Brave Island teamed up with the IW Creative Network, to offer a £1,000 commission for a young artist to create a piece of public art at this year’s Ventnor Fringe. The artist selected for this commission was 21 year old visual artist Izzy Kori, we sat down with her to discuss her plans for this project.
1. Please can you tell us a bit about your creative practice?
I am a second year Fine Art student at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford from the Isle of Wight. My practice revolves around creating figurative sculptures that vary in size and medium as a part of world-building, created through the translation/transformation of the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional, often resulting in a blurring of reality and fiction. The materials I use are usually old, found, or carry homeware qualities – expanding foam, scrap pieces of wood, hot glue, clay, mod-rock, false eyelashes, ping pong balls, acrylic paint, etc. In my recent work I have been experimenting with airbrush as a technique that contrasts with the DIY aesthetic of my normal work. Scale and location both play a large role in my work and is something I am currently developing, be this through upscaling a lot of my pieces or choosing locations such as the outdoors or theatrical stages to experiment with the dynamic between the space and the work. I am influenced by artists and film makers such as Jan Svankmajer, David Lynch, Cindy Sherman, Paula Rego, Niki de Saint Phalle, Paul McCarthy, Shalva Nikvashvili, and Jenkin Van Zyl.
2. What are your plans for this commission?
My plan for the commission is a roughly 8ft figure on a stand, facing in one direction constructed out of two-dimensional wooden sheets that have been cut to shape. The figure is caught and stopped in a momentary glimpse of motion, a take-off towards action. The cut-outs will be painted with an airbrush in bright colours blending with the rest of the Fringe’s radiance. Where is this mysterious figure headed? All we can know is that they look forward to overseeing the Fringe in all its glory.
3. How will this commission help develop your practice/you as an artist?
The commission is greatly developing my practice, allowing me to truly upscale my work, continue to develop my experience with airbrush and refine that as a technique and allow me to implement my work into a public setting. A large part of my practice involves storytelling and worldbuilding, and so having a location like the Ventnor Fringe is ideal for enhancing that element of my work. I am still a student going into the final year of my degree, and so I believe this is the best time in my creative practice to experiment with something at this scale and have that experience in my hometown.
4. Where can we find your work?
You can find Figure Stopped in Motion, in the Fringe Village, at the top of the hill at Flowersbrook, see the listing here. For more examples of my work, you can look at my Instagram page @izzarts_.
5. Lastly, what are you most excited to see at the fringe whilst you’re there?
Everything looks so fun and exciting I can’t choose a favourite, though I’m particularly looking forward to The Big Fringe Variety Show, Earspeeled: A Day @ The Fringe V2, and art_house_life_: Albedo Marz.
This project was created by Brave Island in collaboration with the IW Creative Network which is a programme a bit like Brave Island but for artists, makers and creative professionals of all ages and stages of their career, wanting to develop their business and creative skills on the Isle of Wight.
If you’d like to join the IW Creative Network, you still can! If you’re over 25 in particular this is a great community to be part of after Brave Island. Click here and sign up today to become part of this growing community of creatives on the Isle of Wight.
