Continuing Conversations

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.

So, this time next week I think it’s pretty safe to say, I will be feeling more than a little worse for wear following copious amounts of wine at the preview for my MFA grad show. This delightful thought (and having a couple of days off afterwards) is keeping me going as we enter The Final Week.

I’ve (hopefully) finished the audio work and laid my hands on some fancy speakers for the show. I say hopefully, as unfortunately I couldn’t hear a massive amount of it when I was adding an additional recording to it this morning, due to the pneumatic drill be used outside the edit suite. Will have another listen tomorrow (fingers crossed) after I’ve finished making the panels to construct a dividing wall in the gallery.

After a couple of conversations, I realised I was being a bit slow with my idea for the audio work – instead of recording movement, it made much more sense to record the sounds of an empty house. The work is therefore very subtle – there are sounds of passing traffic on the street outside, the sound of the refrigerator and a toilet dripping. All very slight. I don’t want it to feel like there’s a lot of sound going on, just small moments that give the feeling of domestic indoors-ness, transplanted into this gallery location. Originally I was going to put the speakers up on the mezzanine floor around my exhibition space, but decided against this for three reasons: firstly, as the piece is so quiet, there should be an indicator for the audience that there is an audio piece there; secondly, as I’m being so blatant with the carpet, it seemed kind of daft to then disguise the speakers; and thirdly, surprisingly enough, speakers work best at ear level. It was recommended that I read David Toop’s Haunted Weather – a really interesting book about sound, space and memory. I love it when you read stuff with litters the text with references you’ve already come across, or ideas that you’ve been thinking around, perhaps in different contexts – Austerlitz is mentioned a few times, and he also describes how “sounds are woven with memory”. Lovely stuff.

On a different, but irritatingly hilarious note, I managed to completely trash the transparency I was going to project, and have been spending the last week hoping that we’ll get some sunshine at around 10am so that I can re-take the photograph. I’ve had a wee bit of success, but the camera is still set up as in theory there should still be enough time to get another film developed if necessary.

I’m not quite panicing yet.

Decision time. And mass editing time. Despite having about 80gb worth of video footage, I’ll not being showing any of it (add harsh editing decisions to that). Carpet is staying but is having nothing done to it, no projections, nada. It works very nicely as it is thank you very much – see images attached to this post.

Managed to locate a medium format projector (and a rather fancy one at that) so I’ll be showing one of my photographs as a projection and another as a c-type print on aluminium.

And finally, there’ll be an as-yet-to-be-made sound piece. I’ll be setting up 4 mics in the house – one in the bedroom, one on the landing, one in the hall, and finally one between the back room and the kitchen. I’ll then recording me and Andy moving about, possibly getting ready to go out – as we move about the house, the sounds will be picked up by the different mics, the idea being that when it’s played back via four speakers in the gallery, you’ll get the sense of us moving about the space.

Not sure about the fire surround as yet – it seems to be becoming something else, something more sculptural and less about documentation. I’ve finished Stage 1 – making boxes to hold the separate sections in the right place, and which also enables the piece to be broken down into sections for storage and transportation – this thing is bloody heavy. Stage 2 will involve filling said boxes with expanding foam with plasterboard on top, and finally Stage 3 will involve a plaster render. Not sure if it’s going to be going into a fake wall anymore, or whether it would be more interesting seeing the packing crates. Hmmmmm.

One of the later video ideas I had involved using various different photographs, and plans of the house and making a piece in which these different sources seemed to melt into each other. This was an earlier edited plan, but I’ve put version of this forward to the lovely folks at Rednile (www.rednile.org) as a proposal for one of their Factory Night commissions at the Oceana in Wallsend (where coincidently, the work I made as part of the Wildworks project I was involved in last year was shown). Will know the outcome of that in a few weeks time (fingers crossed).

My night time reading consists of a couple of music tech text books (Spatial Audio and Shaping Sound), I’m catching up with some reading about cultural concepts of documents and documentation and I’m on the hunt for writing about how the Victorian’s believed recorded sound to be akin to cheating death. Relevant? I think so.

Yeah. So editing, right? It’s gotten to the stage that this is an increasing priority. After deliberately trying to stay open-ended about processes and ideas, my MA exhibition opens in just over two months and there is a limit to how many pieces will work together in the space I’ve got, and how many I can realistically make.

I’m showing in the Hatton Gallery, which as far as exposure is concerned is a bonus, as this tends to get the most foot-fall. However, the distinct drawback is having five days to install, and only 9-5 at that. Now bearing in mind it took over a month to install my interim show, and that was generally working 9-10 most days, you can see why that might be causing me a few anxieties. And that’s not to mention Schwitters. The Hatton Gallery has a permanent installation of Schwitter’s Merzbarn, which adjoins the space I’ll be using. This causes difficulties whatever exhibition is installed in this space, as Tyne and Wear Museums dictate that it cannot be covered in anyway, and that the large green information panels remain in place. So you’ve got the choice of ignoring it (pretty difficult) acknowledging it, or in my case, using it as an instrumental part of the installation I’ll be making.

The reason I’m going down this route is for several reasons – as a use of the space it suits the way I like to work, but more importantly, there are echoes of the Merz in work I’m making. I’ve taken a carpet from one environment (in this case a domestic one – the first Merz was created in a domestic space), and am re-locating it to another. Schwitters also made incorporated lots of pre-existing objects into his work, again, similarities here.

Continues…

(Cont.)

So the pieces I’m working on:

Carpet – might be on a wall, might not be, might have something done to it – possibly a projection of a shadow from where the bay window would have been. It would be a shadow from somewhere else, not related to the carpet itself, or where it’s from – basically a recording of another trace, layered on top of this one, so two different documents are intermingling, but as a viewer you’re not sure about the relationship between them.

Video – hour long recording on the light from a window moving over the floor. A sound track from the same space is recorded from at a different time, so as you watch the visuals, you’re aware of something else happening which you can’t see, but is taking place in the same room.

Photographs – very excited about my new medium format camera. It’s about 40yrs old, is solid as a brick, has interchangeable lenses and bellow. Yes. Bellows. I’ve been playing around with bulb exposures and slide film, photographing small details of domestic spaces, traces of light on walls, through curtains… If I can get hold of a 6×6 projector, then perhaps I just project one image. Or maybe just one print. I know that I don’t want any framed prints, as then it’s about an image, where as I would prefer to see any printed photographs as objects. So paper and printing processes need to be carefully considered here. I was thinking at one point, of having these as a looped DVD, where one still image melts into another, into another… but I think now this is going to be a proposal for something else.

Fireplace – I’ve got the plaster fire surround from our house, and the idea is to turn it the wrong way round so you can see the interior of it, then put it in a fake wall. So when you look at it, there’s this feeling of perhaps being in the wall.

Overall sound piece – I’ve been recording ambient sounds from the house, with the idea of making a soundscape which subtly suggests the domestic space within the gallery location. Again, time issues here.

So there we are. Also, just posted a review of the National Glass Centre’s current exhibition The Glass Delusion up on Interface. I’ve haven’t written many reviews before, despite having opinions about just about everything, so thought I should rectify this. Here’s the link: http://bit.ly/dkK7kK