Ruby Wallis—Unfixed Landscape

Unfixed Landscape

Through my practice I argue for a return to the senses by engaging with the landscape, through the sort of ‘haptic’ experience film can provide. I have chosen Coolorta, a small alternative community in the West of Ireland for the location of this research. This is where I lived as child. The three artworks, Autowalks, Moving Stills and Turlough Swim are made through lens-based art practice and explore the boundary between empirical and phenomenal forms of research. Drawing on the writings of Judith Butler, Maurice Merleau Ponty, Laura U Marks and Vivian Sobchack I have engaged in walking and filming, ‘slow film-making’, ‘the close up’ and the ‘point of view shot’. The cinematic approach adopted moves over the course of the project from a perspective which privileges sight above the other senses, to an engagement with haptic filmmaking, which seeks to explore the inter-subjective experience involved in the relationship between the spectator, subject and filmmaker. There are critical difficulties in my approach; retrospection can be prone to nostalgia, which can produce a romantic view of the past, yet Julia Kristeva proposes that visiting this melancholia can be potent within artistic practice.

Biography:

Ruby Wallis is finalising her practice-based research at The National College of Art and Design, Dublin. She completed Masters Documentary Photography at UWN (2007) and a Fine art degree from CCAM (2004). She Lectures photography history and theory at GCD and is a visiting lecturer at BCA, CCAM and LIT.  

Ruby has just finished a year- long residency at The Centre for Creative Arts and Media, Galway.

In 2013 she was awarded first prize at Claremorris Open Exhibition selected by Andrew Wilson Curator of contemporary Art at Tate Britain and was nominated for the Prix Pictet award by Trish Lambe, The Gallery of Photography, Dublin.

Publications include: Vision magazine, China. The Weary Blues journal, Ireland, Defunct magazine, Iowa, Super Massive Black Hole magazine, Ireland .The British Journal of Photography, UK. Family Album of Ireland, The Gallery of Photography.

Academic publications include: ‘Autowalks’ a paper On-Walking for the International Multidisciplinary Conference at The University of Sunderland, (2013).‘Unfixed Landscape’ The Journal of Artistic Research (2012). Research papers: ‘Visualizing Utopia’ Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (2012).

Recent exhibitions include: G126 members show, (2014). Galerie Du Faoudic, Lorient (2014).  Claremorris Open Exhibition, (2013). Portfolio 13, Photo Ireland Festival, (2013). Clause four, UK, (2013). Other Madonnas, Centro de Artes Visuais, Portugal (2013) Exiles, The Lab, (2012). Moving Stills, The Dock, (2012). Incredibly Close and Extremely Slow, Amsterdam (2012). Project 30, Emerging Views of Ireland, Gallery of Photography, (2012) Undertow, The Lab, (2012. Tulca, (2011 and 2009). Ffotogallery, UK. (2010).

Wallis was Artist in Residence for the Galway County Arts Office and ‘That’s life’ and ‘Kidsown’ publishing partnership. Awards include: The Arts Council travel and training award and The Galway Arts Office Individual Artists Award. She has been shortlisted for The Gallery of Photography’s Artist Award in 2006 and 2009  and EVA in 2012.

Unfixed Landscape is an artist-initiated project, in partnership with Pallas Projects/Studios