(Re)Seeing
Alice Martin
(Re)Seeing
Alice Martin takes on Look Again’s Seed Fund residency for September, presenting new work in both physical and digital form in the Project Space window vitrine and on social media.
Inspired by museums and archaeology, her work plays with historical objects and digital 3D technologies, inhabiting a hybrid space that questions and reinvents how both are understood when they become entangled and create new forms.
Her starting points are open source, digitised collections of historical objects and artefacts, now available virtually to a global audience. Some are from renowned museums such as the Metropolitan in New York, or more remote locations such as Åland in the Baltic Sea, while others come from virtual repositories such as Global Digital Heritage.
Her choice of objects, such as painted wall fragments, oil lamps, beads, and flooring are deliberately small scale and everyday, and have already been mediated by digital technology. Martin pushes this much further, using 3D modelling tools combined with traditional materials and processes, including clay and casting, to produce new versions of each piece. She has had to adapt to limitations imposed by Covid 19, reflecting that the objects she makes have become much more delicate, handheld, and digital without access to studio facilities at this time.
She will display these new artefacts together in a setting resembling a museum, although, due to object type, period or location these would never be seen together.
She says, ‘This gives the viewer a unique perspective, allowing them to interpret archaeological material in different ways. Instead of being told what it is they are seeing, a person’s imagination comes in to play. A fresh understanding and a range of narratives will hopefully be gained through the ambiguity of the works.’
As well as the physical sculptures, digital 3D models and screens, the objects will be presented online through images, video (including time-lapse) and GIFs. Follow the Look Again Instagram for additional project materials.
Biography
Alice Martin is a visual artist from Stirlingshire and Committee Member of the art collective GOSSIP (Graduate Opportunities Supporting Sustained Independent Practice), based in Stirling. She is a graduate of Gray’s School of Art (2017) and completed her MLitt in Archaeological Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands in 2019. Shortly after she undertook her first solo exhibition CTRL Cat the Tolbooth, Stirling (supported by Visual Artist and Craft Maker Awards: Forth Valley and West Lothian). Selected group shows include Crafting the Future Discovery Day, The Engine Shed, Stirling; RSA Open Exhibition, The Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh; They Had Four Years, GENERATORprojects, Dundee, (Commission/selected artist, supported by the Hope Scott Trust) and New Generation Show 2017, Compass Gallery, Glasgow, (Invited artist).