Amber Jesson
About
Amber Jesson (b. 1998, UK) is a multi-disciplinary artist currently based in London, predominately working with pinhole photography, dark-room processes, etching, letterpress and forming narratives through poetry.
Earlier this year, Amber was awarded the Fen Ditton Contemporary Printmaking Prize 2023 for her piece ‘Deep Within’. Her MA studies in Print at the RCA have been generously funded through the Burberry Design Scholarship.
Education
2021 - 2023 MA Print, Royal College of Art, London
2017 - 2020 BA(Hons) Fine Art, De Montfort University, Leicester
Selected Exhibitions
Upcoming: RCA2023 Graduate Show, Truman Brewery, London (13th - 16th July)
2023 Contemporary Printmaking Prize, Fen Ditton Gallery, London
2023 TwoFold, Southwark Park Galleries, London
2022 Bethlem Gallery Art Fair, Bethlem Gallery, Kent
2022 Withheld, SafeHouse, London
2022 The Damage is Done, Pump House Gallery, London
2022 RCA Work In Progress Show, Online
Statement
What is it...
... to be a vessel?
Empty. Blackness ensues.
To contain,
To be contained.
Sitting between the boundaries of the seen and unseen.
Travelling on foot deep within,
To sacred spaces where the veil between land & person feels indistinct,
... I situate myself.
I walk. I heal. I breathe.
I feel the connection in those moments, to my sisters and mother,
Flesh touching ground touching flesh,
Separated by time but not spirit.
Hold Me, I call once more...
... She Responds.
Cocooned in the earths embrace.
A stone circle. A cave. A womb. A Camera.
Places of emergence. Places of transformation.
Life. Death. Rebirth.
Light transcends through sacred spaces,
Just as light is my medium, contained within my pinhole camera.
A 'womb-like vessel',
Bound together by film in a state of temporality,
... Matter transforms.
Deep Within
Flesh Touching Ground Touching Flesh
“A circular aperture is an opening – a primal archetypal motif for birth and a place of transformation, symbolically feminine.”
– Eric Renner, Pinhole Photography: From Historic Technique to Digital Application
“The archetype of the womb is that of the container - container space, the alchemical space within which transmutation occurs. Within this womb container all arises, transmutes, becomes and dissolves back into the cauldron of the womb to arise yet again, again transformed, again becoming, again dissolving”
– Theresa C Dintino, 'The Archetype of the Womb, Part I'
Light Transcends Through Sacred Spaces
Medium: B&W Silver Gelatin Prints, Pinhole Hagstone Camera
Size: 52cm x 52cm Each
Hold Me
Dol Tor
