visualeyes, 2022
Visualeyes is an exhibition of new work by artist Ellie Niblock, inspired by a month spent exploring the landscape of YSP. Niblock was selected for the 2020 Art for the Environment Residency Programme. Organised by University of the Arts London, it provides opportunities for MA and PhD graduates to undertake short residencies with host organisations across the world. After a delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Niblock began her time at YSP in November 2021 and returned in June 2022.
Niblock’s work brings together digital and physical elements. She investigates how real and virtual worlds co-exist, and probes the creative possibilities that emerge when they overlap. During her residency, Niblock experimented with synthetic and natural materials to make sculptures. She also used scanning technologies to capture 3D digital models of the natural environment and the outdoor artworks. Visualeyes manipulates and combines these two aspects in a fascinating hybrid world. Within this imagined space the artist considers what it means to see in new ways and from other perspectives.
Niblock digitally fragments and reconstructs the landscape of YSP and gives it an alternative existence in virtual space. Her vivid distortions exaggerate the organic beauty of the natural world and she creates a heightened, euphoric vision populated by avatars and strange forms. Surrounding the video works are Niblock’s characteristic silicone sculptures in sugary pastel colours. She describes these as simultaneously seductive and repellent, and enjoys the fine line between these two sensations.
