I’ve spent the last two tuesdays in the darkroom at the Brindley Arts centre in Runcorn, using their facilities to make some more work in the ‘Would you tell me..’ series.
I’ve been using the cut out arrow silhouettes placed onto photosensitive paper, then exposing the paper to the enlarger light numerous times – moving the arrows each time the light is turned off. It’s a process akin to stop motion animation, but the effect is a series of stills, or something similar to those long exposure photographs of car headlights at night.
It’s an interesting process to work with, as I work out how best to make the arrows move around within a space – something that is going to be really important as I make the floor projection that I plan. I am finding though that I’m doing the same thing over and over again – the composition of these works is the same as the pen drawings and my pinned collages, so the next thing on my to do list is to play with the meanings behind the arrows (as highlighted in the list of words in my last post). I think I might go back to pen, paper, and outlines – drawing around the cut out photographs, using certain arrows multiple times and trying to make the arrows communicate my interpretation of Shanghai’s rhythm more strongly.
One thing that I’d note that this process has brought to light, is that not all of the arrows that I have got in my collection are suitable for creating the work I want to make, so careful selection of the arrows will be important as I proceed.
I’ve been having a period of playing with the things and ideas I brought back from Shanghai in the past few weeks. I’m trying to prod and poke the ideas and works to see how they can develop further.
I’ve started some more pinned collages of the arrows – working in small balsa wood boxes and using limited colour palettes of the arrows. The boxes are quite interesting, as there’s 2 ‘canvases’ the body of the box and the inner lid. I’m thinking that they are like artist’s books: small, contained, readable. I’d like to include some text with them, so I’ve been working with the script that I wrote for the show and tell at Castlefield Gallery last month.
I’ve highlighted words from that text, then I’ve been through the thesaurus for each of those words, selecting more words that seem to link in with the work. Here’s the original list:
Opposing
Indicating
Influencing
Assisting
Interchange
Directing
Easing
Rhythm
Flow
Order
Instruction
Isolating
Pinning down
Intertwining
Affecting
Reflecting
Enabling
Inviting
Follow
Charting
Interactive
Animated
Tension
I’ve created a word cloud from the resulting list of words using tagul.com which I find helpful to highlight some of the more important words in my thoughts.
It’s making me think more about the meaning behind the arrows, how they work in changing people’s movement, how they link in with the rhythm of life in Shanghai.
I’ve been questioning whether I noticed more arrows in Shanghai because there were more or if it was associated with me not being able to read language so that was all I could read. I’ve been trying to take notice of arrows on signs now I’m back home, and they are there, but I feel that they don’t jump out like they did while I was in China. There’s definitely not as many stuck to the floor, and those are the ones that interest me most.
