Painting & Printmaking School of Fine Art
Holly Marsden

I am drawn to things that I find to be both magical and mathematical, and through drawing, filmmaking and sculpture, I aim to capture the feelings of the weather and light. I understand my ‘pretend map’ drawings as a way of forecasting a feeling, in collections of images that are plotted in constellations. To me, these can be read as a way of understanding being in a space, by a combination of markers in a landscape, a map scale, and images from dreams. I am drawn to playing with scale and the viewers’ relationship to a landscape, suggesting imagined stories that are held in the layers of a place.
My small metal sculptures (rulers, set-squares and ‘satellites’) are small instruments of measurement with etched drawings on them. I find that combining my practice of drawing with metal work to make something to be used to measure, an interesting way of connecting to my environment. I want to ask what it feels like to be told something made from cardboard and tinfoil is a machine with a specific function or that a nonsensical map will tell you something you have forgotten. I often work from pictures I have seen in dreams. Through drawing, this becomes a way of mapping an unfinished ‘sleep thought’. In this way I express my interest in the pretend: the pretend map, machine or journey. I am interested in shared imagining or the act of trying to relate to someone else’s imagination. Like in theatre, when people come together to watch something, dreaming collectively.
