Rose Skinner's Fantastical Installations - Imaginapolis

IMAGE FROM ROSE SKINNER INSTALLATION: LLAMALAND





My interview with the artist for my thesis:

INTERVIEW WITH ROSE SKINNER
QUESTIONS TO THE ARTIST

1) What is the intention of the spaces you create in your installations?

I’m bored with living in the urban environment. I question why form and function has become more important than our ability to connect with the spaces around us. Why creativity, wonder and play are being designed out of our experiences. Why liability and profit trump experience. I question the implications of living in a world designed by these factors by creating nonsensical escapist environments base purely on the sensory experience.

For me escapism is an intriguing topic within contemporary society. Multifarious socially expectable forms of escapism are deeply rooted into our contemporary way of living so much so that escapist ideologies have become a lucrative commodity, package ingeniously into our everyday lives. My installations are a child-like wanderlust to escape the urban environment; to sink with-in a self-created fantastical world which turns the everyday banal into a candy flavoured psychedelic adventure; a place where things aren’t logical and sense doesn’t need to be sought.

2) Would you say that they are an expression, a realisation, or a simulation of the landscape of the imagination? (or if not how might they relate to imagination for you)

Could I say a manifestation of the imagination?

The imagination doesn’t always make sense. Well, mine doesn’t. It’s a surreal mind-trip, a complex web of conscious and sub-conscious desires and fears that influence the way I think and live my life. Imagining and dreaming are a fluid non-committed way for me to explore artistic concepts and scenarios before manifesting them into reality.

My works are essential an exploration into the unconscious. Imaginopolis in particular was an experiment in creative visualization using the naff technique discussed in new age philosophies such as: The Secret, What The Bleep Do We Know an Creative Visualization?

3) Is the outsider's 'experience' of the installation important to the intention/effect of the work, and is the work meant to be experienced as something separate than their 'reality'?

The audience completes the work. Or to be more accurate, the audience’s experience of the work is the work of art. Viewing pictures or watching a video of the installations never really equate to walking into the environments and being immersed in a cacophony of sounds, smells, tastes, colours and intervening interactions that make up the worlds.

My intention is to create an alternate reality, something that steps outside of the everyday experience but the individuals perception of the space is the real reality and the constructed environment is the means to that unique perspective. . does that make sense?

4) How do you want (if at all) the viewer to relate to the worlds you create?

I would like the audience to find their own relation to the environments. The eclectic and intricate nature of the works and the use of everyday materials allows for broad interpretations.

5) Do you use juxtaposition? (i.e. of negative/positive elements or dream/reality structures)

Juxtapositions aren’t something I construct into my work but it inevitably happens. One end of the spectrum gives the other a psychological context.



Good luck with your studies.

Best,
Rose