Thinking about the drawings/objects may well work as photographs, or rather just showing a photograph of them. There is definitly something about how they look. Two pieces for the exhibition are shown, but they may appear different in their final form, represented on something else. Still planning the projection idea, not certain about their format as yet, or whether I will even show that format in this particular project. My work needs to balance Rachael’s and so I may stick to more ‘static’ forms of representation.
Our last meeting ended in us pondering whether light is the key to our project; I think it’s certainly a strong element of the direction my explorations are taking – Light and History.
I am working from the premise that time and light are one and the same thing and by interrupting or manipulating the straightforward path light takes to reach me (the beholder) I am metaphysically connecting with the past – it’s not the most scientific theory; it holds no water in the physics department and certainly needs some work in the way I’m wording it but I like this theory and I feel like it’s working. (Going with my feelings about my explorations is part of remaining engaged with the metaphysical theme of our project).
So – before I try out some of my more ambitious ideas involving nasty chemicals and hugely time-consuming hand telecineing – I have made a few pinhole cameras as a simple way of interrupting light on its course to the beholder.
I decided to start making based on the few principles I remember about camera obscuras without looking up the best methods of going about it. This way I become discoverer and scientist (as well as irritated struggler) of optical instruments. After much tungsten and daylight testing with different sized apertures I have come to the conclusion that there are all sorts of ways to view these upside-down worlds and each one is as exciting as the other. More tests to follow…
I have studied a piece of my work, a drawing partly cut, and it is giving me some thought about the parts of it that remain ’empty’, the parts that are liying behind the cut, where that part of the drawing once was. Is it possible to develop this part of the drawings, to expand on the empty sections, to give the viewer the possibilities of filling the blank space with meaning? Simple but effective changes. It is the same effect of the white in my windows. I am asking myself also, ‘How does my idea of time relate/exist to my ideas about the spaces I draw?’ Is it expansion or contraction of time and space? Or does the whole thing oscillate?
Sharing with Rachael today and considering that not only is it important for the work to flow naturally, but the collaboration itself does too and it is, which is good. We have not had chance for many meetings, but it appears we are existing all the time in the back of each others minds about what we are thinking, doing, what the house is revealing. I like this part of the relationship, it feeds the creative process as both an individual and a joint work. We will be meeting next week to share developments and work so far.
For myself, as usual, it is a thinking, then working, more thinking, then more working process. I have not been up to Haden Hill House recently, I want my memories, the ‘absorbed’ to work for me. It is all part of what I do myself and their is an overlapping of ideas between that and this project. So far, I have been thinking about the cutting and mirrors, but I have gone away from the literal aspect of these ideas and tried to develop them a little. I have been using the reflections in a way that gives a time element, recording by photo the reflections and drawings then by way of process returning the reflection back to it’s correct orientation, but it is still the mirror of reality. I am using objects as a basis for drawings. For instance, to reflect the religious aspect of the family, I have made a small tryptich alter piece on which will sit drawings. I have also been playing with constructions.
Time does play a part in my work, not only light as I understood till now. My practice is moving slowly away from that of drawing only, I will ask what development this project thus far has brought for Rachael. Is there a conceptual element to my practice which at one time I would have rejected as an interest?
Well it is certainly an interesting collaboration with Rachael. The instinctive element to our ideas, forming whilst working on our own, is as mysterious as the project, in a good way. I don’t know whether it is the House, or ourselves that are getting in tune with something, but the ideas work well and come from a united source. That source is unknown to me too, as yet. Is the house pulling us together? Is it something we both are open to as artists that forms an integral part of our practices, that fuels the internal responses to somewhere?
I’m interested now to see what is discussed at our next meeting, I think there is more to reveal than just the project.
