I am a contemporary installation artist based in rural Manitoba. My current work is on the topic of my personal narrative. I use a combination of clay, photography and print to excavate my past and surface the events, ideas and experiences into visual metaphors.
Self Portraits
With my self portraits I explore my past self in a moment of time. I take one event or circumstance as my starting point I construct an image of myself in that context. I aim to make visible an internal state or identity that once defined me. By the end of this body of work I will create 12 self portraits each exploring a theme such as my arrival to college, my experience unschooling, teenage friendship in isolated zealous Christian expat community, my beliefs that emerged in isolation, and my construction of a gender identity within the context of pervasive sexualized violence.
The print I am creating is a large lino-cut work that measures three and a half feet diameter. Composed of over 150 individual pieces, it is a work that relates to the experience of piecing together a past.
Clay
My clay work is process centred and experimental. I am interested in what happens when you push the clay and glaze out of its traditional application in order to make something that is unpredictable, “chaotic” but paradoxically bound by the laws of physics and chemistry. By understanding the rules of clay and deliberately breaking them, my work enters into a material conversation with the clay. The end result is a material metaphor for my narrative.
Alexandra Ross 