The post-MA world is a bit of a weird one. You always know after working so stupidly hard on a project, that there’s this odd flatness when it’s finished. Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite pleased to be done – but having spending all week working in front of a computer at home so far is a wee bit of a change to being pleased to leave uni by 9pm at night.
So, the exhibition. I showed 3 pieces – the carpet piece, now entitled ‘Document’, and sound work ‘Empty House’. These were shown together in the Hatton Gallery, whilst my medium format projection ‘Untitled (Projection)’ was shown in a separately, in a space just outside the Hatton. Various reasons for this – although I wanted to have this build up documents in one space, visually it wasn’t working in the slightest. The projector would have ended up bang-slap in the middle of the gallery, disrupting the view of the carpet. I tried putting it next to the Mertzbarn, (which I’d built a wall in front of to give the carpet some space) but again, there was a massive over-crowding problem. In one of those lovely accidental things that actually work quite well, the light from the projector ended up really lighting up the space – as the transparency was an overexposed shot of light coming through a window, this seemed to work pretty nicely. Images attached to this post show ‘Document’ and ‘Untitled’, follow this link for ‘Empty House”: http://soundcloud.com/lauren-healey/empty-house
As a result of the MFA, I was awarded the Hole Editions Publishing Award (http://www.holeeditions.co.uk). I’ll be working with Lee Turner to produce a litho edition, which I’m really excited about. Instead of working directly from some of my photographs, our first idea is to see how litho plates work in a pin hole camera, the idea being that there’ll be a directness about the images being made. Neither of us have any idea how this will work, but I really like the openness to experimentation.
I’ve also got a studio sorted at the fantastic New Bridge Project http://thenewbridgeproject.blogspot.com , so will be able to get on with continuing the fire surround piece. I wasn’t convinced about using this for the exhibition, but after loosing a week due to some insane skin outbreak all over my face at the beginning of August, there was pretty much no choice but to put it on hold. Other pieces / ideas I’ll be working on in the coming months include: combining new recordings with found and archive sound, to create a situation where a linear understanding of time is disputed by over-layering recordings from different periods; and making a text piece which discusses the limitations of the document, whilst being written in such a way as to embody these limitations through the use of language, description and presentation. (And yes, I did pull those descriptions directly from an application I’ve just done). And if the funding comes though, I’ll be doing some writing for an exhibition catalogue for a gallery showing at the London Art Fair too.
Which is all good, ‘cos I really don’t know what to do if I’ve got 5 minutes space.
