Progress in 2021 — Adam Garratt

2021 provided a slow pace to the start of the year due to lockdown & social restrictions being slow to lift into the summer. Once again allowing for a time to reflect on my practice & make work by exploring new methods & mediums.

In addition to installing some work in late 2020 at AWEsome art space in Exeter there were some new & exciting explorations with in my practice.

I had the time from January till around April to complete a walking project with a friend which allowed us to make work based on our local area. For this book work I was able to explore the edge of our small but expanding town & notice the effects of urbanisation into the countryside. This lead onto my interest in the nearby urban fringe & the materials, forms & spaces seen here.

I was also afforded the time to explore painting methods in acrylic which are ongoing. This began as experiments in colour & texture in the form of pallet paintings. As the year went on a new direction of work splintered from this along side my long term practice. It is a very new direction that im excited to explore. It has evolved around my queerness & seems to be addressing my reflections of youth beauty, magazine advertising culture, floral imagery & my place as a gay person in his mid 30’s. It has taken the form of collage, painting & object glorification. This work is taking form with plans to explore & discuss outcomes with an artist friend but for now it's not out there. However watch this space.

One amazing development in 2021 came mid way through the year with the selection to take part in CORRESPONDENCE01. This project provided the impetus, funds & output to be able to join Double Elephant print workshop, a facility that I have been itching to use - realistically since graduating from MA in 2019 - but actually since I head about it about 10 years ago. Once I became a member it was time to make work for the CORRESPONDENCE01 exhibition, then each month as my membership went on I could expand my printing practice. Several steps have been made with materials & images.

Currently I am drawn to printing on translucent materials, such as tracing paper, corrugated plastic & my old faithful, plastic Monarflex sheeting. All showing imagery from fringe areas that somehow describe the encroachment of human habitation on someplace more rural.

I have tried to continue my practice with the principal of reuse at the forefront of my making decisions & I have managed to salvage some bits that I could use. I did have to buy the corrugated plastic, which gives me mixed feelings but I will use it to its fullest. One benefit of the plastic is that it can be cleaned & reused if the printing isn’t what I want.

I look forward to continuing with these threads of work & hope to make something interesting down the line. There seems to be a collection of work building that will hopefully lead to an interesting dialogue. For now I will build on this with a view to documenting it & logging what i have made.