As I thought about the time that lapsed between thinking about it and actually starting this blog I remembered school reports ” Joanna is a slow developer”. In terms of art practice it seems to me that speed is not the important word but development. Does it really matter if one starts a blog before the beginning of a project or at the end of that project. The next work will reference the last work, as that one did the one before that, and so on. Looking back at original notes I wrote :
“I will make a Dover painting or series of paintings to be hung, projected, used in detail where ever and however seems appropriate. The work will affirm life whilst questioning time, memory and perception” That was 16 months ago as I recieved a commission ” to produce a moving image piece for projection” and “integrate the new piece into the composer Nigel Clarke, violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved and writer Malene Sheppard Skaerved War & Peace commissioned works bringing together new work, performances and text responding to Dover’s history.”
The Dover Arts Development (DAD) War & Peace programme runs from May 2012 – December 2013. Ambitious in scope and scale, its aim to deconstruct Dover’s multi-layered history as peaceful industrial town, seaport for generations of arrivals and departures, and defensive military stronghold in times of war. Over the life of the programme, separate but inter-related projects will engage participants and audiences in a visual, musical, poetic and intellectual reflection on place.
I wanted to find a space I could work into, that is what a canvas is of course, but at this time I was looking for a place in Dover.
Where are paintings missing, lost or absent?
The Dover Roman Painted House, is a space that seemed promising. Through the fading of the existing paintings on the remains of walls it seemed to offer a place that could actually appreciate some new paintings! With projection I could temporally add a skin like painted layer to the surfaces.
I liked this idea but was haunted by the difficulties I had had with a projection on a Cliff face at Samphire Hoe in 2001. This is still something I would like to return to. What worked was as the sun began to set, its coloured rays were refracted on the eastern borders of the cliff allowing one to take in the structures of the cliff face in the fading sunlight. Nearly unnoticeable at first, new colours started to appear and one began to perceive new structures forming on the face of the cliff. As it grew darker, the structures become clearer and the colours intensified as daylight gave way to the full projection.
Just this week I met Thomas Grey a master of projection and talked about the problem I had had finding a good solution for the edges or borders of the projected image on irreguar shapes such as cliff faces.
So I moved away from the roman painted house projection ideas to making actual paintings, I thought I could hang 2 or 3 amongst the “other” Dover paintings in the Dover Council Chamber in the old town hall and maybe there could be a small concert there with Peter Sheppard Skaerved and the Kreuzer Quartet. The curator of Dover Museum seemed quite open to this suggestion.
I sat with this idea for some time and then came a pivotel conversation and a thought about history – always evolving never still – times of war times of peace.
When I paint I paint in Layers. One layer and then I wait for it to dry. It takes a day and the next day I can paint again. If I hung a camera from the cieling of my studio and took a photograph at night (a constant light condition) after each painting session I could take a painting through a continuing evolution. Usually I am wondering when a work has reached the place to stop. With this idea I could go on and on and would be left with a photograph from each stage.
This is what I did. the final work is made from 42 photographs https://vimeo.com/84545206
