Steff Jamieson
MA work
MA work
The Reluctant Mute
Extract from The Experience of Psychotherapy and Silence
As sessions become part of her weekly routine, she finds herself making note of conversations and encounters which have caused her varying levels of anxiety or frustration. All in a bid to forego moments of silence. With these strategies in place she jumps from anecdote to anecdote, trying her best to fill up the time. Time that won’t end even after their conversation does.Â
The silence is prominent, a third party to their conversation. What does her muteness mean? Has she indeed repressed too painful an experience to share39, too deep within her body for language to decipher, implying a hidden truth – a hidden self.Â
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39 Adam Phillips, Promises Promises (London: Faber and Faber, 2000) p.130.Â
Psychotherapist and writer Adam Phillips believes ‘People come for analysis when they have reached the limits of their language’; often the continuation of ‘their own available descriptions of what’s happening of what they feel – has become too painful.’
Info
Info
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MA Degree
School
School of Humanities
Programme
MA Photography, 2016
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Contact
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+44 (0)7450 239621
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Using photography, text and sculptural elements, my practice derives from an interest in the physical act of making with domestic, habitual-based labour used as an outlet for grief. By returning to the fundamental properties of photography – light, time and photographic paper – and acknowledging the darkroom as a site of production and labour, I explore the limitations of the medium alongside the limitations of language.Â
The Reluctant Mute uses various devices to explore ideas regarding mutism, self-censorship and the failing of language by using patterns, both generated in the darkroom and borrowed from William Morris, acknowledging his ethos towards physical labour. Patterns break up, overlap and slip, making visible the artist’s hand. Projected creases and folds become representations of themselves, repeating the act of folding to both remember and to forget, an excess that mutes.
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Degrees
- BA Photography, Kingston University, 2010
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Experience
- Artist Talk, Camberwell College of Arts, 2016; Artist Talk, Kingston University, 2015; Darkroom Technician, Kingston University, 2011-current
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Exhibitions
- Blue Box, Dyson Gallery, London, 2016 ; Blue Box, Off Print at Tate Modern, London, 2016; Stewarts Law RCA Secret, Royal College of Art, London, 2016; Art Dubai, Mina A’ Salam, Dubai, 2016; Untitled, 6th Floor Niche Gallery, SVA, New York, 2015; Sensing Grounds, The Horse Hospital, London, 2015; RCA Secret Dubai, Art Dubai, Dubai, 2015; Stewarts Law RCA Secret, Royal College of Art, London, 2015; Work-in-progress Show, London, 2015
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Awards
- School of Visual Arts Residency, New York, 2015
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Publications
- Oophagy, group publication, self published, 2016