Emma Plunkett's Art Gallery

The Early Years

During the very good vintage of 1969, in the last hour of Aries, as the apple trees blossomed, Miss Plunkett (aka Miss P) was born at home in her Irish parents bed, surprisingly fast. She then changed colour several times, from blue to yellow before settling on a pinkish orange hue. Miss P was born and brought up in Northolt, Middlesex, U.K. where after a brief childhood she developed naturally into a typical Northolt girl with sky blue eye liner extending way past the limits of her eyes and a strip of blusher plastered on each cheek, that was deliberately left unblended, to symbolise her urban worrier status. She won the art prize at Northolt High School when she was just 13 (going on 30), which pissed off the bigger girls no end. She achieved A grades, for art at ‘O’ and ‘A’ level standards. Her mother decided, when Miss P was a mere 16, that it would be the last opportunity to influence her daughter in a positive way, to secure her optimum future survival and so the Plunkett family moved to Buckinghamshire. Like a chameleon, Miss P blended into her new environment, firstly by starting to enunciate her words fully, then by ditching the stilettos and lastly by leaving her cheesy roots behind, (well kind of, later on, in her illustrious career, she enthusiastically embraced all that stuff again).

Education

In 1985 Miss P started her formal artistic training, when her mother dragged the reluctant Miss P to the local art college. Miss P settled in and enjoyed six months of solid life drawing and oil painting, with excellent tuition from Ian Mackintosh and Neale Worley at Amersham College of F.E. It was here that she first met her life long friend and creative colleague, the crazy, romantic, disco kid T.V. that is Mark Video. By 1988, she had completed a BTEC Diploma in General Art and Design. From there Miss P went straight on to gain a Ba(Hons) Degree in Fine Art at The University of East London, which for her meant a great deal, as it validated her creative streak. Her chosen subject for the 10,000 word, final year thesis, was a postmodern schizophrenic scenario, based upon a shopping experience that described products and locations similar to the 1985 film Brazil by Terry Gilliam. She weaved fine art facts and figures, to the reader through her descriptions of futuristic advertising campaigns encountered in her story. The starring role went to the head of painting at the Slade School of Art, Tim Head, (her favourite artist of that time). Miss P got a 2.1 for this thesis which pushed her overall marks, up to an acceptable 2.2.

The Real World

It was then 1991 and after six years in higher educational institutions, Miss P was raring to get out into the real world, to see how her art would be received by everyday people, outside a gallery or institutional environment. She wanted to take her art to the people, instead of them having to go out of their way to see something extraordinary in the inhospitable atmospheres of the white hostile cubes that dominate the way art was and is generally accessed. Whilst living and working in central London for over 10 years, she started off by making sculptural ceramics and selling them at Camden market, after a while she took another direction and chose to fuse painting and photography by using cyanotype printing, her art evolved again into large scale, tiled photocopies from black and white prints she made in the home made dark room of her bathroom at home. She exhibited in numerous bars, cafes and several arts centres including, The Drill Hall off Tottenham Ct Rd, The Photographers club in SW1, The Tabernacles in Portobello, Tyssen St and Islington.

Establishing Herself

During 1995, Miss P developed her ideas seamlessly from photography to video and made mixed media site specific installations at numerous night clubs, venues, theatres and parties, working with the best music around from great D.J’s, bands and particularly with sound scape artist Peter Coyte. Slide projections lead her into video projections and eventually digital film making. Miss P showed her multi media installations and or with live video mixing at every opportunity and was involved in some really amazing underground cultural events around London.

C.V.

She worked tirelessly with and along side really ‘havin it’ crews like Wierdo Magnet, D-fuse, The Tardis Studios, Subliminal Psychedelia, The Invisible Expanding Collective, Dragon Fly Records, Liquid Connective, The Loud Bang Work House, Oubliette, Femi-9 Product, Reality Check, Punkvert and Omsk. She worked in places like Fabric (resident VJ), The Foundry, Bagleys, The Aquarium, Spitz, The Vibe Bar (resident VJ), 333 Club, Heaven (with Mr. C), Notting Hill Art Club, Slime light, Plastic People (live web cast), Portobello Film Festival, Camden Parkway Cinema (squat party), Turnmills (with Carl Cox), Big Chill 96, Sonar 96, Big Audio Dynamite Parties, Silicon Graphics Studios, The Science Museum (1st live web cast), The Lux Gallery, The former www.worldwide.fm (live web cast), The Drome (Warp 1-9 and Drome Zone). Through all this Miss P forged a deep friendship with her female Vjing ally, the incredibly beautiful, intelligent and capable Funkcutter, together they played, sometimes known as E² and they mixed remarkably well with Reality Check VJ’s Tim Ockendon (God rest his soul) and Candi’s Flipped (no rest for the wicked)!

Further Training

Miss P went on to have excellent digital editing training from Connections in Hammersmith, Kingsway College in Westminster and Four Corners in Bethnal Green and was taken under the wing and taught by highly creative and technically superb film maker Stuart Crundwell and the incredibly talented and generous film maker Louise Stevens. Miss P worked as a video technician at the The Lux (the former London Film Makers Co-op and London Electronic Arts) where She tried her hardest to convert the traditional film makers towards cheap accessible video, only to find that they had a massive influence on her instead in ways of traditional filming techniques and smooth editing styles.

A Change of Scenery

In 2002, satisfied that her mission had been completed in London, Miss P stepped courageously into the unknown, she just wanted to experience what else was out there in the world and so hitched alone to Europe, with all her video equipment carefully packed in flight cases between a few clothes. Miss P collaborated with the group once named The Sheela’na’gigs, who introduced her to the traveling scene. They made a show together with Trapeze and pyrotechnics mixed with live video feed back, which they performed at the biggest night club in the world, Privilege.

Illustrious Career

Miss P, since then, founded Tribal Funk (2003-2007) which organised art and dance events, collaborating with loads of talented people as they all come together to make things happen. Miss P has also made her site specific multi media art installations in places like The Dragon Festival, The Rocket Festival, Robodock Festival, Manumission, Cream – Pacha and Malibu House Club in Plaza Mayor in Malaga, Opera 4 – Granada, La Menta – Sala Tren, Granada 10,  a monastery somewhere in Normandy and in various cities such as London, Brighton, Amsterdam, Ibiza, Barcelona, Orgiva, Malaga, Granada, Wroclaw in Poland, Liberec and Prague in Czech republic.

Currently

Through lots of soul searching, the wonderful helping Hands family and glorious landscapes in the rural mountains of southern Spain, where she eventually settled, Miss P found peace of mind, spiritual harmony and her perfect love match in graphic artist and fellow VJ, The Almighty crs#1138 and they are living happily ever after!

In 2009 the now Mrs P, continues her Slow Motion World Tour by taking her heArt out into peoples homes and on the internet, exhibiting video, photography, painting, sculpture, poetry, drawing, text, web content and anything else that takes her fancy.