Ju Gosling

London, United Kingdom

About the Artist:
Ju Gosling is a performance and multimedia artist working largely within the theories and traditions of the disability arts movement. JU works mainly with digital lens-based media, but also with performance, text and sound.

Currently, she is working with Sarah Wigglesworth Architects on the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive at Holton Lee in Dorest, and is the project's artist-in-residence. JU also holds a part-time residency at the National Institute of Medical Research, funded by the Wellcome Trust Sciart fund. In 2004 Ju was awarded an Artsadmin Digital Media Fellowship for Disabled and Deaf Artists.

Artist's Statement:
Matisse produced his bronze casts Backs I-IV over a period of decades from his original plaster, mutating the piece further in each successive casting with the model's hair/spine becoming ever more prominent. AS an artists with a degenerative spinal impairment, the work has always spoken to me on a number of different levels. As a digital artist, I am interested in the parallels between casting and digital media. And as a woman artist, I am interested in the power play between the (usually male) artist and the (usually female) model.

In Perception I-IV I wanted to take the place of both model and artist, occupying the same pose as Matisse's model, and experiment with sculpting in light rather than metal. Having shot the original self-portrait on film, I transposed it to digital media and then mutated it four times by adjusting the 'curves' and using filters, with the piece becoming ever less naturalistic with each successive version. I wanted to explore the perceptions that we have of the body, and wrote when I originally produced it: Do we see ourselves as naked, surrounded by burning fiers, banding our fist hopelessly against a brick wall? Or do we see our strength, melting away the barriers? Do we see the energy within us, and use its power? DO we see the physiscal body, or do we see the humanity? Do we see all of these?