Annabelle Potts profile picture

Annabelle Potts

  • sd18ap@leeds.ac.uk

2021: Art & Design BA Hons

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Statement

Looking into the style of graffiti art, or vandalism as some may see it, and relating it to themes of isolation and finding silver linings in our immediate everyday environments.

https://www.instagram.com/apotts.art/

This studio project has a heavy focus on the effects of isolation on mental health, by constricting all of us to inside spaces and only allowing to orbit around their homes for daily exercise. This progressed the mindset of trying to appreciate our surroundings and to hopefully become more rooted in the places we each reside in.

As I have stayed in Leeds, the urban setting is decorated prominently with Graffiti tags and other artworks, promoting me to involve them in my collages inspired my psychogeography. The spontaneous and tribal like creations are immediate and expressive, over time developing a dialogue between each other as the brick wall canvas becomes evermore crowded, juxtaposing and relating to the lack of contact we have been able to have with others, both strangers and people we love.

Using an oversaturated editing style demonstrates the idea of finding positivity in something that may have seemed mundane previously, also using collage and being driven by album cover design and it’s ability to tell a story through a cluster of images, this has been a primary aesthetic foundation for the project, using the saturated style to replicate the trapped and drowning feeling some people have experienced through the long lockdown periods, relating strongly to mental health difficulties.

This project has been therapeutic in many ways, allowing me to escape and improve the sights I am seeing everyday.