Emma Pratt is a visual artist based in Edinburgh.

 

"My work starts from small ideas and notions, which grow and develop as I continuously add to them by making and as such my work is very much process led. Taking inspiration from imagery found in films, books, over heard conversations, magazines, television, the Internet and personal experience, I create mixed media sculptures. I am interested in a wide range of areas. A few include; anachronism, folklore, outsider art, shape shifting, low budget horror films, melodrama, artificial paradises, hypnogogic states, ectoplasmic beings, psychokinesis, surrealist methods, domestic pets, architectural structures, fragmented body parts, transformation fetish, human behaviour and traditional modes of sculpture. Through the interweaving of lots of separate threads my work arrives at a loose narrative. Certainly not a preconceived one, but rather an open ended, layered and even non-sensical narrative emerges in the detail. It exists as more of a 3-dimensional collage than anything else. I am interested in the use of narrative strategies and dramatic devices, those used in film in particular, to impose control or curiosity in the way in which the story is portrayed and experienced. The use of these devices in sculpture is in stark contrast to that of film, it highlights the areas in which medium fails. It is this restriction that I enjoy; it is a futile challenge and alludes to the idea of fakery and a staged aesthetic. In this way the work almost comments on itself. I look to narrative to inform my work. I am fascinated in how it manages the way in which the characters, stories, objects and ideas are revealed in a story. My work is often confusing and difficult to interpret and can be seen as open-ended narratives that allow multiple readings and encourage the viewer to fill in the gaps. It is very layered in the sense that I apply lots of little, and seemingly diverse or un-connected imagery and ideas together, working as a 3-dimensional collage. The work itself is a product or realisation of my ideas and notions. I do not work from a preconceived narrative. Rather the work will create itself as I go along through a process of making or the intent will become apparent after the work is made. At other times it emerges as an arrangement of fragmented elements that just somehow seem right when placed together. My research methods are typically working through small-scale models and drawings, jumping to and fro to determined what fits best and what is the quickest and most fitting way to get a ‘notion’ out of my head and into physical reality. I find that looking at my work retrospectively informs my next move, generally in a formal way. The work just appears through making, in a similar vein to the Surrealists use of Automatic Writing."