field trip: finding my place
mid Nov
After my tutorial (24/10) and group crit (14/11) and reflection on my research proposal its clear that I have a lot of different interests and potential themes / subjects. I did a quick review/mind map of these ideas...
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I realised that its too much to do everything that I am intersted in here and that there are a lot of themes that I need to be more selective/specific about. I also felt a bit lost - in finding my place with my work now, versus work I made some time ago which had a connection to land art, but was not necessaily 'print', and that some of the printmaking I've made more recently I was less happy with. I had an interesting dicussion about this with Sheila on the course and decided on her suggestion to do a review of my past work that I felt connected most to my current intentions, and use that exercise as a way of going forward in my making. At the same time I felt like I had been thinking too much about what the work is about and needed to just 'make' work, be in a specific place and to connect to the landscape.
I reviewed my previous work (2018-2022) and reflected on what I felt worked well -see review and photos here . What is important to me is that I have both a feeling of connection to a place myself in the process of making, and a sense that this was also carried into my resulting work. I made a list of the actions on location and resulting work that I had made and then created a word cloud of the feelings and impact from the making process:
Review of my work summary - interactions with the environment and reflections on process -
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Putting painted canvases in the sea - making sound and film
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Collecting seaweed/chalk/rocks from coast and making pigments for painting/seaweed paper sculptures/monoprints
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Exploring/research on coastal management, enviornmental impact and exploration of human/nature discourse
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Rock rubbings, drawing with stones/other materials on beach
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Swimming with canvas - drawing direct from cliff onto canvas
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Working on fabrics local to area - eg Jute history of making in Dorset
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Leaving canvas out on the beach/mountainside/overnight - allowing it to become part of the landscape/contain a history of being in the place
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Walking in area - stopping & drawing - sitting - being in the space - watching & noticing - recording​​
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I also planned a field trip. In order to select a location I did a review of previous locations that I have worked in and considered their commonalities:
- interesting interaction between human/nature (ie environmental/climate change/coastal management)
- some personal connection or a place I have visited many times
- a sense of emptyness/wide spaces
- small town/rural area
- rocks & sea/coastal
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Kimmeridge Bay in Dorset is the location I chose - a location that I had started to do work on some years ago that I wanted to revisit. I have visited here many times and been past on my south west coast path walk. The map below shows its location and also detailed are some of its key features.
Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset
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Site of Special Scientific Interest on the Jurassic Coast
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Marine Conservation Zone - contains over 100 seaweed varieties - one of largest in UK
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Kimmeridge village gives its name to the Kimmeridgian rock strata - an Upper Jurassic rock division dating back 150mya
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Famous for its Kimmeridge Clay - containing bitumous shale a source rock for hydrocarbons - previously burnt as 'coal'
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Site of the oldest, continuously operating onshore oildrill in the UK; since 1959, currently producing 65 barrels a day, 350 miles down in a rock strata that was laid down 520 mya
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Area has been investigated by academics/geologists as it is the same rock where oil is drilled in the North Sea Basin
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Important geological site - limestone wave cut platform
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Location of a major UK/Jurassic fossil collection and museum - Etches Collection
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Kimmeridge era limestone is also the source of lithographic stone from the late/Upper Jurassic period - not at this marine location, but the same strata inland in (mainly) Germany​
Source: Jacobs, Megan & Martill, David. (2020). A new ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaur from the Upper Jurassic (Early Tithonian) Kimmeridge Clay of Dorset, UK, with implications for Late Jurassic ichthyosaur diversity. PLOS ONE. 15. 10.1371/journal.pone.0241700.
janet cardiff – the missing voice audio walk
mid Nov
Myself and Sheila Woollam did this together. I had done this audio walk many years ago and I was excited to revisit it. I had forgotton large chucks of it! I found the it really interesting to experience two realities at once - of the world around us and the world created in the recording – ok we are used to listening to music through headphones, but having the description of a different reality to the one you are walking in being narrated to you feels surreal, like you have a secret – you’re in a secret world – like someone else is with you as they know where you are walking, but not in a scary way – more companion-like, friendly. Intimacy is very effective and I enjoy that – the element of walking at the same time as listening is really positive – could I do something like that? In a landscape rather than just having sound through a static headphone on the wall?
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Certain bits stick in my mind –
'Find the crossing and when you get to the other side I’ll meet you there….' - I found this very intimate and comforting
Going into the church and hearing church music – is it on the tape or in the church.
The feeling of sitting in a church - also contained and ‘held’ space adds to a similar effect from the audio.
Suddenly a horn blares out – is it on the recording or in real life – I like that ambiguity/uncertainty – where am I which space do I occupy: seemingly each one and both at the same time.
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In parts I thought some of the music and sounds effects seemed overly staged - like too obvious (choices); I might have pared these back and couldn’t follow all the story – it was a bit confusing. Overall it gave me lots of food for thought for future use of sound/audio and walking in my work. I also will look further into other artists that explore sound and walking in their work for example, Katrina Palmer's work on Portland, Dorset and her work 'The Loss Adjusters'.
