Wet beads on the line
INCUBE8 Part VIII 
Johana Hartwig
Johana Hartwig
Pre-preview critique
led by Mike Murray:
Thursday 22nd November, 6pm
Thursday 22nd November, 6pm
Preview:
Thursday 22nd November, 7pm-late
Exhibition Continues: Friday 23rd – Sunday 25th November, 12-6pm daily
Wet beads on the line features a series of mini visual sketches, inspired by the humanity of the inanimate and the beauty of the incidental. Responding in a playful and intuitive way, Hartwig produces these sketches, captured on film, to form an elegant and thought provoking dance between multiple screens. Sewing these screens together are some curious objects and maquette experiments, made in tandem with and apriori to the films. Hartwig shares with us exquisite symbiosis; a light touch, the small, often overlooked transitional moments as we touch our world and our world touches us.
‘Object muses’ and ‘objects of interest’ include ‘plastic bags’ and ‘overhead telephone lines’. Like many good love stories Hartwig feels an immediate aesthetic attraction or fascination for the things that she films, followed by more thoughtful musings, including those around story, purpose, usage, impact and future.
“The magic of watching the elements play, on man made objects, on the every day. Invisible wet beads gathering speed, then merging, surfing, falling, sprawling."
“The magic of watching the elements play, on man made objects, on the every day. Invisible wet beads gathering speed, then merging, surfing, falling, sprawling."
Hartwig’s works all involve a certain amount of impermanence, as the elements touch the manmade and a beautiful moment is suspended. This is grounded in the exploration of the form and function of everyday manmade objects. Which includes the functional limits of objects and exalting the 'live' quality of an object, the humanity innate within it, which we as the designers pressed into their very making and is perhaps akin to a soul.
Johana Hartwig is an interdisciplinary artist based in Cardiff, working predominantly with video. Hartwig has a background in sculpture and a form-led approach to the making of film. Graduating in 2001 from the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff she has exhibited widely, most recently at the Oriel Canfas Gallery, Cardiff. Hartwigs’ films possess strong visual narratives that feed from intuitive, emotive responses to environmental quirks, sensual objects, obsessional patterns, flux anthropomorphism and humour.
Over the last 12 years,artist Mike Murray has drawn inspiration from objects and images of mass production; using everyday objects to create dramatic installations and sculptures and studies using paint and other media.
Using the 'free association' work of Sigmund Freud and Christopher Bollas, Mike's work examines our unconscious associations with objects in our everyday lives. A fine art lecturer in Swansea,South Wales, Mike is also an internationally exhibited artist, with his work shown in Venice, the South of France and New York, as well as across Wales.
