Bethany Marett
This week we’re introducing a new regular feature, 1 question, 1 work (1Q for short!) in which we ask an artist to answer a ‘big’ question, focusing on just one work in their response. Kicking us off, we’re delighted to welcome an old friend of SP, Bethany Marett. We asked Bethany:
In creating your work, which is more important,
concept or execution?
This is tricky, as both concept and execution are extremely important to me, and they generally exist hand-in-hand. Even when I place the utmost importance on the concept, the execution is ultimately what the work is judged on. We do not get the chance to speak to every viewer of our work. It’s often quite difficult to find the right balance between wanting to explain why you made it and that you want it to mean something, and also to hold back and trust it to speak for itself, allowing the viewer to take their own meaning from it. Ultimately, I don’t want a viewer to remember what it is that I told them it’s about, but to remember what they saw and how it made them feel. The piece must be enough in and of itself, and that relies on the execution. Art is about communicating, whether a concept or through the execution.
My latest work, completed this year is Trunk, and in the case of this sculpture, the execution of it definitely comes before any concept. Sometimes we make things that we don’t necessarily understand yet, that become clearer in time and not every work of art has to have a ‘meaning’. The work is a cast of my mid-section, part of the same series as Corpus which I made back in 2018, but as my relationship with my body has changed, so the original concept for Corpus cannot be applied straight to Trunk. Instead of being born out of a negative relationship, this one is more of a celebratory piece, something beautiful and mysterious, with the algae frozen in time within silicone, and the light emanating from within. Yes, it’s a part of a woman often subjected to much criticism and focus, but it’s also quite funny and quite odd to see a sculpture of this part. No one needs to be informed of any concept to understand this work, to recognise what it is and to potentially see something beautiful and intriguing in it. I suppose it’s all to do with my own relationship with the sculptures, and how much meaning or concept I decide, as the maker, that I want to put on them. Ultimately it depends on the work, but in terms of my own practice, and as someone inspired by processes and materiality, the execution pips it to the post. However, for a successful work of art, we cannot have one without the other, it’s the combination of the two that hits the spot – triggering both the intellectual and the visual. I am a maker, and I want my work to deliver more than just an idea.
Trunk (Front), 2021
Trunk (Back), 2021
Corpus, 2018
Bethany Marett is a multi-disciplinary artist based between London and North Yorkshire.
