Rural Living: New Collaboration Bursary – Kim Walker & Sarah Laing

For our third collaborative weekend we’d originally thought to go back to revisit places and objects we’d seen before to look at them again after a break and a period of reflection. The Ard near Port Ellen was a place we’d been before and when we were here the second time around, we found objects that we’d already seen but were now different.

We decided to visit new sites over the Saturday and Sunday and headed to Ballygrant in the North-West of the island. We walked from Ballygrant to Port Askaig though beautiful forest and loch-sides and an night had a beach walk at The Big Strand.

On the Sunday we spent the day at the RSPB Loch Gruinart nature reserve and walked two trails across moorland and woodland whilst spending time in the two RSPB Birdwatching hides.

http://www.mapmywalk.com/gb/isle-of-islay-sct/

Three questions that Sarah posed to me regarding my practice and working processes as part of our New Collaboration Bursary project.

Q1. I almost always work individually in the studio and have rarely collaborated until now. You had a strong idea of a sound/ description project you would like to work on before we began this collaboration. Has this project developed or changed as a result of working with someone else or have any new ideas or ways of working come in to play? And what is it that appeals to you about collaborating with someone who works in another medium?

My ideas have changed as a result of collaborative working. My initial idea of writing and recording abstracted descriptions of found objects still exists as a key part of the project but I am more aware that my ideas are part of a larger whole. My creative process is also more fluid and I feel increasingly flexible to change and development as we work through our project. I find that currently the ‘not knowing’ is really exciting, as is engaging with another artist on all the points of reference for the work. In terms of sound, I’ve used sculptural elements with sound on two other occasions so working with sculptural techniques and sound is very interesting and exciting to me. Collaborating with another artist who uses different media from myself appeals greatly as together you are able to meet in the middle and gain perspectives and ways of approaching the work that you couldn’t achieve alone.

Q2. You have lived on Islay for roughly 7 months now. How has this new location changed/ influenced your practice or what you are interested in- has moving to a smaller population affected your work? You have also made several large moves in the last 5 years. How has moving and change in location affected your practice or has it at all?

Living in a rural island like Islay has actually made me more determined to continue to create and present work. I think I am mire aware of the fragile balance that many artists live through when the try to maintain and develop their practice, live their lives, find escape, gain financial stability and maintain their social and family relationships. Living in a community that itself is fragile has also made me aware of my options to try to make my creative practice generate a small amount of income. An example of this is I have begin to teach myself printmaking and with a view to create printed note cards and larger works for sale on Islay. Other recent moves were to Chicago (2009-2011 see) to study at SAIC and Aberdeen (2012-2013). Both moves were challenging and I think moving makes you re-visit your identity and creative ideas. You need to be adaptable to meeting new people, engaging in a new environment and in the case of Chicago, learning to navigate an entirely new culture by placing yourself bang in the middle of it.

Q3. What is it about Sound specifically that excites or appeals to you more than traditional physical media? It is still early days, but for this project, when do you feel you are exploring unknown territory in terms of themes, place or execution of ideas?

I find working with sound exciting because as a medium it is essentially ephemeral as it exists and changes all the time. Think of all the different parts in a favourite song. You listen and the next second another sound is there, the previous one gone but left within your memory. I think sound is very powerful in activating memory as there is no visual experience there, only what you bring to a listening experience of what is in the environment around you at the time you’re listening and what the sound means to you. It’s almost like you are forced to instantly contemplate and decide on meaning due to the constant movement with sounds and I think this leads to a very honest interpretation of art and experience. In terms of our project, the unknown territory has surfaced with execution to date as we have experimented with mold making and casting which is entirely new to me. For me the challenge will be the execution and physical fabrication of our ideas – sculptural forms and creating objects that exist in space rather that as a digital file.

