​Sarah Falkenberg-Hassan- Artist

Transient Textiles 2013

 

I dislike the predictability of daily routine and the reliability I have on my diary planner while in Reading. I constantly yearn to be travelling, embarking on new cultures and the unstructured, spontaneous lifestyle while being detached from technology. My works express this need for the travelling freedom and to escape from my structured lifestyle.

 

 

It is unavoidable to admit that I need structure as much as I despise it, the reason I eventually always return home after travel. This obsession and restlessness has resulted in producing many of these large canvases. I was influenced by Kusama’s works; her installations conveying her hallucinary obsessions. “My life is a dot lost among thousands of dots”. These dots create connotations of infinity and rhythmic pulsing patterns of restlessness. Helen Frankenthaler and Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist works encouraged me to work on larger surfaces and experiment further with layering and mark making. Potentially, each canvas is a reflection of a different country’s culture I have travelled, each one using diverse colors to highlight it’s differences while all being in the same style due to the way I interpret the cultures. When painting, I listen to music from countries I have travelled giving the works a “universal aesthetic”. I enjoy the freedom of splashing the color across the canvases, the geometric structures expressing my life’s structure, which holds me back from travel.

 

I began installing my canvas works in public spaces. I wanted people to make their mark on the canvases by walking on them. Kusama’s installations allow the viewer to walk on her art, she describes this as “walking in her mind” therefore developing a personal interaction with viewers. Some people were thanking me for allowing them to walk over my work, others stood still. Some ran and dodged the canvases by jumping into free space avoiding the pieces. This brings into account the rules of our society, the structure of artworks being hung in a gallery space being the norm and that we are taught not to ruin something, which is someone else’s. I wanted others to feel this restriction and restlessness, which I feel in my daily life. It was interesting to find a young child and a dog innocently jumping around on the artwork when I installed them in Forbury Park, which demonstrates they have not yet learned these social norms. Adults walked on the grass. We are governed by structure throughout our lives, even when travelling we try to adapt ours to another culture’s normality.