Emily Willey
The Information Corporation
21 Jul - 02 Aug 2015
EMILY WILLEY
The Information Corporation
21 July — 2 August 2015
“The process encouraged me to push my work in a direction that it hadn’t gone in before, performing in front of an audience. For a recent art graduate, any opportunity to experiment and test out work is amazing. Platform has made me realise how much I love making work and has pushed me to apply to do a MA in Fine Art next year.” – Emily Willey, 2015
Platform is an annual award designed to nurture new artistic talent by selecting and exhibiting work from art school graduates from south east England, providing support through the critical period between graduation and life as a professional artist.
Working with video installation, Emily Willey (University of Reading) critically looks at how broadcast news can skew public opinion. Under the guise of The Information Corporation, a fictional news channel, her work responds to complex news stories which are subsequently performed and edited as simplified narratives. With the use of papier-mâché and crudely made news reports, InfoCorp takes serious topics and re-presents them in a ridiculous manner to critique corporations’ manipulation of the mass media.
‘[T]he strange mood of our time, where nothing really makes coherent sense. We live with a constant vaudeville of contradictory stories that makes it impossible for any real opposition to emerge, because they can’t counter it with a coherent narrative of their own. And it means we as individuals become ever more powerless, unable to challenge anything because we live in a state of confusion and uncertainty to which the response is ‘oh dear’ but that’s what they want you to say.’
Adam Curtis (2014) in “Oh Dear”-ism II and Non-Linear War [Documentary]
The Information Corporation
21 July — 2 August 2015
“The process encouraged me to push my work in a direction that it hadn’t gone in before, performing in front of an audience. For a recent art graduate, any opportunity to experiment and test out work is amazing. Platform has made me realise how much I love making work and has pushed me to apply to do a MA in Fine Art next year.” – Emily Willey, 2015
Platform is an annual award designed to nurture new artistic talent by selecting and exhibiting work from art school graduates from south east England, providing support through the critical period between graduation and life as a professional artist.
Working with video installation, Emily Willey (University of Reading) critically looks at how broadcast news can skew public opinion. Under the guise of The Information Corporation, a fictional news channel, her work responds to complex news stories which are subsequently performed and edited as simplified narratives. With the use of papier-mâché and crudely made news reports, InfoCorp takes serious topics and re-presents them in a ridiculous manner to critique corporations’ manipulation of the mass media.
‘[T]he strange mood of our time, where nothing really makes coherent sense. We live with a constant vaudeville of contradictory stories that makes it impossible for any real opposition to emerge, because they can’t counter it with a coherent narrative of their own. And it means we as individuals become ever more powerless, unable to challenge anything because we live in a state of confusion and uncertainty to which the response is ‘oh dear’ but that’s what they want you to say.’
Adam Curtis (2014) in “Oh Dear”-ism II and Non-Linear War [Documentary]