Jemma Gunning

2018 QEST Johnnie Walker Scholarship - Printmaking
Bristol

Jemma’s practice explores the degeneration of urban landscapes and antiquity, trace, decay, architecture, time, chance, process and surface patterns are common themes that run through her work. Using etching and stone lithography supports her vision in the subjects she depicts. Both processes require an enforced decay whereby the acid bites into the substrates, resonating with the natural decay of the structures that she documents.

Jemma received a QEST Johnnie Walker Scholarship in 2018 to undertake a print research fellowship at the City and Guilds of London Art School. During her fellowship she researched into industrial decline using printmaking as a tool to expand her knowledge of dereliction and decay.

Since becoming a QEST Alumni she has set up her own print studio in Bristol, allowing her the freedom to work on large projects and commissions.

The exploration of a location is just as important in my practice as the making of the work itself. My intention is not to replicate a location but to make people slow down and properly consider subjects that too many of us would normally walk straight past and ignore. With the speed of urban redevelopments that are happening rapidly across the world, I feel it is increasingly important to record our past, freezing a moment in time and recording these forgotten historic structures.