Barbara Ash
Barbara Ash is an award-winning artist-sculptor exploring the dynamics of female experience, girlhood and identity through sculpture, and painting, based on a boat next to the Bristol Channel.
Tania Kovats recently chose Barbara as the finalist for the Sculpture category in the Marshwood Arts Prize. She described Barbara’s work as:
“Stunning work, perplexing, awkward, confrontational sculptures to dream about as well as stand beside. This work wrestles with all the right questions a sculpture should”.
Works
Flights Of Fancy
“Flights Of Fancy” is an ongoing series of sculptures using simplified doll-like forms to playfully “pastiche” female mythological icons and ideas of beauty and elegance. The work attempts to deconstruct conventional perceptions of the “female”, in an attempt to dismantle dominant narratives around how women are depicted in art. In this series I choose to work on an intimate scale using a range of mixed-media, non-precious, often textile, especially lace trim, materials, questioning traditional orthodoxies of what pertains to be “serious” sculpture.
Shadows of Frailty
“Shadows of Frailty” looks at our vulnerability in the pandemic; how our feeling of safety is undermined with a common threat to survival. The paintings work in sections or pairings which echo my feeling of the weird compartmentalisation of life since lockdown and the polarisation of the challenges different sectors of the population experience. Those of us on the sidelines have to adjust to restrictions and financial pressures and keep morale, while others suffer and mourn, and then alternately those on the frontline battle with trauma and unsafe conditions, risking their lives.
The mixed media paintings incorporate family photos, Victorian photos, and references from paintings (Frida Kahlo’s “Girl with a death mask). There is an element of unreality, farce, and denial in the scenarios which reflect the way I, along with many others, have had to develop the necessary ability to “switch off” to cope in crazy beleaguered times.
Soft Power
“Soft power”. These prints, somewhat nostalgically, reference a sculpture installation I did in Bangalore looking at issues of female representation and freedom. This ongoing series is variable editions: the same lino-printed image with hand-stamped elements and some slight variations/individualities in each print. I enjoy the fluidity of composing with separate blocks and enjoy the flexibility of having irregularities in the reproductive process; I personally find traditional print orthodoxies too confining for my particular way of working.. I am in the process of devising a way to incorporate this series into a larger mixed media hanging multiple piece, looking at options of printing on fabric or another range of material…