Review of an Art event

Rose Finn-Kelcey: Life, Belief and Beyond

(Review of an Art Event - Silver Arts Award for the iCreative Course) 

What better to do on a rainy (and rather cold) summer Sunday then to go the Oxford Modern Art Museum's new exhibition on Rose Finn-Kelcey. Since I dragged by boyfriend along we decided to led by a lovely museum curator on our journey.


'Rose Finn-Kelcey (4 March 1945 – 13 February 2014) was a British artist, born in Northampton. Finn-Kelcey grew up in Buckinghamshire as part of a large farming family, and went on to study at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, and later Chelsea College of Art in London. She died on 13 February 2014 of motor neurone disease. She lived and worked in London from 1968.
Finn-Kelcey worked in a variety of media including performance, video, sound, installation, sculpture, photography, papercut and posters.'  (Tate Museum)
Would like to know more about the artist? Read her compelling obituary on the Guardian. 

I always admired multidisciplinary artists and Rose seems to be no different. Here are some thoughts regarding the experience and 

IDEA FIRST


She found the idea first, and then worked on how it could be discovered through an art form, and not the other way around. This approach gave her not only artistic freedom, but a freedom from imposed structural thinking from the outside which often clouds our path of creation. 

How does media effects our understanding of images - an increasingly relevant question Rose chose to discover many of her works. It's particularly true today that an image is able to between different forms reality, from an oil painting to a selfie on Twitter to a virtual reality experience. 

Rose Finn-Kelcey Untitled drawing, Memory fades more in some parts of the picture than in others, circa. 1970. Courtesy the Estate of Rose Finn-Kelcey


I can't escape of the habits of my generations therefore I immediately started to thinking about the next phase - words and caption, and how we're leading people's thoughts with or without saying something or anything. Image manipulation due its circulation is something she seemed to be very aware of even from her early work, almost foreseeing what might happen with the widespread use of the internet. 

One of our mentors at Film Oxford mentioned that having a narrator in documentaries is lazy storytelling. Well Rose used words wisely, always considering herself as a performance artist, demolishing boundaries between forms of expression. 

The physical manifestation of the piece in her work is determined by the original thought. 

Can we trace back to our original, unaffected feelings, hopes, wishes and plans whenever we might do in our lives?

Well if you would like to be inspired, moved and provoked at the same time, and might come up with your own answer to the question above - visit the exhibition. 

p.s. If you brave enough to follow my advice - tag along to a guided tour. 







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