whilst continuing the pursuit of additional context to my practise. The second section includes more practical skills such technical drawing, presentational techniques, assembling and deconstruction objects and images. To be too specific with my skill set would inhibit my ambition to experiment with media and methodology. I intend on using the skills which best suit the idea, allowing for maximum experimentation thus giving my practise breadth and room to expand naturally.

I believe that the work you make defines you’re practise; a practise constitutes as an ongoing, living, developing always expanding body of work. The ideas which hold the practise together should always be evolving meaning it’s easy to pin point a specific idea that a practise revolves around but not always so easy to describe an ongoing evolution of work. However an artist I believe has a similar theme of work to my own is Christian Holstad, his work involving the removal of parts of the face leaves a sinister alien like character on the page, this work links well to my theme of removing context’s. Matt Bryans works similarly to Holstad, using an eraser as his tool of destruction he removes sections of the face leaving very little information for the viewer. The work presents a disturbing, alien like quality because of it’s lack of context through the removal of what’s familiar to us, in this case everything bar the eyes and mouth.

Initially I intend on continuing my study of faces and the body, I want to really experiment with ways to remove context in a face. Cutting, sticking, ripping, covering etc. Ideally I want all my work to be framed although as I’ve previously mentioned the ideas dictate the skills and requirements of the piece. Currently my works involve drawing a whole face then using a scalpel I remove the key lines to the re-create the image over a basic pen line drawing. Whilst keeping the recognisable elements of the face the reconstruction itself removes the context giving the face the ambiguous quality my practise tries to emphasise.