Artist Statement
My artwork revolves around animal symbolism, folklore and self-expression, exploring how these link to the wider world and the political/social climate. The animal images come to represent different aspects of identity, internalised relationships and experiences, including partially processed and unconscious associations. The meanings of animal images are often complex and vary vastly within different cultures.
My artwork revolves around animal symbolism, folklore and self-expression, exploring how these link to the wider world and the political/social climate. The animal images come to represent different aspects of identity, internalised relationships and experiences, including partially processed and unconscious associations. The meanings of animal images are often complex and vary vastly within different cultures.
In her BBC interview in April 1937, Virginia Woolf speaks about words being “full of echoes, of memories, of associations – naturally…they have been out and about, on people’s lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries…they are so stored with meanings, with memories...” (Woolf,1937).
In a similar way to words, animals are infused with local, personal and collective meanings that have developed over thousands of years, sometimes so buried within historical and cultural knowing that some seem to arrive from a mysterious, felt place, never completely new. Animals have often been used as tokens of collective and personal identity like the Golden Eagle in America or the Lion and Unicorn on England's coins and also the symbols of political movements like the Black Panther movement. Considering all of these elements, when working with animals I find that there is naturally a political and symbolic element in animal images and within what their unique characteristics represent in wider contexts. The view of everything personal also being political is a strong underlying theme in my work. Find out more about Beth's work www.bethhoyes.weebly.com/ |
Wolfscape 2016
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Artwork for the A Void Exhibition
When working on an image for this exhibition, I was originally drawn to moths and how they fly towards light bulbs mistaking it for the light of the moon as the theory goes. Originally I was thinking of how people are drawn to things that attempt to fill a sense of a gap or ways to avoid the feelings that arise in the spaces between, such as interacting constantly on phones, sugar, coffee, alcohol, cigarettes and so on. I had an image of repeatedly bumping into something mistaking it for what was really needed. This developed into seeing the moon behind the light bulb as a steady, predictable presence, relating to a kind of ‘secure base’ in attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988), the spaces between the moths, marking the voids between us, full of texture and matter rather than empty. Wherever you are in the world the moon provides connection to a universal symbol, mapping time with the eb and flow of tides and skies as the world turns on its axis. So this image highlights two sides - connection and disconnection, which perhaps links to many shared experiences in relation to phones/social media and political shifts in recent years. The moth also represents transformation due to its extreme changes in its lifecycle, making me think of the shifts that happen at times of upheaval.
Bowlby, J. (1988) A Secure Base, Routledge
When working on an image for this exhibition, I was originally drawn to moths and how they fly towards light bulbs mistaking it for the light of the moon as the theory goes. Originally I was thinking of how people are drawn to things that attempt to fill a sense of a gap or ways to avoid the feelings that arise in the spaces between, such as interacting constantly on phones, sugar, coffee, alcohol, cigarettes and so on. I had an image of repeatedly bumping into something mistaking it for what was really needed. This developed into seeing the moon behind the light bulb as a steady, predictable presence, relating to a kind of ‘secure base’ in attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988), the spaces between the moths, marking the voids between us, full of texture and matter rather than empty. Wherever you are in the world the moon provides connection to a universal symbol, mapping time with the eb and flow of tides and skies as the world turns on its axis. So this image highlights two sides - connection and disconnection, which perhaps links to many shared experiences in relation to phones/social media and political shifts in recent years. The moth also represents transformation due to its extreme changes in its lifecycle, making me think of the shifts that happen at times of upheaval.
Bowlby, J. (1988) A Secure Base, Routledge
Mothlight 2017