Reference
Artangel (website accessed Nov 2024) The missing voice - case study B, Janet Cardiff, Whitechapel Library (now Whitechapel Gallery) June 1999, https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/the-missing-voice-case-study-b/
Artangel (website accessed Nov 2024) End Matters, Katrina Palmer, The Isle of Portland, Dorset, 25 April 2015 - 30 August 2015, https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/end-matter/
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approach to sketch books
early Dec
I like the idea that I will have a sketch book and neatly and regularly put my thoughts and ideas in it and do great drawings and return to this great treasure trove and see my logical process unfolding. But it doesn't work like that for me. I have a lovely Fabriano journal/drawing book and I started to make notes in it and select things that resonated with me to consider for the future. I realised that I am not consistent enough for this approach to work. Sometimes I will make notes on my phone, sometimes I will just take photos, sometimes I will write on scraps of paper and transfer things back to another notebook or an email and then put them in a word document and put it onto my online patform. Its actually exhausting keeping up with myself and where I put everything. The end of term one is telling me that a better system would be good. A notebook that I do reflect in regularly is a good idea - writing physically seems to help me think rather than typing into my phone. A regular/weekly transfer of ideas would be helpful. Fewer scraps of paper might also help.
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Does the chaos help or hinder the making process? Am not sure. I think I sabatage any orderliness as it feels too planned and not free flowing enough. Lets watch this space.
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reflection on collaboration
end Dec
​Over the course of unit 1 I found myself taking part in a number of (informal) collaborations which I found both helpful and fulfilling. I have a background of teaching beginners printmaking and enjoy the process of supporting others in their creative practice and know that I get a lot of inspiration and energy from the experience myself. So it was perhaps not surprising that I enjoyed the various collaborations that took place this term:
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After a group crit Sheila, Bella and I met in the canteen to discuss 'WHAT ARE WE DOING????!' We had some ideas but felt a bit stuck in which direction to go. We each talked through the issue and then discussed together ideas/ways forward. Just the process of talking with other people about the work was really helpful to consolidate ideas or decide they weren't going to work and a group discussion made it a shared experinece that was beneficial to us all. A similar discussion happened after a lecture on critical reflection by James Reynolds between Hywell, Ollie, Sheila and myself.
I had further practical experiences of sharing/getting someone to help me in making my work that had a similar collaborative and positive effect. One time where Chelsea helped in one of my films, another when Jirapak helped me to make a large crumple sheet for the pop-up show and a further time when I helped Sheila to sew her pop-up show installation and she helped me to make my film. See photo below. I enjoyed this process of giving time to someone else and also benefitting in my own practice - maybe that shared experience becomes part of the work and relates to the themes in my work around embodied practice and interconnectedness. This is something I could consider further in my work.
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Making crumple paper for pop-up show, Jirapak, Jackie and camerperson
Revealing traces of Litho stone grit, Chelsea and Jackie
notes on sound
mid Dec
When I was preparing my film for my pop up show I realised I had not thought a lot about sound seperate to film. I had made a few sound recordings with a hydraphone on my field trip, but had not looked into other artists work very much. It reminded me of a sound and foley artist who had been a previous tutor, Rebecca Glover, and went back to look up her work. She describes her work as creating ‘multi-sensory experiences that present alternative perspectives for listening and engaging with the world’ (www.rebeccaglover.co.uk). For example, one project was to search for and collect sound and sculptural traces of both the mining and natural formation of the landscape in the Rheidol Valley, Wales, over its history. In a presentation on sound art and foley she talked about objects as filters and that the context of objects is heard in relation to what is around it. This makes me think of our sensory experience more broadly and that everything that we see and hear is always in the context of what is around us and adds another dimension to the experience of landscape and the theme of interconnectedness that I am interested in. I felt that my attempt at recording sound in my field trip was not very successful – but I feel now that I was not clear about what I was doing or the sounds that I did get. I think I want to try and develop this side of my work to provide a broader context for the experience of place and connect it to my thoughts on audio walks - see above.
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Glover, R. (2019) Sounding Objects: Listening through objects the art of foley, Auralities talk, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge, (https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/31444530)
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next steps in my research
mid Jan
Focus on the characteristics of the place - my location and what I can use from there:
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seaweed a big element of place at Kimmeridge as well as rocks (papermaking?)
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oil drill and repetition, and waves and repetition, and rock fall and repetition??
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field notes of place - include in audio walk?
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In practice continue with:
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etching plate/rock aquatint
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lithography - rock pigment and traces of prints
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digital and film - consider photography - flat image next to texture?
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​sound - research more - intimacy of walking headphone experience – how to replicate – what to say – field notes factual descriptions weather feeling?
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Ideas to consider:
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materiality and use of fabric/ceramics/wood/laser cut etc
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space in my work - how am I creating space - from location to the work? Consider Japanese Ma
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research/reading on embodied practice to find connections to my own experience (eg Wylie J 2005, A single day's walking: narrating self and landscape on the South West Coast Path, Transactions of the Institiute of British Geographers, Volume 30, Issue2, June 2005, Pages 234-247)
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do LESS?? how can I focus the work?
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