Alexandra Hunts

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Does knowledge lead to understanding? With my work I try to cut through the disciplinary boundaries of academia and disturb the lines between legitimate and illegitimate forms of knowledge. From this perspective I would like to discuss the changing role of the artist in the process of creation of the works of art, without getting involved in the capitalist segregation of labour. I also try to reformulate the term “production”, to wrest it from its association with the neoliberal economics and politics of today.

Each of my projects is very investigative, starting with a long and entangled research into a topic, which often leads to a complex discord of social, historical and political narratives. I try to dig into a subject's history, to explore the complexity of the unknown, to collect different types of knowledge outside the frame. I have become obsessed with the investigation of material, the mastering of skills, and the obtaining of information.

With the dematerialisation of art, the “idea” produced by the intellect became the most valuable element of an artwork. From this perspective, I often return to the presence of craft in my own work and make a connection between physical process and theoretical research. By going through the entire process of creating of an artwork, I try to experience the role, abilities, capacities, as well as the limitations of being an artist. The physical craft becomes a bridge connecting the viewer from the reality of the here and now to the infinity of the mind and idea.

As a way of coming closer to the essence of the matter I often use repetition and reproduction, taking it to such lengths that it almost becomes an obsession combined with handcraft, uniqueness, and sometimes amaturistic approach that allow itself to fail. This can coexist in contrast with the reproduction, copy and mass manufactured goods.

The result reveals itself through objects and images, videos in labyrinthine investigations. Each work correspondents directly with our post- modern world, with its issues of environment, economic systems, capital and globalisation.