Jessica Webster
I am a conceptual painter whose work is complex in its range of themes and materiality. My focus on the painted surface offers an understanding of the embodied unconscious. My process also runs alongside public and private concerns that are current, such as sexuality and class relations. My practical approach to each body of work is made productive by limitations set upon my body as a survivor of violence and thus being wheelchair-bound. The traces of intense labour in movement and gesture establishes the formal signature of my work. I have recently had my third solo show (July 2020) with Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.
Could you tell us a little more about your background, and how did you begin creating art?
I grew up on the Highveld gold mines of South Africa, in small towns. It was during Apartheid and things were bleak, even to me when I was small. Under this light, it was a typical white middleclass upbringing. That background can make you complacent or cynical. I was always the latter, which can trigger creative thought because your mind must find somewhere else to inhabit. An escape, a protected space for freedom. Creating ‘somewhere else’ – that new viewfinder - is the beginning for most of us I’m sure. And I had early success in this regard. When I was sixteen, a painting of mine was among the first works ever acquired by the MTN Collection (a multinational mobile telecommunications company, operating in many African, European and Asian countries) which is now a major corporate collection of South African art, comprising some 1400 African and South African works.
What does your art aim to say to the viewers?
To think about what we see in things. Perception is complex. Especially because what we have identified usually has something to do with ourselves, and the self's own desires. The perceptual landscape can be dark territory. My work happens in those territories, and I want the viewer to witness or engage those spaces. Importantly, that they find those spaces in my work on their own creative terms. My meanings are layered, so that the viewer’s interpretation is centred.
Can you tell us about the process of creating your work? What is your daily routine when working?
My approach is conditioned by certain limitations in that I am practically wheelchair-bound. As a survivor of violence that caused my disability, I find that the complexity of my experience becomes a reflective tool in how I approach the studio each day. I tend to challenge myself in what surfaces and tools I use, how many or how few layers I can use to provoke imagery. It is never a direct line to the solution. For example, I don’t treat the canvas stretcher as the obvious choice to work with. A slippery polyurethane sheet or rough hessian will affect my gestural quality, and I definitely want the environment that I have constructed to inform my ideas. This is maybe a form of paying respect to the material world, which is appropriate to my thematic concerns with sexuality, race, and class. And these intensely worked surfaces create the sense of optical and psychic depth in my work.
What’s the essential element in your art?
The band of space flickering between my body and the painted surface. I must be alive to that distance or intimacy. This element of creative practice is not precisely mine, nor is it the base material, but the quality between. To let that character of the frisson, have it's say.
In your opinion, what role does the artist have in society?
Some artists are entertainers, some are observers. But across the world, our main function is to reflect aspects of experience that, in the humdrum of everyday life, are less than apparent and often invisible. The simplicity of this task belies the effect of revealing these undisclosed parts of life. It can be momentous or confounding, or neither!
Website: jessicawebsterart.com
