JACKY PUZEY (Phd Fine Art)

I am currently a research student and practising artist at Bath Spa University, as well as student fellow in the Fashion and Textiles department. MY PhD is entitled: ‘Hybrid Dialogues Situational Strategies; art, culture, and dialogue through practice-led research’.

 

My PhD  practice led research focuses on collaborative structures that are used to explore the contemporary legacies of histories and racisms in specific site, through dress, pattern, material histories and public spaces. I highlight the use of visual strategies as a way of navigating complex postcolonial situations through performance, costume and dialogue. I draw on postcolonial theoretical ideas of creolisation, the creation of new dialogues through histories of cultural mixing and implication, resituating this idea as a strategy rather than a space.

 

Image above:  from Convivium, by Jacky Puzey and collaborators Image by Annie Lovejoy
Copyright Jacky Puzey and Annie Lovejoy October 2005

 

Convivium, the beginning part of my work towards my PhD, was produced as an exhibition, a feast and an event in St Thomas Church, Bristol with a group of artists, writers, singers and guests. Originally an invitation to show my MA piece Postcolonial Dreamcoats, Convivium evolved out of discussions about site, history and personal negotiations of identity to produce a space for shared history – the word Convivium means literally living together, but also dinner or feast, in the original Latin. From archival research to contemporary multiculturalism, we worked, sang, feasted, and created a space where old histories could be examined from the perspective of a shared equal space, each person creating their own work and collaborating as well to think about art and cultural production as a way of navigating the old church as a new site.   

 

Image above:  from Convivium, by Jacky Puzey and collaborators. Image by DA Tidy
Copyright Jacky Puzey and DA Tidy October 2005

 

Shade, my main research project, is about influence and exchange. It’s about beautifully tailored suits acting as passports, getting you into places that you might not otherwise expect. It’s about the act of wearing the suit, dressing to pass into new communities. It starts from my memories of travelling the business/diplomatic circuit from England to Europe, USA and Africa, but it also considers dressing to move countries, to migrate, to arrive in new cities, to create a passport into new communities and the rules of those passports. It takes the idea of invitational space and exchange further, to examine rituals and unwritten complicities, as the suits come together to perform, invite, and interact with site, audience and wearers.

 

Image above: Shade: the Hostess suit: studio documentation. Photos by Jacky Puzey copyright 2007  

 

As part of Shade, I recently took part in ‘The New Barbarians Collection Fall 2007 Collection – Designer Primitives on the Runaway Runway’, a performance project at the Arnolfini gallery, Bristol with the artists’ group ‘La Pocha Nostra’.  During the performance, I wore my suit from Shade. Links below:

http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/livedance.php?id=79http://whiteboxphoto.com/lapochanostra/index10.html

  

Selected Exhibitions and Papers

Exhibitions and Collaborations (since 2005)

2007 November  Shade: part of La Pocha Nostra’s artists’ residency at Arnolfini, Bristol to  create ‘The New Barbarians Collection Fall 2007 Collection – Designer Primitives on the Runaway Runway’. (particular responsibility for props and costumes)

 

2007 June  - July Shade: exhibition at Silai for Skills, Bristol for Easton Arts Trail – performance and research project

 

2006 June  - July Postcolonial Dreamcoats exhibition at Exeter Phoenix, Exeter as part of Respect Festival

 

2006 June Postcolonial Dreamcoats exhibited at Bristol University Drama Dept for Symposium ‘Arts and Culture in the Colonial City’

 

2005 September – October Convivium collaborative exhibition and event at St Thomas Church, Bristol

 

2005 May Postcolonial Dreamcoats at St Nicholas Markets, Bristol

 

Conference papers

2007 Sept 6-8 Paper ‘Hybrid Dialogues, Situational Strategies’ including presentation of ‘Shade’ new research at Manchester University

2006 June 8 Paper ‘Hybrid Dialogues, Situational Strategies – City Space – Contested Place’ : Arts and Culture in the Colonial City conference at Bristol University

2006 May 15 -17 Paper ‘Hybrid Dialogues, Situational Strategies’ at Racism, Postcolonialism, Europe conference, Leeds University