From PR: APOPOCLECTIC features MA Fine Art part time student work at UCA Farnham and refers to the multi-layered complexities of the contemporary world, an eclectic lament played out through the media of film, photography, performance, sculpture, painting and installation. The work belies an underlying sense of rage, anxieties about misrepresentation of identity through public data, the Anthropocene, the overwhelming quantity of information online and disconnection of human experience with the increasing reliance on technology. This cornucopia of work provokes essential and existential questions about being in the world. Going beyond pure fury, the work portrays a sensitive, unique and nuanced set of personal responses to the complex gifts of the past, confusing challenges of the present and the potential of a social and environmental apocalyptic future.

Uriya Jurik asks searing questions through juxtaposing ancient nomadic traditions, materials and shamanic rituals (of her Kazakhstan roots) with our contemporary over abundance of information, virtuality and the threat of data impermanence. What will happen to our deeper connections to the past? Will our individual and collective memory and cultural depth crash with Facebook and the Cloud?

We have got just a two week notice to set up the whole exhibition: from individual project proposals, collective decision on the name and the theme, PR, marketing, curation, risk assessment and of course the actual production and installation of work. I have chosen the most challenging way – create a completely new work based on one of my sketched ideas (see pic.), meaning that I would have to start from scratch. Getting more engaged with sheep wool I had an idea of embracing fluffy quality of the material instead of compressing it in to a densely felted objects. I have experimented creating a mushroom cloud, and other manageable size installations, however the aesthetics of The Cloud had to be large scale to make an impact of displacement – a cloud is taking over a gallery space, especially in a large space of James Hockey Gallery. Since processed wool is quite a pricey material and I needed a lot, I have ordered it directly from the farm. The wool was coming straight from the sheep with all of the grease, dirt, poo, blood from lambing, bugs and hey. Dirty, dusty, greasy and very smelly, it wouldn’t be possible to fluff up and use this material in that state, not in this context at least. It took me a week for a concept and ordering materials and another long week from morning till midnight of time and labour consuming process of cleaning and drying the wool. This was only possible with help of my friends. At the gallery there were challenges of restricted suspension and I had to reconsider the whole installation. I have changed the way of building the cloud suspending about a hundred fluffs of wool with fishing wire off the grid, that allowed to create a 3D effect of even a larger cloud. I gave up on laptops and gadgets due to tech reasons and for ambiguity. The Memorial – a dress with long bone necklace hanging 3,5 m off the floor and projection of generated by Google cloud personal photo slideshow with the silly music added by Google, was completing the installation with the cloud. There were many challenges, many changes and lot’s of time pressure to set this exhibition up. However, it did result visually and aesthetically in a very satisfying installation. Since it was my first time working in this team I was very pleased with how organic was the whole preparation and exhibition.