Creating a fiction and transposing the form of an idea
Recent goings on in the church spire, bell tower communications, television rooms, clock-services/maintenance and the FINAL DELIVERY: I expose the words final delivery as the television, wrapped in its cloth gets transited from the top of the tower to the altar flats, and this transition is the very subject of the installation – how did something get from one place to another, how did an idea change, and what hold this idea.
These photographs are documentation of a recorded act, a staging process in preparation as well as in subject making for the final display. The documents will also further the work, setting it beyond its physical appearance: the documents will be catalogued and this will be how the work exists from then on.
This blog helps with such a process –
I now deposit these as finished products.
Now the question is how do I negotiate the exteriority of the building, do I reference this or does this change the idea yet again. Perhaps a drawing from observation would be more appropriate and interpretive than a snap-happy photograph.
To consider how something is sampled and transferred. How spaces are animated through interaction and interference. These images are taken in the bell tower of the church in which an exhibition shall be realised: the arena here is situated below the clock tower and above the rest of the tower as it climbs. To introduce equipment requires introduction of light and electricity to navigate the tight winding stairs, yet once you are there, you have things set up it is like a studio in which to experiment, cross-reference and “draw” with your ideas and your tools.
This is where the television has been stored, along with its white tablecloth – collecting dust, but still functional when someone returns. In the non-space that that provides height enough to make a spire visible within the cityscape, is where these activities happen, where samples from the public altar are brought from below and toiled over.
Eventually the re-samples will be brought back downstairs for the exhibition: in time for public display. The former space is the rehearsal place, the “stage” is the exhibition itself where objects and formulaic display cross-reference and act out their animating conversation.
Getting to think about how a drawing can both be an instruction to the research in to something made, presented – animated-projected-displayed-laid out: this conference between note book, photocopied page, photograph and BLOG, is paramount to the working of an artwork. The drawings can be and are sometimes indeed developed through turning an original instruction / plan over, tracing through from the other side and beginning to think of things differently.
Complicated plans then become simple visual integrations, on the page, how they fit on the page, how they transfer from one mind to another – one stage to another and from one thing to the other. A progression of a piece comes from the re-negotiation of a church floor plan, how the installed work will eventuate in the time and place, in which it is installed – this is reflected in the paradigm of re-making a drawing, from a previous conversation between notes / doodles – this drawing, in anticipation of the project, then confronts another time and place.
This is an image shown in its both sides. It’s both instances. Its progression thus.
And MEANwhile: another church project continues, and is soon to reach fruition. Holy Trinity Church, Leeds is to hold three pieces (possibly fore pieces) of work later this month and running into November, in time for the seasonal change and also the adjustment in time-keeping.
The time will shift and so will the appearance of the interior.
here is a research drawing i have been working on: a drwaing that will also be displayed alonsgide that, which it is actually depicting
call it pitching the final display (which i am actually looking forward to, the finality of things will hopefully be more fuild than the path of researching the site)
Working site-specifically – working with solitude – working with architecture
I am currently working on a small project that needs the capacity to re-locate or translate itself.
The interior qualities and histories of St. Mungus Cathedral, Glasgow seem to have taken upon a preoccupation with drawing concerns. The geometric patterns on the floor of the room at the far back left of the ground floor, are developing in to a research project – and I need another space to re-construct this.
A site is needed re-represent the geometry. With each visit to the Cathedral floor, I learn more of its asymmetric probability: I plan to scale the actual floor itself, through drawing, not by entire observation, but by paying certain enclosed attentions to the different patterns that make up the design. In gaining knowledge of these patterns, I reach the actuality of the floor-space and go back to the ‘design’, which then re-forms itself in another space that is ripe for experimentation.
The materials that are to be used will be specific to the new site: such will be the interventions that they work aesthetically as they are temporarily installed. The marketing of the happening will also play a part, translating yet again the actuality of the research.
The research and the activity of measuring and making the drawings, are both intertwined as learning processes: this process will then transcend and apply itself into the negotiation of an exhibition space, as a blank arena, in which to ‘work out’ and plan, construct and re-conceive.
