Artist Statement

“Never before have I had a period of such absorption and reflection in my work and who I am as ‘Self’. This has been a solo experience with no rights or wrongs, just intuitive action through materials to force a further understanding and contemplation of what I am. In this work I did not exist, what existed was the something other. Being aware of the breath has been the hinge point allowing me to access the something else - memories, perceptions and societal reflections. With this came experimentation of materials - some made, papers found, old books and frames used in installations. These older items used because they have been a witness to a world before my birth as if resonating a memory through it's absorbtion of time. The work is quantifying me through this time in my personal history where I felt outside of society as if I no longer existed.

Through this work I have been able to tackle and wrestle myself and question my identity. This experience has demonstrated the power, stillness and strength in breath to unhinge and stable beyond body survival."

- Seran Kubisa

In Kubisa’s new works she applies her considerable artistic endowment to masterly drawings, collages and paintings that wallow in the strength of pain and identify blocks which are then purged. These blocks generate from self-imposed beliefs, society norms and the contemplation of being a woman. ‘Grips’ take you into strangulating patterns. 'Cut up Diamond’ collages are a personal protest of circumstance constructed from cut-up past works. Self-portraits bring you into a place where what is purged is dark, stagnated and male. In ‘No can Speak’ you enter a forced isolation. All are contemplations of the self through the stillness and forcefulness of breath.

Kubisa is entering one of the most fascinating phases of her artistic practice. It is hard to discern what is the best from Kubisa's vast output, be it the early series ‘Where are We', set in a cosmological world, or her production of neuroscience complexity paintings and installations. Equally, it could be her 12 year investigations of fragments stolen from objects and location which contemplate journeys and memory to produce a vast archives, exhibitions and the film, Recall.

Recently, there has been something of a renewed focus on drawing and paint. These more immediate mediums are suited to her current dissection of self where feelings and memories are recorded directly on paper. These works hold a tension in viewing and demonstrate a power not seen in previous works. The unquantifiable nature of human emotion depicted by her latest work is juxtaposed with the reassuring dependability of her previous series which were an intense examination of a physical world. This past work was a dissection of objects through social and scientific examination to unmask its physical life journey. This current work remains familiar as it dissects the artist's life through emotion, blocks and the formation and breaking of patterns to encapsulate intense moments from her personal life. This is addressed by expulsion through breath of sociological and genetic engrained blocks and patterns.

This examination has led to over 400 drawings, paintings and collages, some of which are drawn when a memory surfaces, others that reflect on society, communication block, experience of isolation and the social dislocation and subjugation of women.

Surpassing Kubisa’s innovative practice and constantly evolving processes is an innate and masterful use of colour. To experience Kubisa’s installations, architectural projections, science artworks, drawings and paint is to take you into a understanding of unique colour fields where colour impacts, leads and is seething yet subtle and clever.

Kubisa’s work has been informed by memory in science, personal, global and cosmological. All the time pursuing the myriad of realities that are never certain. The work oscillates between the visually regcognisable and the contemplations of all that can be felt between and, in the process, redefines the boundaries between abstraction and recognition. Sinuous, sensual, and sometimes dark, Kubisa’s work brings us nearer to a seductively complex vision.