Sarah and I had our first Glasgow-based meeting on Sunday 4th May. During our previous weekend meet on Islay we identified some experiments with mold making and casting that we wanted to begin in a studio enviroment. We found examples of cheap mold making techniques online using DIY scilicone, plasticine and plaster. Ove the day we created two test scilicone molds which were successful and next we will begin to make molds from the scallop shells found on the Mull of Oa on Islay.

We identified a couple more artists which we both found inspiring and we also challenged the concepts within their work through discussion and coffee.

I exchanged two examples of writings which I hope will become forms of sound-poetry and part of our final body of work. Sarah will now begin to intetrpet these writings through drawing.

As well as the workings above, we also re-visited some ideas for installation and presentation that we think will suit our project.

Over the course of our collaboration we’ll each be posing ongoing questions to each other that relate to our work, individual and collaborative. Firstly Sarah Laing responds to three quesions I asked her after our first meeting.

Q.1 Please outline your thoughts and where you’re at with what you currently imaging making and thinking about as part of the New Collaboration Bursary.

During my first visit to Islay, the biggest challenge was trying not to sightsee and to get over how beautiful the whole island was to focus on the specific. My immediate reaction to what I saw on our hikes is to churn out small drawings and produce as much information for myself as possible in the studio. I am thinking we work in similar ways in that we choose a subject, isolate it (from colour and/or situation and/or name) and break it down through descriptions from our own perspective. Once it’s simplified in this way, represented through drawing or sound, a new, abstracted, complex subject has been created. I am thinking a lot about why we were drawn to what we were:

· objects that are normal to find on an everyday walk, but in one location appear displaced

· objects that are in their natural environment but sitting in an unusual way

· objects that are man-made set into space or where a human has rearranged things. Then Nature has accepted and integrated this new arrangement into the environment.

I am making small drawings from the many photographs we took: mainly Dune-Faces and rock surface studies. I am thinking up ways to replicate objects we found on a mass scale through tracing and mould making.

Q.2 Can you tell me of any methodology that you used when choosing objects or routes you found on Islay? How do you think this way of selecting images or objects will feed into the work you aim to produce?

When we were walking we chose accessible routes to follow. I had never been to the island before so we followed routes you had travelled and looked for things you hadn’t previously been able to get to. When travelling, and in your case re-travelling, we would stop at places you may have not found interesting before, but I thought were worth looking at and we also discovered new things that had changed since you were last there.

When choosing subject matter for drawing, I tend to draw from the landscape and avoid man-made objects, people and animals. I look for subjects in their natural environment that might be sitting or acting differently than they normally would there. I look for the unrecognisable in recognisable forms, or ways of isolating parts of a form to create anthropomorphism, multiple things happening in one thing, something that is in the process of becoming something else, a curiosity or a curious relationship.

Q.3 You’ve previously worked with scale when creating drawing based works. Can you share how focusing on the small, everyday and mundane objects may affect how you work with and will interpret scale for the New Collaboration Bursary project?

I focus on objects to the extent where I focus on the parts that make up the object, taking a small sample or a cross-section. The hardest thing about capturing landscape with photography is showing how large everything is, how vast it feels, its context and the space it takes up. By focusing on the tiny parts and details that make up that object you can present a feeling of magnitude by describing how much information there is on a very small scale. You can draw off the page and suggest endlessness, you can remove colour and contrast by placing all the drawings on an even playing field and forcing attention on every small part. I think one thing that comes from focusing on the tiny parts of an object is that by giving a very detailed account of a little piece of a subject you can make a suggestion of how vast and indescribable the whole subject is. This is where I am at right now in regards to beginning to use and interpret scale for the New Collaboration Bursary project.

Sarah Laing: I am looking forward to our next meet-up as I suspect we have broken off down many different thought-paths individually from when we last met. I think the challenge right now is to get as much imagery out as I can before we come up with new thoughts and possibilities. I think we need to begin to set some boundaries for specific exercises to work on, although I don’t like that idea as it feel very liberating to have the project opened up before me right now!