Sophie Lisa Beresford

Sophie Lisa Beresford attempts to communicate her complex and unified world-view whilst also exploring her own problematic and paradoxical relationship to making ‘Art’ and to ‘Being’. Rather than make discreet objects for the delectation of a rarefied few, Beresford is instead truly living her art. Her work could best be described as a heady concoction of north-eastern English 'Charva' culture, new-age religion and DIY self-help. In a series of intimate video self-portraits musing on her artistic identity, we are faced with a conflation of church confessional and Big Brother diary room entry as she frets over the direction her life is taking. Frank and disarming, these clips are shown on her YouTube channel or are circulated to individuals, acting as markers for her ongoing progress. Then once a project is settled upon, Beresford often displays an unabashedly utopian impulse. Beresford’s serves to form a compelling and coherent map of her universe The artist compares the process to navigating a castle in the Super Mario Brothers computer game: "Sincerity, in the case of my playing with it, is to experience myself, if I want to... the more sincere I become, the more I become like I was when I was a child… Playing Blocks' reality is a toy :) anything you want it to be.”