interviewed by Alexandria McClintock
Alexandria McClintock Your work gives a sense of the many material and immaterial elements of the world being in a state of dynamic flux. The individual figure often appears in your work, but becomes one element among many, rather than a centring principle. Would you say that your work tends to devolve the centrality of the individual?
Marian Drew Yes and no. I'm interested in the universal yet I can find the universal more easily through the study of the individual.
Alexandria McClintock I also see the figures in your images as being more or less defined by elements/contexts/environments acting upon them. Your figures appear to be pushed into or out of positions or forms by any number of external forces, and thus appear to be individuals defined from without. In the same way, I see paintings on newspaper on the studio wall here in which you have defined human forms by painting the area around them, thus leaving the individual figures as newspaper negatives.
Marian Drew I've created the positive by painting the negative. Yes, it's true you can often find something by working on its opposite. Obviously by creating one side you have created its balance because that is what's left.
Alexandria McClintock You clearly use a range of materials and techniques beyond the medium of photography. I understand your process involves drawing, painting, making and collecting objects and images around a certain idea. You then choreograph an interaction of all these elements with light and movement in a darkened space in front of the open shutter of a camera. How far do you control what the final image might look like?
Marian Drew I have a general... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline