Fynn Bevan Wilson

VIRTUAL TOUR

My name is Fynn Bevan Wilson. I am an artist born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. I have a bachelor’s degree in film and media and psychology and decided to pursue Michaelis’s Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art this year to hone my technical and conceptual abilities as an artist. Throughout this year, I have been working on a self-motivated project entitled Poplar Grove, the name of my family home in Bel Ombré. 

During the first half of the year, the project materialized in many drawings, paintings, mixed media works and prints. I became entranced by the expressive capacities of physical mark making and hardly left my room. The work I made during this period spoke directly to my lived experience. I was incredibly sick. When making, I found a brutal honesty made its way through the work and the truth of my mental state was revealed. Whatever I felt, I desperately expressed in hopes of making myself feel better. One of the text pieces included in this body of work literally reads ‘Fuck, so manic’, though even that was insufficient for me to seek help at the time. I find it hard to distinguish whether art was helping me or making things worse during this period. 

I told myself that the work I was making was a form of therapy, though in hindsight, I think I was just using art to enable destructive behaviors. Day on day, I would sit behind my desk in my room and drink, draw and paint. I couldn’t stop myself; it was totally compulsive. Everywhere I went I took my sketchbook and stationery with me, and the work I made often became a haunting replica of a distressing thought or feeling. When I initiated the project, I told myself that the themes I was exploring were oriented around family, psychology, sexuality and politics. What I was actually doing was tracing my descent to rock bottom. Having hit rock bottom, I continued to make art. 

Though this time, in the latter stages of the year and post-treatment, the work I have been making has concerned itself with my recovery. Having returned to campus hardly more than a month ago, my supervisor suggested I add to the body of work by making photographs and pairing them with the many text pieces I made while earlier in recovery. The process has been challenging, though it has offered much respite and clarity. 

The text pieces that are included in this body of work speak openly about all I’ve been through this year. Making them served as a means of self-affirmation and helped me better understand the year for what it was: one of immense pain and hurt inflicted on myself and those closest to me, but also of hope for a brighter future guided by the many revelations I had while working on this project.