Dark Sentiments 2014 – Day 15: Tessa Farmer
Posted By Randy on October 15, 2014
Tessa’s miniscule sculptures reinvigorate a belief in fairies: not the sweet Tinkerbell image in popular conscience, but a biological, entomological, macabre species translating pastoral fable into nightmarish lore. Constructed from bits of organic material, such as roots, leaves, and dead insects, each of Tessa’s figures stand barely 1 cm tall, their painstakingly intricate detail visible only through a magnifying glass. ~ About Tessa
Source: facebook
Unless otherwise noted, all still images that appear in this article are from the official Tessa Farmer website which states, “Tessa Farmer was born in 1978 in Birmingham, UK and is an artist based in London. She received her BA in 2000 and her MA in 2003 from the Ruskin, Oxford. Subsequent awards include the Vivien Leigh Prize, a sculpture residency in King’s Wood, Challock, Kent, and a Royal British Society of Sculptors Bursary Award. In 2007 she was nominated for The Times/ The South Bank Show Breakthrough Award …
“… Hovering with rarefied, jewel-like beauty, Tessa’s tiny spectacles resound with a theurgist exotica: their specimen forms borrow from Victorian occultism to evolve as something alien and futuristic. Playing out apocalyptic narratives of a microscopic underworld, Tessa’s manikin wonders rule with baneful fervour: harnessing mayflies, battling honey bees, attacking spindly spiders. Presented as wee preternatural discoveries, Tessa’s sculptures conjure a superstitious premise, dismantling the mythos of fantasia with evidence of something much more gothic, sinister, and bewitching.”
When I first set eyes on the Good Ms. Farmer’s work, I was reminded at once of the work of Juan Cabana, Kate Clark, and also of a personal experience I once had, except in that last case far less delightful in demeanor.
Take a look at these images from previous exhibitions:
To close, here are two motion picture offerings. The first is a short film made using stop motion animation; a collaboration between Tessa Farmer and Sean Daniels called Nest of Skeletons.
And here is an insight into the mind and methods of the Artist herself:
so sorry to be the proverbial wet blanket, or whatever, but did not care for this for one reason. Whether it is from the Lenape side of my heritage I don't know, but it seems to me to treat the remains of our four footed, winged, feathered or furred brethren with disrespect. I have no qualm with hunters who take game for food, but even as a child I was taught to show respect not only to the living creatures but to the bodies which had once carried life, and so it is sad, to me, to see the vessels of life used as props or puppets. But please don't take it as a personal criticism. We all have differing tastes,
All the best –
j
No wet blanket seen or felt my Friend.
When I was actively teaching the Nova Scotia Hunter Safety Education Programme, one of my personally claimed parts of the curriculum was "Hunter Ethics". According to the book, that had everything to do with respecting land owner rights and assorted interhuman relations, but I laid claim to it because it didn't stop there for me.
Yes, the laws of man must be observed, but in the end, the Hunt is exclusively between the Hunter and the Quarry. It isn't a contest, it's a conversation. It's not about who has won, who is better in the combative sense, or who is the supreme species – the Hunter seeks to be worthy of the Gift asked for, and if found so, then to be thankful and respectful in every way imaginable to his or her Brother or Sister. I encapsulated this back in April of 2012 in a poem called "Connection" – http://randy.whynacht.ca/archives/7255 – as well as in other pieces published here along the way.
The vibe of the series is Dark Sentiments, in all the iterations the term may conjure. If this piece hadn't struck a sour note with you, we'd be poorer for not having heard you mind.
Thank you Jay