Art Success: Adelaide Damoah in conversation with Jenny Wiggins

 

Jenny Wiggins graduated with a B.A in Fine Art from Goldsmiths University in the 1970s and later went on to obtain an M.A in Fine art from Canterbury College of Art. Wiggins has a history of teaching art and even set up a foundation.

 

In her own words:

 

The focus of my work has long been the landscape both in terms of its physical representation in maps and in the evidence left on it by living forms such as snails and plants.

 

The recent pieces continue an interest in ‘the accidental poetry of the ordinary’. My system of working is like sowing seeds; images grow out of the processes.

 

Plants are trapped on sheets of aluminium or wood under layers of paint and varnish, which fixes and ossifies them.

 

‘Archaeological’ scraping and sanding uncovers these artificial fossils, exposing the morphology of the plants, some having been grown from seed between glass sheets whilst others are grown normally and then pressed.

 

Both as an artist and gardener I am fascinated by the relationship between ourselves and other living organisms and the ways we use to describe them. I feel am continuing a long tradition of collecting, pressing and ordering of plants – an attempt to preserve and commemorate something that would normally be returned to the earth (composted). This work could also be included in the tradition of paintings described as ‘nature morte’.

 

Jenny Wiggins.

 

Publication mentioned in the interview: “On Sublimity and Synaesthesia” by Stephen Baycroft.

 

Share this video please! https://youtu.be/cPRijk-xJak

 

Jenny Wiggins works at Second Floor Studios in Woolwich. You can visit his studio and see first hand her work in progress, as well as some of the work shown in this video, during the Open Studio event this year. The event runs from the 2nd to the 5th of June 2016 and all are welcome. Jenny’s studio is number 17 Trinity Wharf, Second Floor Studios. Come and visit!

 

Learn more about Jenny Wiggin’s work here: http://www.jennywiggins.com

 

Please click the link below for more information on this years Open Studio event.
http://www.secondfloor.co.uk/open-studios/default.html