nerys joseph

Nudes in Vivid Colours

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Nerys Joseph makes paintings of the human body, focussing on form, line and colour.

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'Light on skin. For me, there is nothing else. I see all these colours in the human skin, so essentially I am just painting what I see.' (N.Joseph)

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Nerys Joseph studied Fine Art (painting) at Southampton Institute and MA Fine Art at UCA, Farnham.

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Her first teacher was her mother, who taught her, from a very young age, how to see the world, and put it on paper.

 

Recent photographic and film based work dealt with; memory, the presence of absence, and the magic and disorientation of childhood.

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Research text for photographic and film works.

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When we are born, we enter into a world of rules enclosed in a house that becomes our universe.

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‘How does the body, not merely the mind, remember the feel of a latch in a long-forsaken childhood home? If the house is the first universe for its young children, the first cosmos, how does its space shape all subsequent knowledge of other space, of any larger cosmos? Is that house “a group of organic habits” or even something deeper, the shelter of the imagination itself?’

(Stilgoe, JR. 1994, vii- viii)

 

Memories, dreams and imaginings are simulations created by the brain. Human perceptions of reality are also constructed via simulation, which is why our dreams feel real. The act of remembering is constructive, so by revisiting past places or 'universes' it is possible to reconstruct memories that affect our current reality.

 

Some homes curiously can remain unchanged over decades. Places frozen in time, waiting to be reframed.

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Bespoke, motion-sensor light boxes add a dream-like or nostalgic glow to the photographs as they are unexpectedly triggered from the dark.

 

The film-based work invites the viewer further into the space so they may more directly experience the magical disorientation of childhood through the eyes of the artist.

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‘Thus by approaching the house images with care not to break up the solidarity of memory and imagination, we may hope to make others feel all the psychological elasticity of an image that moves us at an unimaginable depth.’                                                                                                (Bachillard, 1958, 6)

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In 2020, Nerys is focussing on painting.

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