Sleepless and bruised by Ayse Kipri

Oil, rivets, nightdress on canvas

Artist statement: In the recent years my work has offered me a ground for healing with the use of humour and irony. Having always had a deep interest in the pictorial surface; its extension beyond the canvas and its conventional framework, I bring in playfulness and imagined bodily sensibilities to my paintings, such as the alien-like washer nipples and metal hardware. Some of these may be seen as aggressive gestures on the canvas: punctures with rivets and holes punched into the canvas with eyelets ripping the painted surfaces.

While the configuration of these hardware inserted directly into the surface may reference the grid, the materiality of it initially came from my experience working as an art handler where I spent my days precariously packing, moving, and installing other artists’ artworks in a still very masculine art world.

Blue packing foam and screws and washers forgotten in my pockets had become my everyday materials. I started entertaining the idea of making use of these by bringing them directly into my paintings and reconsidering the painting’s attachment to the wall space as a more visible experience. I started suggesting alternative hanging methods, holes where you can see the wall behind too. As well as making fun of the elevated, almost holy status of the painting where you are never allowed place a painting directly on the floor, by hammering in some furniture bumpers on the corners of my stretchers. Intentional damage to the painting itself to avoid damage from the floor.

Placing my work in the boundaries between painting and sculpture with their methods of assembly and extension into the outside space; I view them more as objects rather than flat surfaces. Some of the ideas of their assembly also derived from observations of urban architectural elements.

Having experienced debilitating insomnia, illness, and mental health issues in the past year, I also started channelling these into my work with the use of more personal imagery and materials such as: the blue shadows created by the blinds in my bedroom at early hours of the mornings I spent awake, an old nightdress from my mother, cuttings from my old jeans, use of text and references to poetry and psychology through the choice of colours.

Other subjects that frequently make their way into my practice are imagery from feminist cinema, like the heroine addict’s cat that gets kidnapped by the female vampire in Ana Lily Amirpour’s Iranian neo-noir A Girl Walks Alone at Night, or Andrea Arnold’s Cow: Luma, a working female animal; music, witch torture devices and tactics; which include sleep deprivation as a confession method for women practicing herbal medicine, and Mona Chollet’s theory on how women being scrutinized since the witch trials in the middle ages carried onto our contemporary society even today, directly or indirectly make their way into
my practice through personal filters.

Find out more about Ayse at www.AyseKipri.com

Sleepless and bruised by Ayse Kipri

Oil, rivets, nightdress on canvas

Artist statement: In the recent years my work has offered me a ground for healing with the use of humour and irony. Having always had a deep interest in the pictorial surface; its extension beyond the canvas and its conventional framework, I bring in playfulness and imagined bodily sensibilities to my paintings, such as the alien-like washer nipples and metal hardware. Some of these may be seen as aggressive gestures on the canvas: punctures with rivets and holes punched into the canvas with eyelets ripping the painted surfaces.

While the configuration of these hardware inserted directly into the surface may reference the grid, the materiality of it initially came from my experience working as an art handler where I spent my days precariously packing, moving, and installing other artists’ artworks in a still very masculine art world.

Blue packing foam and screws and washers forgotten in my pockets had become my everyday materials. I started entertaining the idea of making use of these by bringing them directly into my paintings and reconsidering the painting’s attachment to the wall space as a more visible experience. I started suggesting alternative hanging methods, holes where you can see the wall behind too. As well as making fun of the elevated, almost holy status of the painting where you are never allowed place a painting directly on the floor, by hammering in some furniture bumpers on the corners of my stretchers. Intentional damage to the painting itself to avoid damage from the floor.

Placing my work in the boundaries between painting and sculpture with their methods of assembly and extension into the outside space; I view them more as objects rather than flat surfaces. Some of the ideas of their assembly also derived from observations of urban architectural elements.

Having experienced debilitating insomnia, illness, and mental health issues in the past year, I also started channelling these into my work with the use of more personal imagery and materials such as: the blue shadows created by the blinds in my bedroom at early hours of the mornings I spent awake, an old nightdress from my mother, cuttings from my old jeans, use of text and references to poetry and psychology through the choice of colours.

Other subjects that frequently make their way into my practice are imagery from feminist cinema, like the heroine addict’s cat that gets kidnapped by the female vampire in Ana Lily Amirpour’s Iranian neo-noir A Girl Walks Alone at Night, or Andrea Arnold’s Cow: Luma, a working female animal; music, witch torture devices and tactics; which include sleep deprivation as a confession method for women practicing herbal medicine, and Mona Chollet’s theory on how women being scrutinized since the witch trials in the middle ages carried onto our contemporary society even today, directly or indirectly make their way into
my practice through personal filters.

Find out more about Ayse at www.AyseKipri.com