Artist in Conversation: Nichola Kinch
Ursinus student curator Caroline Tilson joins Nichola Kinch to discuss the works of mother mold: a cosmogony.
Details
mother mold: a cosmogony imagines a generative world beyond conventional social hierarchies, where forms and ideas flow freely. Through encounters and transformations of material states—their magnification, distortion, and refraction—the exhibition offers new ways to envision mutual and collective connections.
Curated by Emelia Bowen, Hayden James, and Caroline Tilson, members of the 2024-25 Museum Studies Curatorial Practices Seminar at Ursinus College.
Light refreshments in the gallery at 6:00 p.m., followed by the talk at 6:30 p.m. in the Berman classroom. This event is also on Zoom starting at 6:30 p.m. Please Sign Up to receive the Zoom link.
This event is free and open to the public. Consider adding a donation to your ticket price to support more free events like this at the Berman Museum of Art.
About the speaker: Nichola Kinch
My creative practice revolves around the use of historical and contemporary technologies to explore image and image production as finite and concrete occurrences. This overarching principle propels a research agenda that spans pre-photographic practices to computer aided design and manufacturing and centers on the creation of poetic and fantastical objects and installations that explore image production as a metaphor for a variety of fictional constructs.
I am interested in the moments in which we, as viewers, become aware of image as a mediated production. My work of the past several years takes root in the research of Victorian era image production, early photographic developments, and the advent of moving image machines. I have a particular fascination with animation machines and optical toys. The physicality of these devices, and the purposeful interaction required to operate them make palpable the power and limits of visual perception. The deliberate and specific engagement required for the generation of these illusions offer an instance where the producer’s role in the creation of image becomes tangible.
My recent exhibition “Love Stories” at the Fleisher Art Memorial is a collection of animation machines, large format photographs and optical devices, all presenting a rarified image of nature. Each object offers an illusion, a grove of 10 ft trees that pretend to be real but are flat, a phenaksitascope that is dressed up as the moon, and a flock of birds whose flight is powered by a manual crank. The titles all stem from antiquated popular culture and reference a promise, a limitation, or both. Through these objects, and the images they create, I draw parallels between the mediated photographic experience and the construction of romantic thought, in regards to experiences of nature and, perhaps, other love stories we choose to tell ourselves.