Gina Parr

Stemming from my early work as a Performance Artist, my interest has been and continues to be in space, atmosphere, time and memory. My childhood environment, where I had neither control nor space as my mother was an undiagnosed hoarder, deeply informed my Performance Art, my Set Design TV career and subsequently my Painting and Photographic work; space and atmosphere are no longer just desirable commodities, I now feel it is necessary to create and recreate them, bouncing between clutter and clear.

 

My early performance work, “Not Enough Room to Swing a Cat in Here” at the Waterloo Gallery in 1980 explored the connection between possessions, confinement and absence of space. Subsequently, my series of photographs, “Horizon” has expanded this theme to create illusionary space from a cramped and chaotic environment in urban India and the Far East, and my Painting series, "River meets sea,” has been an exploration of the open space where two large bodies of fluid merge and has lead to the series “Spatial history”.

 

Considering the fine balance between chance and control has understandably also become increasingly important in my work and this marks the tension between how much I will allow to happen by chance, and my need to intervene and engineer the paint to control the developing relationship formed on the canvas. Whilst my work is fundamentally abstract, the foundations are born out of figurative reference and autobiographical themes and draw on personal emotional passage and scenario.