Jessica Young
In a series of interviews, we talk to our graduating artists about their practice and process…
Our atrium is a huge space, offering up a tempting spatial canvas to graduating students. Jess Young (BA Fine Art) has taken on the challenge by creating her largest work to date for Degree Show One, a series of hung objects made from foam, latex and inflatable plastic all in pastel shades.
Engaged, like many students, with the impact and experience of digital technology, Young however wanted to work with tactility and decided to marry the two:
It’s a concept I’ve been working on for most of this year, trying to realise that the relationship between the physical and the digital isn’t a rivalry. There’s a synergy. Just because something is digital doesn’t mean it can’t be translated into the physical.
Having spent time this year arranging objects to photograph for Instagram, Young decided to bring the screen into real space, hanging her objects in a row across the atrium space.
Jessica Young
Her objects, many of them found, suggest the synthetic with their bubblegum colours and manmade surfaces. And though this is where Young’s attraction lies, it’s important for the artist that the objects age, gather dust and the materials degrade over time. Selected for the emotional response they provoke, her objects respond to their environment, twisting, fraying and bulging:
The way that big pink strip of latex hangs? It curls perfectly either side. It’s so satisfying, so calming… The autonomy of materials, which is so different to the digital. You have a certain amount of control and then the material will do what it wants.
Jessica Young has been nominated for MullenLowe Nova Award.