Zara Ramsay
In a series of interviews, we talk to our graduating artists about their practice and process…
BA Fine Art student, Zara Ramsay’s objects are betwixt and between. An arrangement of found and made pieces: the resin cast of a bumbag hangs from the ceiling with strips of elastic either side or a video of someone imitating the sound of Kellog’s crunch (something the company attempted to trademark). The objects are brought together in installation, in what Ramsay describes as “a pseudo-science, an analysis of practices of living and our experience of materiality.”
Her material choices are from a hybrid place – stuff that is neither liquid nor solid, synthetic nor natural. Indeed, she explains “the very fact that those delineations aren’t quite clear. I find that really uncomfortable.”
Zara Ramsay
The piece combining the bumbag cast with elastic, is titled Echo Star after a satellite. Ramsay explains that when satellites no longer function they are relegated to a space grave yard in perpetual orbit, where Echo Star will be heading in 15 years. Though her objects offer peculiar material explorations, there is the underlying concern of consumption and production, the implications of present actions on an unknown future.
Ramsay’s work involves marrying the handmade with the found, she finds making an integral part of her process. “I always like to make things,” she says, “it’s about trying things out and building up an inventory of these strange objects.”
Engaging with process across the College, from the jewellery workshops to laser-cutting, Ramsay has found particular inspiration in the Materials Library. Discovering an aluminum building product made by a Danish firm for example, Ramsay was attracted to contradiction of a flexible yet strong metal. Having written to the company, a sample of the metal now takes its place in her Degree Show installation:
I’m wondering what are these weird things, trying to evoke that aura they have. Part of my practice is giving materials their say.