So, I think my video is done …
I’ll be testing the projection next week on site and the good news is that the potting shed has been cleared out and is ready to function as a space for the screening.
A couple of quotes from the blurb I’m writing:
My work, which consisted in a return to observational drawing, collection of video footage and photographs, was mirrored by the work done by Duncan, the gardener, both of us in some sense engaged in shaping, creating, structuring and constructing visual pleasure.
…..
you can mark a space off and surround it with barriers all you like: borders are habitually crossed, defences breached: rabbits break through the rabbit proofing, weeds establish themselves….
Well I thought I was getting on really well and went from this …
…to this
I spent hours this afternoon trying to get this right and ended up scraping away a lot of the paper. Funnily enough I rather like the end result and think I can still salvage something.
Wow! Not quite all change at the top (yet) …
When I started the work for the festival I had a strong feeling that I couldn’t go on working in the same way as before so the opportunity came at a good time. It was hard to identify the exact reasons but I just didn’t feel able to work as I had done before. Even though my work is not political as in polemical, what is going on in the world has its effect; immunity isn’t an option.
My work is much more about the real world around me – there has been a figurative turn which I’ve felt coming on for a while, although there is a sense in which it also lies between representation and abstraction, as in this piece. For ages I’ve fretted about presenting work on paper and the need to frame it. Because of the way I work, I tend to just make the work and then think about how to present it and it’s always a problem. But, I am now trying to incorporate those considerations into the process earlier: so I have tried collaging a re-worked ghost print onto aluminium and then working into it with printed markets using slow drying acrylics. I think I’m finding a solution….
So, I finally have a title for the project…. Encountering Place. Having been a nomad much of my life, the idea of a sense of place, which the Festival is built around, is a bit alien to me. I’ve never felt really local to anywhere or even had a really strong bond to a particular place. I do get attached to places, though mainly because of the people who are there.
I managed to finish a rough cut of the film yesterday and here is a link to a rough cut of the trailer: https://vimeo.com/220703789
Lots of tidying up still needed but I am keeping the idea of the split screen… the rest might still change a lot.
N.B. I am voting today!
In the broadcast and the lecture, heterotopias are defined as sites which are embedded in aspects and stages of our lives and which somehow mirror and at the same time distort, unsettle or invert other spaces. From http://www.heterotopiastudies.com/whats-it-about/
Summer has disappeared and I am at my desk shivering after a wet cold walk with the dog! Maybe it is a good thing as I have decided to edit the film today and tomorrow.
This is last week’s charcoal drawing done in the shade while enjoying the warmth of the sun. I’ve popped in a photo of the view too, for fun. I promise the drawing was done from observation and not from the photo.
I showed three of the monoprints at the Dover Printfest as I wanted to get some feedback and one comment was that I need to sign them – maybe in the bottom right corner away from the image. If any readers have any views on that I’d welcome them.
