Artist Statement
Their current work draws from multiple sources, namely a current collaboration with the archive of Corfu ( Κερκυραικό Αρχείο ). Through a research residency, documents of historic value were allowed to be touched, smelled and flicked through. These documents are official state documents from the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries in old Greek and calligraphic handwriting. They had various signs of decay, mould, water damage, bleeding and iron gall ink eating into the paper, leaving holes and patterns echoing the shapes of bygone words.
They are working with Rust, the idea of age, powder and decay, painting and rust painting with rust onto an unprimed linen canvas, opening them up to the possibility of rot change and decay over time.
At the core of their practice, she thinks about materials (not just in the sense of a part of a wider image ) but in a contextual way as active contributors to the painting / sculptural piece. Using it to bring materiality to the forefront and not a secondary thought in viewing the work. Materials are used with a purpose, not just an end to a goal.
Artists bio
Marianna Soukeras is an English-Greek artist studying in London at Slade Ucl and previously studied at the Academe Der Bildende Kunst in Vienna. They work across various mediums, particularly painting and sculpture. She has exhibited with Imperial College London due to a year-long collaboration with the materials department on Phthalocyanine, a simultaneous synthetic pigment and dye with broader secondary uses within the scientific realm, leading to a fascination with pigment and material.
You can find an investigation into The fuzzy lines between things in her imagery,
A current thought of theirs is half understanding. You can never fully understand; therefore, half understanding is as close to fully understanding as you can achieve. Truly, in your day-to-day life, you are not entirely (and I mean completely absolutely ) understood; the going on in your head is not fully communicated by our words.
But even in lesser understanding, there is creativity, if not more than when you have concise words. The innate creativity that arises from such gaps is intriguing- the mind works so much harder when searching, often coming up with much more inventive ways of thinking or saying from within this fog.
These are some of the thoughts circling her head when they paint, and they ask you to look into the fog.