I am starting this blog as a way of documenting and sharing my research.
At the weekend I was in Norwich setting up at an exhibition at Hungate Medieval Art, a deconsecrated church in the centre of Norwich which is now used as a research centre holding exhibitions by contemporary artists relating in some way to medieval art, as well as historic exhibitions. The exhibition’s title is Anti-Angels: The Medieval Other. The exhibition runs from 28th September to 3rd November 2013. The other artists in the show are: Steve Baker, Sarah Caputo, Lisa Davies, Mike Dodd, Theole Fenning, Susan Petticrew, Carolyn Radford, David Sinnott, Alexander Small, Karen Tang, Rod Tompson and Ursula Spottiswoode. A fantastic space, I set up my projection in the chancel. The video work “Transmute” fitted the theme of the exhibition as I was interested in the medieval/early modern idea of the alchemical homunculus in a contemporary context i.e. the self-generated humanoid and its relationship to the production of material wealth. The ‘Other’ of the world of alchemy becomes the other of 21st century cloned human, who could be of either sex.
In the contemporary world, as in the middle ages, such creations are regarded by many as transgressive and as a testament to the hubris of their creators.
“Transmute” relates to a text work I made earlier this year, “The Promethean Code”, adapted from “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley. I divided the text of the novel into five themes:
Life
Death
Science/Nature
Weather
Philosophy
Stage 1:
I gave each theme a colour and extracted words relating to each theme, typing each word in the appropriate colour in roughly the same place as it appeared in the text, thus creating a pattern of words/colours.
Stage 2:
The words were then replaced by a block of the colour designated to that word, resulting in a pattern of blocks of colour, resembling visual representations of the DNA double helix.
I won’t be at the private view of Anti-Angels on Friday, as I can’t afford to go all the way to Norwich again!
