Diane Roe

MA Fine Art

Hope is a Thing with Feathers

Primarily a painter of works on canvas, Diane's practice has expanded to engage in the materials of the sculptor, using improvised armatures from found objects, worrying and layering surfaces, and marking them in order to address the problematization of subjectivity. She seeks an understanding of the relationship between the question of how we understand ourselves as unique individuals within the positioning that the self is part of the many processes which signify ‘moments at which a particular alignment becomes visible’ (Stark, 2017).

Diane's practice is situated in, and informed by, a state of tension born from the positioning of subjectivity as a constantly shifting process. Her work interrogates the notion that the subjective self ‘occurs in the zone of proximity in the space between entities’ (Stark, 2017).

Hope is a Thing with Feathers is a body of work where she has assembled seemingly heterogeneous objects, juxtapositions and apparent contradiction. She seeks a collaboration between objects thereby creating a space to examine the proposition that the state of being is contingent on encounter.

What They Say explores the apparent disjuncture of live birds living among, and encountering, alien structures. Loaded with symbolisms, the corvids seem to speak of what it means to be human, to fear the uncertainties of life, yet find hope and meaning.

Eroded structures, broken and fragmented walls, encounter corvid feathers. Placing these two objects together, Is there a secret? explores the notion of ‘vital materiality’ (Bennett, 2010).

And, above all, Diane hopes the works create a space in which the viewer, in encountering them, can ‘become with them’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994) and find ‘new ways to appreciate life and new ways to live’ (Stivale, 2011).