Ingrid Mary Percy
Translocal Ephemeral Cultural Appliqué
Artist Information
Ingrid Mary Percy studied visual art at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, B.C. (B.F.A., Dip. F.A.) and at the University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C. (M.F.A.). She has been involved in the visual arts, writing, and music communities of Canada for 25 years. Since 1997, Ingrid has taught visual art at various institutions including the University of Victoria and Emily Carr University of Art + Design. A professional visual artist, she has exhibited her work across Canada and internationally. Ingrid has served on the Board of Open Space in Victoria, B.C. and Eastern Edge Gallery in St. John's, N.L., Canada. Currently, she is Vice-Chair of the Board of Visual Artists Newfoundland (VANL-CARFAC) in St. John's, N.L. and the regional representative on the Board of Canadian Artists' Representation (CARFAC) National. Ingrid lives in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador and is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Fine Arts at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland. She teaches 2D Design, Drawing, Painting and Serigraphy.
http://polychromefinearts.com/artistsb/percy.html
Project Description: Translocal Ephemeral Cultural Appliqué
"Art is an activity consisting in producing relationships with the world with the help of signs, forms, actions and objects." - Nicolas Bourriaud
If I, as an artist, dwell in circumstances, then my circumstances exist wholly within that which has been termed the translocal: "the dynamics of mobility, migration and socio-spatial interconnectedness" (Patrick Sakdapolrak).
I spend a lot of time on planes, trains, buses and in cars. I no longer think of geography as spatial -- to me it has become temporal and financial: London to Seattle, 10 hours, $800; Seattle to Vancouver, 2.5 hours, $100. The world in which I exist is a collage of locations, time zones, social circles, and cultures, juxtaposed and glued together, yet to me, somehow still a cohesive singular.
I am interested in connectivity: bringing things together and sharing these relationships with others.
For this project, I have taken a piece of street art that I found on a wall in Shoreditch, East London (while staying there in July 2013) and brought it to the street of Seattle, Washington.
I wanted to cut a piece of street art from one urban centre and paste it into another. One public space into another, each with a different context.
I have been documenting street art or graffiti for some time and am attracted to it for many reasons. I think of it in relation to my painting practice as found painting. It's part of the discourse of painting but sits at the far end of the spectrum from exhibitions of curated work in public institutions or commercial galleries.
The street art in Shoreditch is ubiquitous and, straight-up, spectacular. It's colourful, big, immersive and everywhere. It's political, funny, loud, ironic and breathtaking. Artists come from all over the world to paint, wheatpaste or draw on the walls and doors of buildings and metal shop shutters in this little, cobblestoned enclave of East London. Although Shoreditch is high end and uber-cool, mocked for being a hipster-haven, inhabited by third wave coffee shops, high-end vintage stores, galleries, restaurants, record stores, and bars, the area doesn't feel alienating -- perhaps because of the small-scale, original industrial architecture (tiny shops, brick, narrow streets).
I find street art refreshing because of its inherent qualities of ephemerality and politicality: the fact that it's usually unsanctioned, public, free, ever-changing, unmediated, uncensored, large scale, engages with architecture and public space, is often anonymous, and sometimes collaborative. It has cultural caché and signifies street cred, cool, and unadulterated, free creative expression.
And it's not a coincidence that Shoreditch is a street art mecca and cultural hub of London: the area has undergone the familiar pattern of gentrification, precipitated by artists or the "creative class" moving into the area in the 1980s, when it was still a historically stigmatized, run-down, industrial area of London and over the past two decades, developing into one of the trendiest parts of the city. Real estate has skyrocketed and most artists (except for the few exceptionally wealthy ones who can still afford to live there like Rachel Whiteread and Tracey Emin) have been displaced and forced to migrate to the next undervalued area of the city which is currently, the ethnically diverse area of Hackney Wick.
