Welcome to my website

The ideas and theories behind my artworks are directly influenced by research theories and evidence from my parallel career as a research psychologist. This website summarises both careers and showcases the main series of artworks, describing their psychological influences.   ​

My art practice 

“Once you know you don’t know, you can begin to explore”  Elizabeth Fisher.
 
Working mostly in the photographic medium, making staged, art images, I also make short video works, mixed-media paintings and sculptural works, all of which seek to offer a positive and playful stance to states of not knowing and uncertainties. I make floating, drifting and indeterminate worlds that celebrate ambiguity and multiple viewpoints and subjectivities.  As writer Deborah Levy highlights “It is essential to surrender to the idea that human incoherence, which is always twinned with coherence, is what keeps us curious, furious, confused and vitally alive”. I’m interested in making slower, open-ended images and object that invite contemplation and shared dialogue. 
 
My studio practice is process led, hands-on and experimental; I take household substances and transform them into small sculptures, or mix them with traditional art materials. Photographs are made from small sculptures using a close-up lens, lit just for the camera with the final prints large-scale, and mounted on aluminium for exhibition. 

​For work in progress you can follow me on Instagram at catherine5524 and for articles and research I use twitter at catherinejacob5
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News
In October I'll be taking part in Take/Make the 2020 Photo Fringe exhibition with a collection of images celebrating the positivity of not knowing and uncertainties. 

        Video works

Current studio works

My new Everyday Awe series is exploring the psychological impacts of wonder in our everyday experiences. I'm also researching and thinking about the impact of people leaving earth and travelling to mars in A Message from Mars, which is looking like it might become a book project. I'm also working with images to aid our consideration of  time perception and scarcity mindsets.  

All these new works are made from photographing everyday household materials,  or by making paintings which are created just for the camera. 

Lockdown works

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I also make photographic works outside the studio. During the current Covid crisis I've made work in response to call outs by Format Photographic Festival and Impressions Gallery regarding the #massisolationproject  and under the hashtag #Covid19artistsathome.  I've also made work in response to Groundwork Gallery's #doorstepenvironment challenge and sold with the wonderful #artistsupportpledge set up by artist Mathew Burrows to help artist make sales.

Short biography

My work has been shown in institutions (including a solo show at mac, the midlands arts centre), commercial galleries  (including Flowers Gallery, Sarah Mysercough Fine Art), at photo festivals  (Herefordshire Photography Festival,  Photo LA) and many artist-led spaces (Lewisham Art House, Whitstable Bienalle Satellite,  APT gallery,  Norwich Arts Centre, Elysium Gallery, Swansea).  I've also held residencies at the Florence Trust (2002-3), on a working sheep farm in Constable country (Rural Idyll, 2011) and in 2006 I ran Viewfinder, a £10k landscape photography  residency for Redbridge NHS Trust working with patients of a cancer ward to revisit and photograph their favourite landscape scene in the UK.

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