I like to follow my inquisitive instincts and explore the world about me. I bring that world into my art. I try to question everything in my life. I often return to early memories and experiences, mixing them in with current actualities. I use my work to explore and question events both past and present. I found the technique of using words to make my art by accident, but it has been fruitful. I use text and also drawings and photography in this wandering.
I enjoy risk. I excite risk by being direct with language. Forgotten memories and misplaced thoughts reappear when I might not expect them in my work. Not only does my work allow this surprise, but also on occasion it has given me space to express my emotions very physically.
Sometimes this process has resulted in emotional chaos. Much of my work is very personal. I feel its ferocity inside me, but with no strong direction. My work finds the direction I need to take. I want my viewers to follow my mind and hopefully then to explore their own history of language through marks made, surfaces scratched and letters written in and amongst the works.
I currently live and practise independently in West Yorkshire. I recently graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in Fine Art - Photography (BA Hons second class upper)
I am keen to develop, exhibit and sell my work. If you like my work, please just send me an email at merry_swarbrick@hotmail.com.
2008 Forgotten to Agree, Wasps Studios, Glasgow, Scotland | web-site
2008 Works of Non Fiction, Leeds, England
2009 Glasgow School of Art - Degree Show, Studio 24, Charles Rennie Macintosh Building, Scotland. The show on-line (Follow Fine Art then Fine Art Photography).
'Works of Non-Fiction?' is an exhibition by four young female artists from West-Yorkshire. They have worked, studied and grown-up alongside each other and they have shared their lives at an intimate level. Despite these common origins they have produced a particularly diverse range of work exploring numerous themes and many different media.
Merry Swarbrick's photographs are the fallout from challenging situations in which she adopts the paradoxical roles of protagonist and victim. - Josef Pitt-Rashid, 2008, Overview of statements from 'Works of None Fiction'
