STOKE WINDOW by JESS POLGLASE
Saturday 22nd March - Saturday 29th March, 2014
In the first of a new series of AirSpace Gallery's In The Window exhibitions, Cornish Artist, Jess Polglase explores architecture, perspective and space.
In Stoke Window, Jess has created a piece of work engendered through a particular process. Through creating wall drawings that are linear maps of ceilings she has visited, converting a photo to a line drawing and then taping this onto the wall of the exhibition, her lines extend perspective in an exhibition space by working with the nature of her surroundings and creating a warped shape that encompasses the room. She works with the exhibition space, not within it, and enhances the architecture already present, her lines of whiteboard gridding tape signify a space usually unnoticed and unloved.
At Airspace her lines fill the windows. The lines are not meant to be recognisable to the audience, purely reduced to line they take on a new meaning, and the original ceiling is purely the starting point of the lines. Instead we are asked to question perspective and the way in which Jessica Polglase’s construction works in the space it fills.
Jessica Polglase was born in Penzance, Cornwall, in 1990. She has been exhibiting in group shows since 2006, when she was selected to be in the ‘Gifted and Talented’ group at school. She has always been interested in art and participated in life drawing classes from the age of 15 in St Ives, continuing throughout college and during the Art Foundation course at Tregye, Truro College, Cornwall, which she completed in 2010. She then went on to study BA(Hons)Fine Art: Painting and Drawing at The University of Gloucestershire graduating with a first class honours degree. Whilst at university she won a month’s scholarship at the British School in Rome, funded by The Summerfield Trust, and this experience strengthened her artistic practice greatly. Both by winning and experiencing the trip her work became more confident and interesting. It also led to her being selected to represent her university at the ‘Hans Brinker Budget Trophy’ exhibition competition in Amsterdam, December 2012 where she was able to compete against other students. She has spent time volunteering at Newlyn Art Gallery and Gloucester Guildhall Gallery, and even spent time as an artist’s assistant for the artist Andrew Palmer. During her time at university she collaborated with fellow student Jodie Downes, finding the experience liberating when compared to solo work, and hopes to have an opportunity like this again in the future. In their second year these two artists also organised a group exhibition entitled ‘Flux’ for the Gloucester Guildhall Gallery.
Jessica’s work is very much about drawing attention to the unnoticed, as well as speaking to the audience on a personal level, and involving them. She sometimes uses mirrors to include a visual aspect of the audience into her work that is different for every person, exhibited at different heights so that the audience doesn’t always see their own face staring back at them. She has a huge interest in building work specifically for the site it will be exhibited in and Polglase is interested in exploring how the space around art can become part of the final work and experience. Her lines of whiteboard gridding tape signify a space usually unnoticed and unloved. Her wall drawings are linear maps of ceilings she has visited, converting a photo to a line drawing and then taping this onto the wall of the exhibition.
Currently Jessica is living and practicing in Cornwall. Her three passions are art, Cornwall and feminism.
For more information and to see more works, visit Jess's blog at http://jessypee.tumblr.com/
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