Cheryl Newman United Kingdom

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Cheryl Newman is an artist and independent curator of photography living in London. Her practice explores the emotional landscape of love, desire, and family history and is an exploration of the human condition described as landscapes of emotions. She works with photography and collage.

Cheryl work is an exploration of the human condition creating fictional scenes described as landscapes of emotions. She explores her history though through thematic narratives taken from mythology, archive and objects of devotion and loss where tension and trauma are a key. Cheryl’s new series of work is formed from 3D scans of votive objects collected over a long period (25 years) in Cyprus. Each object – body parts, models of babies - has been 3D scanned using an Artec EVA scanner and assembled into new assemblages and forms using 3D technology. Her collage work uses a complex photographic collage of images held together with entomology pins historically used for pinning out butterflies and insects. Seen as an allegory for a complex emotional history, Prick responds to both the physicality of the giant cactus plants and the pain of emotional relationships, loss and loneliness. The images hang together, printed on paper as fragile as a broken heart. I spent 20 years as a photography director and am drawn to often exaggerated nature of news storytelling, archive images and the delicate balance between truth and lies. Therefore, I use manipulate archive imagery, family and found images and the surrounding landscapes as a metaphor to represent and explore my own vulnerability to create an abstract narrative of these events. The results create images that are non-linear and poetic and will challenge my memories, my fears, and my sexuality. The short stories or texts also describe these memories are important to the process as it develops and the both truthful and manipulated fiction can create new memories. My practice revisits a relationship with my past, my family, with my environment, my childhood and, the woman I am. My work defines my life’s journey and become a legacy to the passing of time and celebrate the extraordinary nature of the familiar.