Castlefield Gallery Associates Spotlight: Jocelyn McGregor
Posted on 14 August 2024
This month we have asked Jocelyn McGregor to contribute to our Castlefield Gallery Associates Spotlight series, in which current Castlefield Gallery Associates share their thoughts on what the programme offers and how it has been useful for them.
Can you tell us a little bit about your practice?
In formal “Artist Statement” voice: I am a multi-disciplinary artist whose work aims to blur boundaries between real and imagined worlds, natural and manufactured environments. I create ‘super’-natural hybridized bodies and spaces that encourage us to reconsider human hierarchy within the natural world and adopt a more holistic view of it if we are to move forward.
In less formal speak: despite working across film, performance, sound and installation, I think of myself as a sculptor and the work as sculpture in an expanded sense. Expanded as in I want the works to explore the 3D in full, so the sculptures might take on life-like qualities such as movement either through stop-motion animation or being activated by the body; or maybe they have some context or backstory in the form of pieces performed by actors, or through the materials they are made out of e.g. grass made from hair extensions, beaches of carpet from my family home, fishnet tights or fingernails for scales, etc.
How did you hear about Castlefield Gallery Associates and why did you want to join?
I joined over lockdown after another artist recommended it to me. I had two reasons for wanting to join, the first being that I’m based rurally, on the border of Cumbria and Lancashire. There are some amazing artsy goings on in Cumbria but they are few and far between, as are other artists; and then this feeling of being cut off from artistic networks was made worse by Covid and Lockdown. So the Associates scheme was a way for me to make links with a major northern city, have access to a wider artistic network, hear about more opps and general goings on.
What are you looking forward to most about your coming year’s membership?
I do want to journey across to Manchester more and join in on more of the face-to-face events, and get to know new associates’ practices. Thank you to Castlefield Gallery Associates or everything so far, it’s been an arty lifeline!
Links
Website
jocelynmcgregor.comImages
Banner:
- Jocelyn McGregor, detail from DREDGED, solo multi-media installation at The Windermere Jetty Museum (as part of UNTOLD Commissions by Lakeland Arts and Arts & Heritage), 2023. Photographed by Lakeland Arts.
From left to right, top to bottom:
- Jocelyn McGregor, Installation view of Mantle, solo exhibition at Castlefield Gallery, 2022. Photographed by Jules Lister.
- Jocelyn McGregor, Vaginarama (Leck Beck), wearable sculpture, 2023.
- Jocelyn McGregor photographed by Clive Trotman.
