Beatrice Buckland-Willis
Artist Bio
Beatrice Buckland-Willis' practice could be described as a kind of distorted self portrait of the artist and their complicated relationship with their own healing journey. Subverting ideas of the ‘abnormal’ or ‘normal’ pain experience, they explore their connection with chronic pain through the lens of the medicalised body. Having undergone significant orthopedic surgery in their early teens, the artist lives in a body that is not entirely their own, supported by titanium rods and screws they exist in a strange liminal space between the natural and artificial. Their current work-in-progress "Soft Hurts" utilises stills from an earlier video work Crepitus which documented chronic pain flare-up episodes. The artist mapped the vector points of the body as they contorted themselves in an effort to relieve their discomfort. These unusual shapes that were created through this process were fascinating to the artist, as they represented an attempt to turn the unquantifiable into visual data, and have become a recurring motif in their relief-print work.
Artists statement & inspiration
Lately, Beatrice has been experimenting with plaster as an expanded print material. Inexpensive, accessible, and sustainable; plaster casting acts as an exciting alternative to printing with a traditional printing press. The process is unpredictable, yielding mixed and often unexpected results. Interested in construction materials as their own printing substrate, the introduction of plaster into the series has been a natural experimental progression of their work. Plaster acts as both an industrial material used to patch and sculpt, and a medical grade casting material used to literally scaffold the body. As a material, it is incredibly tactile to the artist as the maker, and its fragility can be compared to the fragility of the flesh.
A relief print is in itself an inverse of what has been enacted on a matrix, you might then consider the resulting embossed or printed surface as simply the memory of the plate. "In some ways I consider pain which becomes chronic, a kind of memory of an action. A recurring trauma embedded in the nervous system to be flared and triggered throughout our lives. My work is my attempt to explore these themes, creating my own visual language for discomfort I apply my practice as a means to ritualise what is otherwise meaningless and explore what it means to be 'healed'."
Upcoming shows
Beatrice is currently on residency with Inner West Council at White's Creek Cottage. "I am excited to be running a workshop at Footprints Eco Festival with fellow artist-in-residence Jacqueline Larcombe on Sunday 25 August, 2024. Inspired by the beautiful White's Creek Valley Park, participants will be invited to draw the flora in the edible food garden using sustainable materials on a handmade postcard which they can then send to a friend. It will also be a great opportunity to visit our studio spaces and see what we've been working on throughout the residency, so we would love to see you there!
Eco Footprints Workshop: Sunday 25 August
Website www.beabuckland-willis.com
Instagram @beadoesntknowwhatshesdoing
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