Martha Harris

In my work, I am intrigued by how personal experiences can be universalised. This governs why I create visual forms; how things can be known and felt without being articulated through words.

How I perceive the world has been altered by my study of Capital and the notion that many things we take as ‘given’ are constructed ideologies of our society, embedded in the subconscious to appear as ‘natural’. Whilst this is used to critique the socioeconomic, it is a concept I enjoy applying to human display itself. Associations we make with certain visual phenomena and what they signify feel innate, and I am eager to disentangle them – it is exciting to find the most appropriate gesture to convey, and promote, a certain feeling, which I often represent as an animated outline. I have recently wanted to explore ways to install these emotional representations which divorce them from the context that makes them complicated. For instance, in 'tried to walk' figures tumble over free-floating fabric, and in 'So What Lingers' they hover over streets like phantoms, not entirely anchored in.

Overall, it is my intention to create catharsis. My works are slow and cyclical, so do not ask for sustained focus. Instead, I want them to trigger a connection with a personal realm of serenity, and reminiscence, looping for as long as the viewer wishes to reinstate themselves.

Animation sequences and photography for Lazygirl in promoting her EP, 'Orange Roses'.

Credited in Bido Lito! Magazine.

May, 2020
Experimental video piece using colour burnt location clips and animated gestures.

Once it became likely that I would have to move back to Northampton due to the
coronavirus pandemic, I started documenting my most familiar places in Leeds. I then continued this
whenever I went on a walk in Northampton. I sourced old baby videos, juxtaposed with my favourite memories of my second year at university.

'So What Lingers' is my attempt to visualise what I miss.

Everyone is walking through these spaces they call home and it feels strange to reminisce about them when you are still standing within them. There are memories you associate with each location that are intangible – they are merely the essence of the place lingering, waiting for you until you can retrieve them again.

My animated figures act as cyphers of these essences, layered over my favourite environments. They flicker in, out and over each other like dream sequences.

The Moss Farm,
'I'm Ready To Move On'

March, 2020
Digital projection onto satin with low frequency audio, fan and clothing rail.
52-second loop.

Using motor movement as a visual cue, tried to walk hopes to connect to an infantile sense of comfort.

Bodies tumble, spin, crumple, get up, roll, walk, fall. Crumpled bodies flicker. Bodies tense and other bodies spin beside them. Tumbling bodies gush into each other. Walking bodies dislocate as they move. And each gesture bleeds into the next, floating across the contortions and folds of their satin tarp and the wall behind it. There is a breeze and only faintly distinguishable sounds of the everyday, limited to their low frequencies and made dream-like by reverb. As such, every part of tried to walk is unanchored.
Yet, simultaneously, every part feels familiar.

This installation aims to capture these moments of temporality of bodily movements, decontextualising them so that the experience is something purely soothing.