Progress
I had a call from Carla Moss today who is curating an exhibition at Greenbelt Festival this year. The theme of the show is text because it is the 400th Anniversary of the King James Version Bible. She called to find out if I’d like to exhibit a piece of work I made a few years ago. Unfortunately the work vanished in transit some time ago so we were back to the drawing board. When Leigh Clarke critiqued my work he joked about me eating the Karl Marx’s Capital Volume 1 which I’ve been reading. So I suggested to Carla I ate the bible.
I have been looking at paper as a material that symbolises the drive to create, to attain perfection, specifically looking at how I can this medium can be used not just for it’s intellectual messages but also as a way to understand and communicate concepts through the body. This has led me to begin the process of becoming a human paper mill.
Alongside this I have been researching how we document and present ephemeral artworks especially those created by the body. I’ve begun to use pinhole photography to capture light. I want to create a truthful image of light that allows for the imagination of the viewer to interpret the image. I’ve always feel that art does not exist without the presence of the viewer and images created by pinhole cameras come into a real existence through the eyes of the viewer.
The idea we have discussed for Greenbelt and the celebration of the 400th anniversary of King James Bible is that I select a passages from the text, read and consume it. During the process I will document the action with a pinhole camera. The negative image within the camera will then be developed and transferred to positive onto paper made from the chewed Bible passage. The resulting artwork will be a photograph of the action on the material used to create the action.
The title of the work will relate to the chosen passage, which I have not decided on yet. The obvious choice is Mathew 4 http://kingjbible.com/matthew/4.htm It works perfectly with the concept and goes on to talk about light and shadow which is what we see in a photograph.
I don’t think I would have had the confidence to propose an idea like this before I started the MA. I feel confident in my ability to embark on a challenging piece of work that I will be viewed by such a diverse audience. I’m excited and I’m only a third the way through the course.