By Peter Watkins – Artist-in-Residence
When driving the 660 miles, the twelve-and-a-half hours, and what seems like, and almost is, the entire length of France, its incredible how you see. (Tyres ceaselessly rolling over toll-standard tarmac, service stations, watchful mullets, exchange students, dependable good tasting coffee, more tarmac, travel-tired eyes, broken English, a conversation about swans between two impossibly European men, the taste of yellow, insects accumulating, temperature rising, increasingly picturesque views from urinal windows, tarmac, toll booths, tickets, the colour orange, then darkness and headlights).
I’ve travelled to the south of France to visit Jonathan and Helen Moss to partake in their Atelier artists’ residency scheme. Over the coming two weeks I’ll be working on a permanent site-specific installation, a light and sound performance, as well as various painted-projections in the surrounding Pyrenees. This blog will be updated regularly and will look to give some insight into my time here and how the residency unfolds.
Our third artist is Stefan Rohner, a Swiss sculptor and installation artist. He will probably be bringing a friend, Bruno Steiger, who is also a sculptor. Stefan's idea is to work with shadows, recreating the shadow on the ground from stones.
Each artist has given us an idea of what they would like to create, but it is difficult for them to formulate these without viewing the site. So it will be exciting to see how their ideas change and develop in response to the land.
Our first artist, Peter Watkins, will be coming on the 10th October. He is a photographer working with light and darkness (lighting projected onto trees, grass …). The idea is to create photographs of an element of the landscape and then exhibit these images in the landscape.
We have also been contacted by a documentary film maker, Tamara Erde, who is interested in filming a sculptor, which is an exciting idea. Her showreel is great. She is going to come and work with one of the artists which adds a new dimension to the project. More details to come …
We have had some great applications. Going through them has been a lot of work but worth it, there are some real gems. So far we have invited Rona Smith, a sculptor and installation artist and Peter Watkins, a photographer. Discussing their ideas is very exciting. We are also talking to a few other artists, watch this space …
