Shelley Lafferty

Country where you live:

United Kingdom

City where you live:

london

Website:

http://www.shellart.uk

Instagram:

http://www.instagram.com/laffart

Statement :

I am a recent MA Fine Art graduate, returning to study and my creative desires, after working for many years as an Architect. Always with a creative leaning, I have returned to making and developing installation and immersive spaces to encounter.

Creating is the core of who I am, and the desire to express and generate works, for beauty, for inspiration, for interest, is a passion that has been bubbling for too long. After returning to study the direction in my making has been fundamental to the progression from a hobbyist to an ambitious artist and space maker.

The first artwork I saw was by father, as a custom car painter, I’d watch designs come alive. His garage workspace became my first exhibition as the walls filled with my paintings, as I accompanied him while his was working.

More recently my works and installation concepts are centred around the encounter and the audience decision making, generating works as an output of the experience of being within a space. Creating a 'token' of experience as a moment that can draw the audience into a space where the boundaries between the real and the virtual can blur.

I have some work in progress concepts in development right now, and these will progress as a curation proposal and into hopeful physical exhibition.

Quote:

Phyllida Barlow (2022) 'a desire to find the unfindable'

Follow the strands

Bio:

I am a recent MA Fine Art graduate after 25yrs working as an Architect, my works are expectedly spatial. With a personal interest in one’s identity, portraiture and the impact of grief, my research and art making has developed into the sphere of liminality, rites of passage and otherworldly spaces. Exploring themes of the experience of the liminality, navigation through it, from entering, being within and the journey itself. Contemplating moments of the unknown within the sensation of an other-worldly space.

Working digitally and with mixed media, between maquettes, photography, collage and hand drawing, works do not conclude, allowing them to transform and evolve, sometimes melding multiple works. The gift of time to reappraise and re-consider, as a manifesto, allows growth and reflection on continued life experiences.

The sociology of spaces, human interactions, reactions to and experiences of spaces is key to my making and line of enquiry in the works. The in-between moments are a mystery to be encountered. More recently my works are installations with audience decision making generating works as an output of the experience of being within a space. Creating a 'token' of experience to draw the audience into a space where the boundaries between the real and the virtual can blur.