Orphan 2 Print

Marina Potok - Artist Statement I am a multi-disciplinary artist, working in photography, video and mixed media/collage. While rooted in photographic practice, experimentation with materials, processes and composition is an essential ingredient in my work. I manipulate the still or moving images through juxtaposition or superimposition of figurative and abstract visual elements, language and sound into a newly constructed reality. Infused with humour, irony or a call for re-examination of the familiar or accepted ways of being, my work strives to capture the complex and conflicting nature of such themes as migration and urban geography, intimate relationships and family, work and production in a context which is both personal and universal. At times uncanny or otherwise unsettling, my work extends an invitation to the viewer to construct personal narratives by engaging with multiple layers of meaning vis-a-vis the viewer's individual experience. My current work in progress is titled "˜Psychogeographies' and focuses on exploring the relationship between psyche and place. Psychogeography was formally defined by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals" (Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, G. Debord, 1955). While Debord is credited with the commonly accepted definition of Psychogeography within the Situationist framework, its roots go much deeper (D. Defoe, W. Blake, de Quincy, etc.), but more importantly wider - impossible to apprehend and based entirely on personal significance attributed by an individual in interaction with their environment. Cultural elements, current events and the sharp edged reality of urban geography and pace of life join forces to shape the private experiences characterised by both emotions and behaviours. The very materiality of contemporary urban landscape, transitory like its inhabitants, slips through our conscious awareness leaving only traces of personal attachments and memories. As a double-immigrant and a traveller, I endeavour to map the complex relationships that I enter into with each of my host cities, each not unlike an intimate relationship between two people. Marina Potok - Bio Marina Potok was born in Ukraine, former Soviet Union in 1974.