PIPPA YOUNG

Uncertainty, identity and materiality in a digital world

 

Ideas which inform my work derive both from my personal experience with the process and act of painting, as well as wanting to reflect something of what it is like to be human in an uncertain world. The work explores themes of uncertainty, psychological identity, notions of reality, of fragility, of doubt; and the fragmentary nature of contemporary experience. 

​

I am interested in how we construct a psychological identity through fragments of experience and memory. ‘Who we are’ is often dependent on our location and context, and is constantly evolving through our interaction with other people and the world. Our inner condition is in constant flux, constructed from memory, experience  and our willingness (or not) to conform to social expectation.

​​

Life is increasingly digital - experienced though a screen, second-hand - 'as if real life exists beyond the veil'. In an image saturated culture where we consume images without thinking, I believe painting can be an antidote to the noise of digital channels. The process of making my work has a meditative quality - a thousand small repetitive acts of contemplation. The painting becomes a repository of accrued time, thoughts and ideas. I hope that the paintings can provide a pause, a moment of meditative contemplation; a way of slowing down mass media’s pace of image consumption.

​

​

​