25/08/15
Interview: Linda Ingham
Linda Ingham is a visual
artist and curator, who exhibits nationally and abroad. She has work in several
public collections. Ingham lives and works in her coastal studio in northeast
Lincolnshire. The south bank of the Humber estuary has been a constant
accompaniment throughout her life, as has the industry and traffic that it
supports. The near horizon of the north bank informs much of her imagery, as do
the flotsam objects brought to the shoreline. The passage of time, location and
place is represented in Ingham’s work through process and systems of recording
and the use of materials, such as jet, gathered from the beach; silverpoint and
handmade gesso; and collage from antique books. Her drawn and painted
constructions are often gathered together as composite pieces and
installations, which may change over time. Self-imagery is also a regular
feature of her work. Her works forShifting Subjectsinclude a telephone table containing a book filled with transcriptions
of conversations she had with her mother and a pair of profiles, shaped from
her cast shadow, filled with the abstracted landscape of the Humber.
Anna McNay: You speak of your work ‘concentrating on place and time
through conversation and autobiography’. Is it more a case of using place and
time to help define an uncertain and shifting identity, or do you use your
identity and sense of self to try to grasp such ephemeral concepts as time and
space?
Linda Ingham: I think this depends, as I have used self-imagery in
several series. The Profile Pieces became
my way back into something alluding to self-portraiture but in which the image
of ‘me’ is actually closer to being subtracted; a ‘space’ shaped a bit like me.
It is more about using place and time to define identity. I tend towards a
depressive nature and swing between putting myself out there and wanting to
hide. The collaged elements and stylistic references to my home landscape put
something of ‘me’ into the Profile Pieces.
I’d like to think that the inclusion of this material in some way resonates and
communicates something to the viewer – maybe a sense of authenticity? It
doesn’t matter to me that the viewer can’t see what the material is and I don’t
think it is necessary to know this in order to have an understanding of the
work. I like the idea that not everything within the work is on show; I like
the hidden.
You can read the rest of this interview in Aestheticahere.