POSTGRADCHAT with Janie Kidston

To celebrate Camberwell College of Arts Postgraduate Summer Show 2014 on the 16th to 23rd July, we met with students to talk about their work and give us a glimpse into their graduation work.

MA Printmaking Janie Kidston invite us to ’A landscape of private mythologies’

Glacial flows come from fields many miles long’ 2014

CCA: What has your experience at Camberwell been like?

JK: It has given me an opportunity to really contextualize my work and to understand what I want to do and explore in the field of visual arts. The course has helped clarify my ideas which were pretty woolly when I started.

CCA: What did you find was the most valuable technical skill you learnt whilst studying at the College?

JK: I have worked using digital media so have spent most of the last year in the Photography Resource Centre. This was a revelation. I’d never worked in the photographic studio before or even opened a file in Photoshop so it was one big learning curve. The technical support and the depth of knowledge available have been superb.

CCA: Please tell us about your work?

JK: I am interested the broad topic of ‘landscape’ and the ways in which we visualize unfamiliar territories through the medium of photography; in how we know the world not through photographs but interpretations of actual photographs and in how digital technologies have created an anxiety in our perceptions of the modern landscape.

‘You can’t do a tour without a guide because you may fall into a hole
and die’ (1 – 6) Number 5

CCA: What will you be showcasing in your degree show?

JK: I am showcasing part of a body of work called ‘A landscape of private mythologies’. It explores imaginary journeys and representations of an Arcadian Arctic. It has focused on recreating a world that is born out of idealized settings and significant places long held in personal memory – a landscape of reworked photographic data from magazines, newspapers, the web, travel brochures, catalogues and personal archives etc.