Piotr Skibinski

My work is orbiting around a thin line between the physicality of an
object and it’s form. Translation of visual structure, from ephemeral
to solid. Learning, and where necessary, inventing a personal language
to communicate this transcription.
Culture enclosing nature,
To cultivate something means creating an opportunity for growth, a
setting for development.
I cultivate ideas, breed and raise them on the soil of culture.
Fine art approach blends in with mass production techniques
I focus on depictions of reality, that in context of art, become
reality themselves.

Piotr Skibinski : Solo Show

Stephanie Richardson

In my current practice I have been constructing objects that have the air of esoteric props, objects that resist classification into a register of functional domestic articles. I have a fondness for lifting objects out of childhood and reimagining them within an adult topography and imbuing inanimate matter with unsettling, provocative and fetishistic qualities. I am captivated by objects that appear to pulsate and swarm with unrealised desires... a certain throb and hum radiates from such things. The rocking horse is a slippery, curious object that swells and plummets and is animated under our weight. A restless, squirming object which seems to stir and twitch of its own accord and appears to will you to set it into undulating motion in a tentative and reciprocal choreography.

Jane Stewart

The collection of found objects and materials is an important aspect of my work as an artist. To this end, I gather remnants of domestic woodwork from a local tip and discarded objects from skips and junk yards. I am attracted by signs of use or age, or items which have been part of something else in an earlier life. These objects serve as inspiration for my work and/or directly as materials within compositions of found objects, photographs and made pieces in environments or wall spaces.

MUTE

Objects are the central theme of this exhibition, ranging from a saddle to fish crate. Each window investigates how space and form interact. The main restriction at the WOT is the fact that the only space you get is the small window area, so it's interesting to see how different people approach the space they are given. Each object speaks for itself, however interaction is 'muted' by the barrier of the window, a barrier possibly always present between artist, art and viewer.

Literally

Astrid Jaekel

Turine Viet-Tu Tran

Emily Hair

This month The WOT presents three current Edinburgh College of Art MFA Illustration students;

Turine Viet-Tu Tran, Emily Hair and Astrid Jaekel.

Each Illustrator is preoccupied with the processes of drawing, this being central to their thinking and practise. The exhibition will be focused around ink, paper and books, each piece hand made by the artist. Craft and skill are being showcased interplaying with narratives and ideas. Each artist’s concepts are translated through these mediums and the windows play an important part in the conversation between the work, its context and the viewer. Literally calls on images of books and questions imagination, rather fitting for its location in the windows of the Central Lending Library in the city of Edinburgh.

Weaving the City

Tobias Houlton

www.wix.com/tobiashoulton/tobiashoultonartscom

Tobias Houlton’s practice has typically been engaged in exploring the world of dream, nightmares and mortality, and how these can reflect upon our vision of material Earth.

The world encompasses a whirlwind of emotions and experiences that can be projected upon objects. Material entities of which inevitably provoke symbolic relevance to each individual. The artist, to reveal underlying truths about our human existence, has manipulated objects of familiarity into surreal metaphors. These pieces are to act as quiet statements regarding life in a hectic world.

Faith Limbrick

hellolittlebox.blogspot.com/

Faith has been using faceted lenses to look at the city of Berlin. Making her own architecture, growing it on the pre-existing facades and urban furniture. Many of the places she visited have been abandoned. When places are neglected other things start to grow.

Thorunn Bara

www.thorunnbara.is

Thórunn Bára explores conveying a perception of an uneasy relationship between nature and culture in her native environment of Iceland, a lack of understanding of interdependency of all things in the natural world.

She believes art has a place in facilitating the spectator to orientate themselves by having a closer look and using his or her own experience and thus having a chance to experience a collective responsibility for nature.

Lichens and mosses are considered low plants and often overlooked but they do have a pioneering role in the evolution of life by preparing the soil for rooting of higher plants and hence are both signs of the beginning and the end of civilizations.

Geological fillings in ordinary stones deep in the earth have long been sought after in our culture.

Manmade material meets objects from the natural word in a nonchalant way.

Sacha Imrie

www.sachaimrie.co.uk

A fascination with the documentation of everything, yet an apparent, paradoxical reluctance to give everything away, drives Sacha Imrie’s practice.

Her sculptural work revolves around the two-dimensional – using photography as an initial means of recording thoughts, surroundings, surfaces and whatever else may warrant archiving.

A bid to restrict this documented information, and select points of viewing, sees materials subjected to various processes of fabrication, layering and omission, until sculptural objects form.

