Mirela Bistran "Unfolded Dowry" at Newcastle University MFA Summer Exhibition 2015  

22nd Aug 15 - 5th Sep 15

22nd Aug 15 - 5th Sep 15
Monday – Saturday, 10am-5pm
Newcastle University School of Art and Cultures King’s Road The Quadrangle NE1 7RU

Mirela Bistran
is a young Romanian artist and we encourage you to and see her work “Unfolded Dowry” at Newcastle University’s MFA Summer Exhibition 2015.

The exhibition is the interim show for the 1st year MFAs and the culminating show for the 2nd year MFAs. The MFA Summer Exhibition presents a wide range of media, exemplifying the diversity within the practice of fine art.
Included are works by 1st years, Mirela Bistran, Helen Shaddock, Yein Son and Liying Zhao.
2nd years: Alex Charrington, Sarah Dunn, Paul Martin Hughes, Soonwon Hwang, Ute Kirkwood, Nigel Morgan and Sofija R. L. Sutton.

Mirela Bistran's instalation, “Unfolded Dowry” explores the cultural significance of objects.
The imagined space of the installation is a layering of references alluding to Romanian cultural heritage and veiling Bistran’s own memories.
In seeming together old and new fabrics - hand finished and machine fabricated – the past and the present, the real and the artificial combine.
The installation is a journey out of time, it is about past traditions – though traditions which have become increasingly alien – and it is through memory: but it is a memory re-imagined, remembered and manufactured.
 
Artist statement:
Mirela Bistran
My practice is fed by the way I perceive the world around me, my beliefs, memories and feelings. Together they make up my life journey, the sense of belonging, of identity, of feeling at home with myself.
 
I have a particular interest in finding the right balance between free, gestural brushwork, sometimes unplanned, and the fine, delicate and intricate work of precision. The colours play a very important role; they almost have their own story. And by that, I mean that they always express feelings, very often in a narrative way.
 
A major part of my art is owed much to chance, the subconscious and to dream imagery. I would make rapid sketches directed by instinct and intuition using inks and pencils on paper. Very often these sketches are the beginning of a journey of emotions and feelings expressed through lines and marks that come to life following each other. Sometimes playful, sometimes shy or bold and other times solemn and melancholic, they take on a personality of their own.
 
The imagination dictates the tools I work with. At times they are embodied in fabrics, buttons, scissors and threads. Most of the fabrics I use are dear to me, they retain memories. The process is the same. It starts like a spontaneous game and evolves into a passage of structured layers interacting with each other.

 

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