Jennie Bates

Jennie Bates is a visual artist working across a range of media in Birmingham. Her practice finds connections between topics - predominantly exploring societal structures, institutions, systems of knowledge, communication, and the “self”. She frequently references the visual language of set design, to highlight or question how we perform different roles in society. The work is underpinned by feelings of alienation and disconnection - from other people, institutions, and herself. 

Recently she's been incorporating text into her work, exploring the limitations of language, using English/Spanish translation as a way to think about miscommunication, and how a message can lose meaning during its transmission. She sees language as one of the many social structures that defines norms and dictates our behaviour. 

The idea of an objective/shared reality is something she grapples with as someone whose neurotype deviates from the “norm”. She's interested in locating the threshold between truth and fiction, and defining what constitutes “evidence”.

Her practice is conceptually grounded but materially-led, based in playful use of drawing, painting, collage, print and sculpture. She creates installations that intrigue but disorientate the viewer, mirroring her experience attempting to navigate institutions and their spoken and unspoken rules.