Rachael Thomas and Rachel Charter

rachaellthomas.blogspot.com ; rachelcrcharter.blogspot.com

Rachael Thomas and Rachel Charter have been collaborating together for over a year, sharing an interest in mundane materials, lo-fi processes and site responsive installations. 13.11.10 takes the form of a large, high hung tapestry, composed of oil paint, flour and sugar applied directly onto sheets of tin foil. The work rests on the window ledge with an assortment of soap sediments and sugar coated objects.

The simple materials and plain form combine to create a work that not only takes into consideration the window’s architectural characteristics, but also draws upon the window as a space to promote commodities. Although non-functional and fragile, the everyday domestic materials offer connotations of desirable fabrics and cosmetics, with the title referencing a specific time of happening or an important appointment.

Nika Kupyrova

www.nikakupyrova.com

Nika Kupyrova works in the mediums of installation and photography, using found materials to explore the emotional narratives of living spaces and the concept of “home”.

Found objects interest the artist by their deep-rooted familiarity and gradual re-shaping through possession. In her work, Kupyrova approaches both the mundane and the extravagant of domestics by constructing fictional “homes” which carry the traces of their previous inhabitants, or creating fake household objects, which manipulate the protective, comfort and totemistic qualities of their prototypes.

Magda Boreysza

www.magdaboreysza.com

Magda Boreysza is an illustrator, comic artist and animator. See more of her work at www.magdaboreysza.com. Her hand-painted plates are available to buy at Technicolour, 2 Bruntsfield Place.

Low Pressure

www.low-pressure.co.uk

Low Pressure is an arts collective connected by friendship and an interest in creating exhibitions, events and happenings that provide a platform to support and inspire interaction between artists of various disciplines. Acting as a support network for each other they work both collaboratively and individually.

Low Pressure have produced a collection of objects from mundane materials that play with the idea of value. The outcome created is an illusion of luxury and value in each object emphasized by the laboured process and the manipulation of materials by the artists.

Sarah MacIntyre / Margaret McCormick / Sara Sinclair / Laura Sutherland

Konomi Kaneya

kaneyatrace.wordpress.com

The principle concern of Konomi Kaneya’s current art practice is to explore various natural phenomena in specific stages of their development. She is principally interested in the flow of natural energy; this exploration allows her to understand the living and natural environment. It is important to depict the invisible flow of natural life and by the use of the “line” Kaneya can portray worlds, specific tensions, currents or rhythms.

Kirsty Sumerling

www.kirstysumerling.co.uk

Kirsty Sumerling’s jewellery collection focuses on the beauty of surface decay and the resulting work appears as a series of snapshots of surfaces frozen in time. This installation shows the extensive samples that were produced, informing the final work.

Intrigued by the effects of time and decay Summerling explored this condition in enamel and chemical patina, playing with both control and unpredictability. The embedded patina and change within a surface implies that a transformation has occurred over a period of time.

The resulting work is unpredictable and unexpected; a product of a process deliberately out of her control.

Katheryn Wiggins

www.kathrynwiggins.com

You are human.

Kathryn Wiggins created these images to illustrate what that really means.

Among the visual rhythms, you will come across undecipherable notes and pictures that do not allow illusion, inspired by ancient artefacts we cannot decode.

At the same time, these elements provide innate resonation while invoking a deep sense of having seen unmistakable relics of the human spirit.

Eric Schumacher

ericwschumacher.blogspot.com

Eric Schumacher's work is strongly influenced by experiences gathered from explorations of urban areas. Different kinds of architecture and architectural improvements, as well as furnishing of interiors and other home personification are surveyed with an analysis of the different styles of design found throughout the decades and centuries.

The work shown at the WOT is considered by the artists as a 2D sketch of found images and materials and plays with the idea of an absurd juxtaposition of the human evolution and its utopian visions.

Becky Campbell and Sigrun Guðmundsdóttir

becky-campbell.blogspot.com ; sigr.wordpress.com

“Being immersed outside in water at Sundlaugin í Vík í Mýrdal I was able to look out to the mountain Reynisfjall and I knew that the sea was close by. The day before was the first of a road trip travelling towards the east of Iceland and passing this village a lullaby had been sang to me: remnants of that melody echoed. Suddenly I was fully aware of physically engaging with the tactility of the water- I wasn’t only looking at or only touching the ground with my feet. I was making my own stories I could then tell to others.”

Sigrún Guðmundsdóttir and Becky Campbell began collaborating in Reykjavik in January 2010 following a journey through the south of Iceland. Plants have been sent from Iceland which Campbell has reconfigured as props to be returned to Reykjavik for a performance by Guðmundsdóttir.