In this interview, we speak to Amilia Graham,she creates work within the 4D department of Fine Art.
What is the title of your work?
"On the sentience of the walls".
Summarise the work in 5 words
Fleshy,sensual,cultivating,numinous,meditative.
Talk us through the process of creating your work
The subject matter of this piece is Lauderdale House. I wanted to explore physical space and its relationship to the human body- in this piece physical, domestic, space is something which is ‘bought to life’ by a person acting upon it. I wanted to humanise space, to project ‘sentience’ onto it as a way of breaking down boundaries of what is inanimate and what is alive and responsive- examining the sensual, human, perception of space rather than what is actually there.
I had an image in my head of maggots in wallpaper as soon as we were introduced to this project. I bought some maggots from a fishing shop and then, using an off-cut of wallpaper and some acrylic paint, released some of the maggots into the pattern. I wanted it to look as if the pattern was moving as the maggots squirmed inside, so the paint I used was the same colour as the wallpaper. This became the central image of the film. I then had the idea to include a shot of my hand circling the rim of a wine glass, the ringing sound of which would create a soundtrack for the piece.
How is the work site-specific?
This piece responds to the time frame we were given- the film starts with the hand on the wine glass and then cuts to the wallpaper and finishes with the hand moving away from the glass- leading us to think that it is the action of the hand on the glass which has caused the maggots to appear in the wallpaper. My choice to only include two images was because of the fact that our film had to be quite short, and I wanted to allow enough time for the camera to linger on each image. As the time passes the audience anticipates a cut to another shot but when it doesn’t the audience realises that what they're being shown is in some way important to the piece. Time progresses- the sound remains on the same note and the camera in the same place, but the maggots move from outside the frame into the center, they seem to be forming something, coming together- creating a feeling of something building up as a result of our attention being focused in the same place.