Julia Mary Grey

BA(Hons)FineArt, University of Cape Town

ARTIST STATEMENT

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I am a South African collage and assemblage artist using paint and found material to dismantle, play with and reimagine my own grasp of socio-political challenges and psychological-spiritual growth.  It involves the gathering and archiving of found imagery, boxes of random paper cut outs and layers of messy painting in acrylic, gouache and spray paint. 

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My style of collage developed in the pages of visual journals I kept as a teenager and evolved during my years at art school, whilst working on large scale collage walls. What I do is predominantly process-based and involves the unpredictable flow of ink or paint that I first discovered in those journals.

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The collaged world or wall, much like the visual journal page, functions as a fantastical and idealised container for Self: a new world to inhabit that acts as an antidote to life’s greyness or sadness. I aim to make visible what has thus far been personally unexpressed, leaving pieces of art like breadcrumbs for whoever notices (my future self included). 

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The idea of a visionary visual mission and always sourced back to the psycho-spiritual is where I feel most at home. Despite having formal art training, my goal is not to fit within contemporary theoretical parameters, but to produce work that God (by my own definition) and I might be proud of.



I am constantly looking to create light worlds / a depiction of a potential heaven / a space that counteracts darkness (both social and psychological) / a place to go where the colours are more fluid. 

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Being South African and the psychology around whiteness and privilege has played an enormous role in my creative work. I have lost myself and found myself, again and again, during the development of a healthy ego in relation to subject position. My life's work is an investigation of Self and Individuation with my art being the visual representation thereof. I believe in idiosyncratic expression and candid openness.

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