Works on Paper : Collaboration 1

to watch, contemplate

taking into consideration

appearance

vision

sight of a hunted animal

before or during the chase

an observation, a scene

examine or inspect

a desired end

Val Bolsover

We continued our Skype-enabled collaboration in which photos had played an important part in documenting both our sources and our responses.

Photoshop allowed me merge two representative images, replacing a fence in Jo’s landscape with a sea groyne from mine. As the fence and groyne trace a similar path across their source image the groyne looked quite at home in the green Yorkshire hillside.

In fact the groyne looks so right that no-one notices it isn’t the right sort of fence for the landscape. Initially we see what we expect to see, especially in a familiar situation.

Our joint meanderings through different countryside miles apart show a shared vision of landscape textures and forms. A little pedestrian perhaps, but the restrictions of this collaboration have nevertheless pointed me along some traditional art paths where I don’t normally wander.

Adams, Connors & Payne

For us this collaboration has been all about exploring, enquiring, discovering and testing out.

Continuing the idea of indirect mark making and 3D forms, we have been exploring containment, viewing, peering in, secret images/messages, words and language about viewing.

This has resulted in translucent boxes out of tracing paper, with objects inside them. They are tantalising – you can make out the shadowy forms within, which makes you want to look closer to see more, and drawings inside boxes, with tiny peepholes to look inside and discover.

With our translucent, stitched paper boxes we have also considered the physical participation on the part of the viewer. By having to peer into the boxes, either through peepholes or through tiny pinpricks in the paper, the viewer must pick up the boxes & turn them in the hand, adjusting focal points by different peering-distances. Some of the boxes reveal different layers depending at what distance they are viewed.

Ruth continued to explore the idea of ‘viewing’, creating a series of ‘dictionary haiku’. Using dictionary definitions of the words, ‘view’, ‘look’ and ‘see’ the short verses use the 17-syllable discipline to create 3-line poems and creating a ‘Book of Look’ viewable only through a jewellers loupe.

This has led to the idea of pinhole cameras, and extending the idea of the photograms. The use of a pinhole camera abandons all control. A box that captures a view, containing it within – just long enough for its presence to mark the paper. Pinhole cameras made entirely of out of light-sensitive paper were also explored i.e. the photographic paper is cut into a net shape, folded up to become a box, which is made into a pinhole camera.