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Outwards from Centre
Zandra Stratford’s newest body of work arose through an openness to change prompted by, and at odds with, the stagnation of what has seemed an unending lockdown. Compelled by a curiosity to explore compositional relationships, in October 2020 Stratford began experimenting with new material, scale, and shape. With an approach usually rooted in responding to the materiality of cities, the artist also had to shift their conceptual method, the studio itself becoming a microcosm of inspiration. With less space to roam and more space to contemplate, the resultant works condense and reimagine the artist’s unvarying fascination with experiences of urbanity: the dialogue between artificial and organic.
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After Nyne Contemporary: How does the new work feel to you?
Zandra Startford: "There’s definitely a more granular approach to structure, which I think is a response to creative constriction. So much of my creative practice is rooted around exploring urban environments - small spaces in big cities. Here, I’ve had to narrow the scope, so there’s more time to dwell and unpack detail. There’s a compression and activity in these concentrated movements, like bees in a jar."
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What ideas preoccupy your work?
"Structure and Facade are words that kept coming to mind. Structure that builds resistance to external forces and the facade or aesthetic treatment or artificial appearance. Much of the work is in uncovering what’s behind.
The works also explore the concepts of being home, the visual narrative of where I live. Four paintings include remnants of one Hudson’s Bay shopping bag. Originally drawn to the large type, outside of context, the underlying structure of place reveals this uncomfortable narrative that this was originally a fur trading fort on the very edge of the world, and the tense dialogue and overlap between settler and Indigenous spaces.
“Outwards from Centre” speaks to a new process for me, as I’ve usually made large gestural forms, and extrapolated detail from that. With these works I’ve been returning to a symmetry, building a kind of DNA of the work, and then expanding outward from there, like a shockwave."
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What is fundamental to your practice these days?
"Honestly, just working. Like many of us I have been struggling during the pandemic and being in my studio and taking a mental break gives me a chance to relax. That being said, I have been mostly listening to political podcasts while working so sometimes those visceral reactions to everything horrible come out in the work as a way to move through them."
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Where have you found motivation?
"It’s about occupying and moving through geographies, architecture, inhabiting physical space. The entrance of my studio building echos much of the lateral stripes that’s a recurring motif in my work. I get to the studio through a secret courtyard that most people walk past without noticing and the textures, the angular light, show up in the work."
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Can you tell us about the 'Tsugite' works?
"I’ve been playing with these “grabbable" strips of constructed panel, so proportionally they’re quite skinny, but they have a satisfying depth to them. I love the idea of having these finished, completed paintings, and reorganizing them easily to fit season or mood. I’ll hang them lengthwise in a series or turn one sideways to stack them.
The Japanese art of joinery is “tsugite” so I’ve explored this idea of how the material literally fits together - not just visually, but it’s tactile. They work like building blocks, and it doesn’t matter if you hang them one way and rearrange them a day later. It invites play without the artist having to be there and declaring the “right” way."
Copyright © 2019 After Nyne Gallery
gallery@afternyne.com
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