Art Talk with Tracy Thompson
Date: October 26, 2017
Venue: @thestudioaccra
Time: 6:30pm
Free!!!
Artist Bio:
Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson is a twenty-three-year-old Ghanaian artist whose practice revolves around an interest in material and industrial processes (seen in her recent works with synthetic plastics); As well as Nature which also inspires her— the aspects of complexity, the uncontrolled, and the mathematical ingenuity of nature which embodies its enigmatic beauty.
Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson graduated from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) where she obtained first class honours in Fine Art (Painting) from the Department of Painting and Sculpture in Kumasi.
KNUST plays a key role in her practice as the department of Painting and Sculpture in KNUST is undergoing reformation in its curricular and playing such an epochal role in revolutionizing the art scene in Ghana which was in a state of oblivion to the contemporary art world. Not to mention the radical strives or guerrilla tactics of artistic emancipation heralded by Dr. karî’kạchä seid’ou which has in recent times propelled the art scene in Ghana to gain prominence internationally through the large scale end of year exhibitions that have carried an intellectual vision and scope to expose Ghanaian artists to engage politically and socially to the global discourses and interventions of contemporary art.
Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson has participated in two of these unprecedented paradigm-shifting large-scale exhibitions organised by blaxTARLINES (of the Department of Painting and Sculpture). Namely Cornfields in Accra (2016) and Orderly Disorderly (2017). Opportuned by the cross-generational features of the exhibition, she exhibited alongside prominent contemporary artists like Ibrahim Mahama, as well as artists of the 60’s and 70’s like Prof. Ablade Glover, Kofi Dawson and many others.
Artist Statement:
My current works stems from an interest in synthetic materials and Nature — the paradox and synthesis between inorganic and organic material. My works come in the form of plastics — Polystyrene (Styrofoam) — which at times come with implants of Polyvinyl Chloride sheets, Polypropylene material, as well as particles of organic matter.
Like the Sankɔfa ideology, I condition the Styrofoam to immerse itself back to its own source, petroleum, which is mixed with oil paint. Out of this semi-dissolution process of form and mass, the white-coloured industrial geometric form of Styrofoam is transmuted into coloured amorphous substance.
Air bubbles also form in the substance which is liberated (partial deflation) from its former concealed state due to its original industrial process (inflated polymer). The latent air therefore becomes macroscopically visible through this artistic intervention of material experimentation. These air-bubbles add to the organic aesthetic of the plastic work as it imitates cell-like structures of organisms.
The uber-contraction of mass and matter from the semi-dissolution process used, is crucial to the politics of scale of the art work- ‘Since a million blocks of Styrofoam could be reduced to a small-scale. This is metaphorical and paradoxical (in relation to time) to the millions of tons of decomposed organic fossils which have been largely compressed over a long period .
The transmutation of these ubiquitous Styrofoam material breaks the modernist aesthetic of the original state of the industrial material; its pristine opaque quality and geometric form, which I manipulate to become transparent, coloured and amorphous.
In taking advantage of the multi-transformational ability of the plastic, I also create varied textures in my plastic works by also exploring drawing and carving in an unconventional way by using water (in contrast to the oil nature of molten plastic). The thermo-elastic ability of the material also allows me to explore the complexity of dynamic formation of the work in space synonymous to that of living organism that changes over time.
The viscoelastic property also allows me to have works that imitate frozen motion of liquids which I have explored in simulating geographical forms (water droplets, icicles, stalagmites and so on). Therefore, the transformation (alchemist) process of a ubiquitous material like Styrofoam to become unrecognizable becomes an interest of which I am exploring.