I’m still feeling my way along the boundaries between photography, image, documentary and memory. I’ve been reshooting dozens of digital images using film; I now have a carousel slide projector full of images and have managed to source spare bulbs and an interval timer so that the projector will run by itself. The image attached is from the digital originals.
We’ve been lucky enough to have the curator of a leading contemporary gallery agree to review our show.
Thoughts now turn to editing and presenting the video element of the installation.
The emphasis is still very much on making rather than installing and cataloguing but here at last are some images of the drypoints which form one layer of the multimedia installation which will form the show. There are 16 prints: four nests, four shells, four huts and four disparate but related images namely an ear, a scooter, a tank and a lightswitch.
The frames are ready-mades which fitted the sort of Victorian collector feel I was after. They will be displayed against a pale duck-egg background rather than gallery white.
The scootabike was my first ever vehicle, with stabilisers, when I was about five years old. Aaaah.
As you enter the space you find yourself in a narrow corridor. To your left is a dark space where a video triptych is playing, to your right the corridor is lined with framed drypoint prints and around the far corner you can make out the sounds of a carousel slide projector and a radio playing…
The model shows the larger of the two spaces I’ve been allocated for the show; the room on the left is existing, the other dividing walls I will have to build to create the corridor space and smaller room where the slide projector will show slides of interior details.
For scale the near lefthand wall is 8 feet square.
The smaller space downstairs I will use to either show the drypoint plates in lightboxes, time permitting, or I may make another video specifically for the space.
We also have a shared corridor which will be used as a showcase for all of us, I’ll probably show some large prints on aluminium of the photographs showing elsewhere.
The second attached image is of the 16 drypoints which I framed today.
Now it really starts – we have been allocated our spaces for the degree show so now I know exactly what I’m dealing with.
On the down side my work will be in two separate places – not ideal for the sort of multilayered installation I’m working on which gains so much from the rhythms and rhymes set up between the different elements.
On the plus side I have oodles of space to show including a great blacked out space for projection so I can’t complain. It’s up to me to make the work function in the spaces I have.
There are three elements to the work at the moment: a video triptych, a series of photographs of my childhood home, and a set of traditional, victorian-style drypoint prints all based around the idea of dwell.
I don’t have any print images yet, I’ll begin cataloguing them this coming week and the video is still at the editing stage too, but here are some digital photographs to give a flavour. I have just been re-shooting them using Fujifilm Velvia filmstock with the intention of showing them via an old carousel slide projector.
It’s still applications agogo at the moment but yesterday I had a really useful peer to peer session with an established artist from WARP the Wales Artist Resource Programme. Picked up some great tips on approaching curators and raising my profile.
On Friday I met with Julie Ann Sheridan, owner/director of The Last Gallery who confirmed a solo show for me opening on 16th October – something to work towards beyond the degree.
Finally, in a busy half term week, I had 4 little etchings accepted for the local open show, that’s 2 ticks and no rejections so far. Mmmm is it possible to edit video with crossed fingers?
