Artist: Rachael Gittins

Rachael's work on display at Free for All.

Rachael Gittins

Each of the pieces exhibited here are based on a series of electron microscope images. Rachael was struck by the surrealism of these images, and how opposed this seemed to the cold, scientific way in which they were produced.

The images appeared to be almost like their own worlds, and Rachael wanted to treat them as such; to turn them into landscapes and narratives that run parallel and separate to our own. The images have been subverted and distorted from their original scientific context, firstly by being turned into fictional short stories and then by being made out of select materials.

“These materials are intentionally fake, intended to complement the fictions they were depicting. They are also all hand-made, to remind the audience that, for the time being, they are no longer in reality, they are within the artist’s imagination.”

Rachael believes that we live in an age where this idea of “meaning” is fixated on and obsessed over, where we can no longer find a concrete one in the ways we have before; such as religion or community, and so we have to create our own. Rachael is constantly guided by her imagination, and wants to be filled with as much creativity and fantasy as possible, rather than settle for the bland or the ordinary. Paradoxically though, the processes used to create each piece are intentionally a play on this idea of monotony; they use techniques that involve some level of repetition and routine to create; either through the use of geometric nets or several different versions of the same object..

Rachael was  interested in creating something completely surreal, with little to no grounding in conventional forms or ideas, but doing so using very ordered, clinical techniques, and very traditional, everyday materials; using the ordinary to create the bizarre.