We interviewed Lucy Fennell in our publication “Abstracted” surrounding the artwork “My Vulva” and Fennell’s practice. Visit the publication here.
How did you first get started in art and what drew you to pursue a fine art degree?
Art has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I’m very grateful for my parents noticing this and nurturing my creativity to blossom—they always got me arts and crafts sets for Christmas and birthdays, and I just remember my childhood consisting of me drawing anything and everything in sight.
What drew me to pursue a fine art degree was the indescribable urge to leave Dorset. I wanted to broaden my horizons, go beyond, and see what the world had to offer in terms of expanding my creativity. I chose Falmouth to study fine art because I love the beach, and the course seemed well-suited to me in terms of actually securing a job in the arts after graduation.
Your practice explores surrealism, post-modernism and feminism- what sparked your interest in these areas and how have they influenced your practice?
I started exploring those three areas around A-Level before focusing on them in their entirety once at Falmouth – truth be told, I was just so tired of what the syllabus and the teachers were telling me to do, which was mainly focusing on portraiture and realism. Jenny Saville, Francis Bacon and the like bored me to tears. This strong desire to branch out and ignore what my teachers were steering me towards landed me dissecting surrealism intensely, much to their chagrin
What has inspired you to focus on the body as an art form? Especially within the subject of performance and video?
I previously considered myself to be strictly a painter – at some point around the end of my second year, I had to take a step back and examine my practice to see if anything I made, in particular, could be used as a potential idea for a piece – I intended to stay in Falmouth for the whole summer. I wanted to use that time productively while balancing a social life, driving lessons and a part-time job. Of all the works I made this summer, only one was a painting. I just got sick of it. So much time is spent waiting to conceptualise an idea, for the paint to dry, for the motivation to hit. This is when I started researching performance art and discovering the works of Abramovic, Mendieta, and Ono. I realised that I could use the body as my canvas in terms of performance and video, focusing more on the aspect of process in my work. So, over the summer, I made countless videos of anything that seemed remotely interesting instead of filling my box-sized room with canvases.
How do you want viewers of your work to engage or interact with your art? Are there any specific emotions, thoughts or reactions you hope that your work provokes?
In all honesty, I want them to be confused. I feel that I am still quite elusive when divulging the meaning of my works. I’ve been told that like my works, I’m difficult to read. Perhaps I want the viewers to be confused – this sense of mystery may compel them to explore my works more.
In your work “My Vulva” (2024), you used pomegranate and beetroot. How did you feel using these unconventional materials impacts the perfection of your art compared to traditional paint and medium?
I only started using unconventional materials, such as pomegranates and beetroots, this year. I’m quite interested in the mythology behind them and how they relate to fertility and beauty, and utilising these materials in a somewhat messy way was rather liberating. When you say ‘impact the perfection,’ I have to admit I wasn’t reaching for perfection in the work. I just wanted to explore using media other than paint and brush.
What conversations or reactions are you hoping to inspire from “My Vulva” (2024)?
This work was directly inspired by Shigeko Kubota’s Vagina Painting (1965) – what I truly want is for people to reconsider the whole ‘phallus-as-paintbrush’ concept – why can’t women paint with their vulvas? Is it so wrong, so disgusting?