Edwina Ashton has created films surrounding characters dressed as insects and other animals such as sheep. her film 'sheep' included two adjacent video screens with Ashton dressed in a believable sheep costume, one reading sheep jokes and the other tugs persistently at the costume. the characters have a blank, if no expression. she uses insects in her pieces after her studies in philosophy before studying at goldsmiths. she likes to use these as they are easy to play with, adapt and change into individual characters. she does most of the filming herself and the performances. http://www.timeout.com/london/art/edwina-ashton-interview all the animals she creates are influenced by animals and then formed through imagination, fantasy type characters that i really enjoy and can thread seems within my own work. http://blog.jerwoodvisualarts.org/?p=430
Edwina Ashton’s surreal and eccentric examples
of imaginary insects and bugs are presented to be engaging with human
activities, and on occasion wearing human clothing. Ashton has motivated my work in many ways; I
really enjoy the concentration of involving humans and animals in some sort of
dysfunctional struggle or awkward social encounter. She is experimenting with
the differentiation between the animal and the human due to language, communication, emotion and intentions. The expressions on the faces of the characters
she creates also indicate strong resemblance to human emotions, however
disguised and fantastical they may be, the association is there.
Ashton’s exclaims she is driven by
embarrassment, which is a forceful human emotion. She’s looks at the character
as an individual. Animals are constantly lumped together in to species, and I
like this separation and create a persona for something we don't usually give
these sorts of characteristics to.
