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ARTWORK DETAILS

Name: Jessica Rodda	School:
Title: Funny Girl	Medium: Video
Description: A five-minute video depicting light-media, performance art, and masked actors of different ages using body movement and distorted dialogue.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Childhood trauma is a relevant aspect to mental health, which is prominent in today’s society. Funny Girl reflects my childhood trauma in a personal and contemporary context through alternate mediums and approaches of performance and sound art. While the audience views Funny Girl, they are forced into the perspective of a child experiencing violence. Through light, visual, and sound elements, I am able to achieve strong emotional responses from an audience by evoking fear from childhood trauma. Personally, this impacts me, triggering my inner child, ultimately encouraging a resolution of repressed emotions from past trauma.

ARTWORK PROCESS

Extended from earlier exploration of social stigmas regarding issues of mental health, I wanted to involve digital media, coloured lights and emotion through the influence of Olafur Eliasson who informed my previous light media displays. I experimented with paint, light, installation and sound to encourage intense responses from an audience. I used my personal experiences of childhood trauma and film, light, and sound to evoke repressed emotions. Inspired by my personal context, the formalistic qualities of my experiments with assembled media approaches intended to create reflection on childhood trauma and reveal mental illness as a collective issue within my generation.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jessica Rodda

Jessica Rodda is an emerging Brisbane-based artist who explores sculpture, acrylic mediums, digital elements, and coloured light media. She is innovative in her approach to engage the audience and is attentive towards the use of space and installation, as well as utilising sound, and performance art to address current concerns through personal and contemporary contexts. She aspires to explore the psychology of interior spaces and design with the intention to apply her artistic abilities within the construct of the creative industry and theatre design.