Artist Statement:
I exist in two fairly consistent states: self-loathing, and awe for the world’s patterns and phenomena - which includes the human condition. These feelings form a loop, and it moves, thanks to its simultaneous repulsion and attraction.
My practice is rooted in the ubiquity of sensation, and shaped by the handmade animation process. Not every project is an animation per se, but all involve morphing and incremental transformation, often exposing individual parts of a whole. I consider animation an embodiment of the paradox of things at any scale: what is understood to be individual is a plurality of connections.
I’m usually drawn to exploring systems and sensations rendered invisible due to their immateriality, proximity, distance, or assumed normalcy: non-visual sensations; the brain’s inaccuracy of memory; the invisibility of others' trauma that privilege affords; the vastness of cells; the cycles of generational trauma and mental illness; the ubiquity of a background; the easily missed breaths between words. Directly and indirectly, these projects prompt the audience to reflect on their own tools and habits of perception, and experience themselves as a phenomenon.
Bio:Gwyneth is a depressed animist, descended from European invaders and immigrants, based in Chicago and Baltimore. She makes time for the animation, absurdity, patterns, and paradox of humans and not-humans, often focusing on sensations and systems that are invisible to us due to their immateriality, proximity, or assumed normalcy. She's presented work in galleries, festivals, forests, and empty lots throughout the Northern Hemisphere, including with Roots & Culture, Roman Susan, Woman Made Gallery, Hyde Park Art Center, and 6018 NORTH in Chicago; the Freies Museum in Berlin; and @ptt in Geneva. As an artist in residence, she's gestated at the Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), FRISE (Germany), Harold Arts (Ohio), Arteles Creative Center (Finland), and Utopiana (Switzerland). She teaches teenagers at the Lutz Center for After School Matters, and has taught in many other institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist Residency, and Johns Hopkins University's Baltimore Youth Film Arts. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and received her certificate from the Center for Deep Listening in 2018. She thinks artist bios and CVs are deceptive in nature.
Various kinds of press and online presence:OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Gwyneth Anderson, OtherPeoplesPixels Blog, December 2014
The Art of Measurement: Qualiascope by Gwyneth Anderson, Written in Thread, December 2014
Laughing Video recommendation, Chicago Magazine, November 2011
Laughing Video still, TimeOut Chicago, November 2011
Artist talk at the Pori Art Museum, minutes 43:05 - 53:07, October 2011
Artist biography, Arteles Catalog, October 2011
Interview with Music for Installations, October 2011
TimeOut Chicago review of Pretty, Smart, Poetic, February 2011