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Francesca Monticelli

Francesca Monticelli ( b.1997 in Jersey, Channel Islands) works across a multi-disciplinary practice of sculpture, installation, performance, photography, drawing and writing.

She currently lives and works between Jersey, London and France.

Arbitrary in their abandonment is where discarded objects and my sculptures come to life, as physical matter themselves. They are statically still in a moving environment.
— 2019

More about my practice…

In 2019 my practice evolved a major shift towards an exploration into sculpture as well as a conceptual focus directed towards object-subject relations and spatial concerns. 

Since then, I have become fascinated by encounters with objects, environmental forces and our encounter with them, especially objects on the city streets. I  attempt to unravel their ‘potential’ as ‘not fantastical but still loaded’ into the object’s self, it never knew existed.  I question the potentials for disruption, spillage, pile up or spatial collision to render a hybrid form between the subject-object-environment. Capturing these collision of bodies, both natural and foreign by photography is an instant tool. Letting the digital simmer for while, then later working these images into forms which nod more toward spacial concerns.

My work is influenced our orientation towards things, the marks, impressions and lingering traces of unknown histories and ‘has beens’. What are their memories? Where is their time?

OXO ( hugs and kisses), Digital collage, 2019. [Explorative]

OXO ( hugs and kisses), Digital collage, 2019. [Explorative]

I focus towards an appropriation of an object-subject-environment relationship, as well as an interpretation of body’s gesture towards discarded objects - the human body being posed by chance into form which relates itself to another objects, or its surroundings, that pleases the eye.  Explorations have evolved into the materials’ ability to take hold as a subtle intervention where the works conduct themselves through this chance occurrence. 

Based on a foundation rooted in drawing and writing I have recently been exploring  the ‘psychological and physical space we share with (discarded*) objects’ (Smyth, C., 2018). Do these objects keep us at a distance allowing for the manifestation of traces of independence or aliveness outside the subject’s experience?  Are we ( the subject) an important part to objects’ existence, or they to ours?

2020

However, subject’s experience and situation are themes which have come to surface of my work in 2020. Finding myself influenced by my return to my home island of Jersey in the later 2019-2020. I have been intrigued by my heritage, the traditions and folklore, prehistoric sites and those loaded with histories. Still engaged with object-subject relations, my work has evolved to intertwine the island’s nature and playfully surrealistic undertones.

Most importantly, I recognise my practice continues to change due to my situation, yet certain themes linger…

  • discarded, forgotten, lonely.

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[Discarded objects] They matter, notice, reclaim them, allow them to take forth of themselves, let them ‘stand defiant in placelessness’.
— With reference to Jimmie Durham, The Object (1964).
I end this page on this image. HAPPENING NOW…

I end this page on this image. HAPPENING NOW…