Janet Tryner West Midlands, United Kingdom

• 
• 

  Back to profiles Invite to apply

I am a socially-engaged, early career, multidisciplinary, conceptual, female visual artist based in the West Midlands, UK. I focus on mutable urban and suburban ground level ecosystems to explore intersections of culture, species and matter. My research starts with collecting found objects and waste material and continues by investigating inter-connectedness via abstract form.

Via my eco-system focussed art I seek to bring the human gaze to the ground to consider our local ground level environmental support system.

My work most often begins with a derivé, wandering around thinking about all the living beings that surround me, and making small collections of things picked up off the ground. Through these I begin to make connections to that world full of life, and it makes connections to me.

Art making then continues through investigating traces of life through discarded objects and abstracting forms - often attempting to rebuild structures in salvaged human-made materials, such as polythene blown off construction sites, by which I can think about unbalanced relationships within ecosystems, such as paracitism manifest and are sustained. This appears variously: as hand-printing, sewn sculpture and installations displaying a variety of salvaged material, including polythene and litter, as irl and hybrid augmented-reality installations, soundwalk, scans, publications, natural clay processing unit, video and social art workshops.

Former residencies and projects, and a solo exhibition 'Library of Litter' at Coventry Artspace Arcadia Gallery, were inspired by my ‘#GroundLevelInvestigations’ – a running instagram theme – into litter and urban ecosystems, including: mushrooms, pioneer plants and oak gall wasps.

My work as an artist seeks to increase care and cultural perception of the ground level as a lived space shared between species which is vital to future wellbeing of all. To this end I have developed art workshops to compliment and share my practice ,and work with a number of similarly focussed organisations.

I am a studio holder with, and a trustee of Coventry Artspace (art ecosystems are important too) and a member of West Midlands social art collective, Radio Public, with Workshop 24.