Artist  Megan Whitehead

I begin as a painter and end up as a human animal in search of connection.

My work explores future projections with ancient roots, mythical stories, forms of communication and cosmic translation.

I work with Physical mediums: Oil Paintings & watercolour illustrations, Ceramics, Objects, Space, Light & shadows.

I also work in the Digital Realm with Graphic Art and Design, Simple animations, Digital Marketing, and some Web Design.

 

Currently living and working in Lisbon, Portugal.

 

My current Projects are…

Growing a Tiny Human in my womb

Painting: Watercolour storytelling

Ceramic Cozy Lighting: Votives and tiny Island cave home lamps for light to dwell within.

Experimental Eco-systems: Making funk-tional interactive installations of projections, objects, and imagery where people participation helps to explore the reciprocal relationship of things.

Including Gardening Project at Plataforma Trafaria with EDA

Jewellery:  Talismans to adorn your living spaces and bodies.  Made from collected curiosities. Ancient and antique beads, semi-precious rocks and coral, strung together.   Re-working the old with new handmade glass, Silver, and natural fibers into a primitive, futuristic, pieces of alien technology.

 

Please Get in touch for commissions, Projects and collaborations.

 

 

THE MEMSOUP

The experience will be soupy, warm, and full of foreign flavors.

MEM is the name for the 13th letter of the ancient Aleph Beth  מ      

a symbol that does not signify a thing or idea, but a  shape of the mouth to be filled with sounded breath.

The sound and symbol is beleived to be derived from the  Hieroglyph meaning water

Mystics call   מ  the spring of language that pours forth from a human mouth.

I’m interested in the source of the spring, why we began to speak, tell stories and create myths

I’m interested in what people have added to this spring from around the world…

for it is in this soup that we now swim.

 

I build landscapes with thin layers and inhabit them with figures influenced by modern fantastical worlds of animated characters and the ancient stories told by objects and symbols left behind.

The Images I create are visual aids, often diagrams, I would eventually use for a lecture on Human consciousness. The western predicament of reaching for the unknown in the star-studded sky, our need to get- high, our godlikeness, specialness and equally pulling in the other direction is our almost severed roots and our animal nature, a sense of wishing ourselves back into the natural sinless state of the garden of Eden and our hunter-gatherer primitive past.

I am working towards designing spaces in which to perform this lecture in an interactive setting, facilitating it and creating a flow of collaborative creation. It is this process I will illuminate with projectors and through experiments with objects and different mediums maybe we can better understand our reciprocal relationship to one-and-other and to the environment.

Once in the space live moments; a conversation between objects and images, between you, that person over there, and the environment you share takes over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EDUCATION:      UAL Wimbledon College of Art, BA Hons Fine Art; Print & Time based Media 2012- 2015

Major Critical Project: A story from Senegal, as a case study of Primitivism in Art Criticism, and the relationship between the artist and society.

Oxford Brookes University, BTEC Foundation Diploma Art & Design, 2011- 2012

 

 

EXHIBITIONS, EVENTS & PERFORMANCE

2017    Group exhibition, Live drawing, Wagner Galeria, Ericeira

2017   Open Studio, Unit 8 studios, Bristol

2017    Story Telling Performance,  In the Beginning, Moving Stories with Deborah Ward, Bristol

2016    Site-specific Installation & Live Visuals for ‘Media’ – Miilk event, Gothenburg

2015    Live Visuals for KALA collective, Brixton Jamm, London

2015   Site-specific Installation for Fowl Cabaret, The Book Club, London

2015    Site-specific Installation for Wormfood, Prince of Wales, London

2015    Site-Specific Installation For Eco Building Opening Show, Wimbledon College of Art, London

2015   Site-specific Installation for Wormfood, Brixton Jamm, London

2015 Performer for The Idol, Marvyn Gaye Chetwynd , Abbey Leisure Centre Barking, London

2014  Performer in TURFED for LIFT festival, Hackney Downs Studios, London

2014 Performer in Lucky 7 Walkabouts, Theater & Circus Glastonbury Music Festival, Glastonbury

2012 Necessity is the Mother of Invention, Group exhibition, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

 

VOLUNTEER, ASSISTING,

2017 Props & stage management, Paul Morroccos, Theater & Circus Glastonbury Music Festival.

2017  Assitant Set Design for Sleazy sessions Events, Bristol

2016 Assitant Set Design and Interactive installation for Media events, Gothenburg

2014 Volunteer Street Child United, London, Rio Di Janiero

2014 Assistant to  Artistic Director Renato Rocha, London, Rio Di Janiero

2014 Assistant to Street Artist Joel Berger, Rio Di Janiero