Shefali Wardell
MA Drawing, Wimbledon College of Arts, UAL
Shefali first studied art in the 1990s, being particularly interested in drawing and writing, and went on to work in prosthetic makeup and character illustration, although this was often in between selling shampoo. She returned to fine art to study for her BA at Central Saint Martins and her art practice currently revolves around publishing, drawing, printmaking and performance. This includes founding Pudding Press, a publishing activity, and collaborating on performance work with studio M. She is also an Illustrator for The Ministry of Stories.
For DeL 2015 Shefali will consider the implications of having a material practice in a digital context, how handwriting operates in digital space, and how to resist relentless consumerism. Read More
But I thought they gave you a new iMac at art college…
Although I have been working with digital tools for many years, I never gave up line drawing, ink and paper. Throughout doing my MA, I’ve wondered about the implications of having a very material practice today, and I’ve also been researching handwriting and how it operates in digital space.
For me the power of the digital is about distribution. My production methods haven’t changed so much, with hand drawing, printmaking and writing at the heart of what I’m doing. Yet the dissemination enabled in a post-digital world means artists can step outside the white cube of the gallery space. Or maybe this has just extended gallery space in to everyday life, which is something that I don’t think the gallery ever really achieved for everyone before.
My work still starts with a drawing practice, but has moved into performance and publishing while investigating the digital. I am currently working with very exciting new printmaking technology, such as photopolymer. Using digital programs for this is a purely functional thing. In that way I believe that the digital gives us more choices in art production but one thing I think that we as artists should do more, is to question how much of the post-digital is driven by big brand names and relentless consumerism. Can we really be critical when we’re stuck in a post-digital cycle of buying the latest gadgets all the time? For digital arts education to really empower and enable practice, this is one big factor that needs addressing.