For many projects there are only a few digital videos shown linking to this site unless they have been prepared for the very small screen or can be viewed on the web where the relationship between viewer, image, and context is of less critical importance. What is represented are still images which may come from video frames, as well as drawings or photographs used in research for the work.
TO an edge of a world
2021. second film-work of a trilogy that includes Traces but in this work it is concerned with sitting and viewing and yet divorced from the sea (and so can be also viewed from a seat (eg cinema) yet looking onto the changes of the sea and the horizon line. This view may invoke different things to different peoples situations, the Resident (watcher), the Migrant (which is also all those who who have moved into the area), the Visitor (seer), and the Retired (sleeper waiting), all different states of mind as well as in different times and places Today, Together, Toing (and Froing) and Tomorrow
BEGINNING 7+1
2018-20 Seven projected video sequences with stereo sound, Days 1-7, and one other, Day 8. 16x9 ratio designed as a intervention at the western end of medieval church near a font and onto a screen hung like a curtain with the material reflecting that which could have wrapped those being baptised.
Days 1-7 are concerned with the Euclidean boundaries that we establish in the world around ourselves throughout our early human development and described through the awareness of landscape, perceptual awareness (point, line, form and time) and the use of language (God said). In short the creative process. Sources are used from the Hebrew texts found in Genesis 1 and other places - from Tzim Tzum through to the veiling of the day of re-creation and re-view. From this dynamic practice then comes Day 8 which in the medieval world is marked by octagonal forms. Day 8 is marked by light taken from Day 7 and the celebratory playing of a Gaita which then gets reflected in the playing of another wind instrument (a small chamber organ) recorded from the site the work was intended to be show at which in turn reflects a new light and therefore life that emerged from a cloud that surrounded the film making during a hillside dawn in 2019.
The work is designed to be shown day by day or as one continuous sequence on a number of possible occasions such as World Earth Day but also when the text sources are read as part of sacred rite (eg either jewish or christian) or simply to show a beginning of something. A modified and extended form was also created as a tethered screen based intervention meant to be ‘read’ on a tabletop,
ISABELLA’S PROGRESS
2017-2019 Screen 1 -10m 14' x 11 . Video: H264 codec as MP4. 16x9 ratio at 960x540. Screen II as in screen I Screen III as in screen I + Bookwork
Three video screens ‘hidden’ in three wrapped boxes as drawers in a cabinet accompanied by three Spanish glass jars contained earths found along the route that has been filmed and one public video projected onto folded loosely hung material (perhaps like a flag). The form of the cabinet was derived from a C19th cabinet from Meson Ana in Ribasellar
The work concerns part of the route of the Royal Progress that Queen Isabella II took in Asturias in 1858 by road. However the work is concerned with how we look, what we see and how states of mind may select what we see, and therefore how we are looked on and looked at with the hidden element relating to her possible memories as well as re-collections of the disturbing factors during her reign that forced her into exile in 1868.
The structure of the work is derived from four contours that the Progess travelled through alongside the Rio Pilona 80,90,100 and 110m which gave four distinct films although what was filmed, for how long and where was random. A route was was walked between Villamayor and Cangas de Onis with other research walks along the north bank to verify the route.
Screen 1 concerns the small town of Villamayor where one is looked on as well as looked at, where windows are shuttered or veiled with others small and provided for internal light not the gaze. The poverty caused by de-population from the region today must have still been apparent in the mid C19th when the various Spanish wars also caused loss of life as well as poverty.
Screen II The Royal party may have stayed at Villa Orins before moving into the open fields of the Concejo de Parres where she may have played at being a peasant as she had lunch on a drystone wall. Her gaze would have dwelt on fertile fields but nevertheless are ringed by woodland where unseen sources of gunfire can still be heard.
Screen III a new ‘road’ was built from Parres along the river through old Sweet Chestnut stands fulfilling perhaps a romantic notion of Empire rather than simply only created to remove a potentially more dangerous route through Ariondas. This ‘road. was supposed to follow a Roman route but there is little evidence for this apparent. Today this has became very much a quiet magical imaginative place where it is not clear who or what is watching, it has a certain exotic quality with its moss covered trees, large ferns and where fallen tree trunks could well be bodies, perhaps reminding Isabella of the grimmer side to her reign or at least Goyo-esque fantasies she must have been familiar with.
T H E W A Y I / II
Work for a Walking person
2015 - 2016 Total time approx 14'x11.5”. @ 2'. Video: H264 codec as MP4. 16x9 ratio at 960x540.. B+W and colour, File size 3.34Gb and 611Mb. Single channel sound.
Way I and Way II is a work based on two 10" screens and relate to medieval diptyches, and like them, are intended as moveable works related to walking, in this case two parts of the Icknield Way, a southerly route (14.7Km) and a northerly route (15km). The southerly route travelling eastwards and the northerly route travelling westwards. The physical length of the walk establishes the length of each video. Both start at permanent anchors (the Roysia stone which is a traditional community meeting place and the 40 mile stone from Shoreditch) centring along a controlling N/S axis (Ermine Street) with the two stones approximately 2 miles apart. The southerly route lies across effectively dry terrain ending at the River Granta (muddy river) and was followed in 2016 after the vernal equinox and the northerly route follows the spring line, and is therefore a wet route, and was followed in 2015 before the vernal equinox and ending at the River Ivel (forked river).
Each video encounters four situations that were found to be characteristic of the journeys at the research time and is accompanied by a bound book that draws its concept from travel guides although neither video or book follows a literary narrative. The book has photographs taken from the research journeys as well as prints with hand drawn elements and text in the form of single words that are placed in four groups of one to four words associated with various encounters along the way. The reading of these words then offer new possible events and interpretations. Both videos and book are contained in a carrying box but only one screen can be played at any one time. As the video requires electrical power the obvious place to view them is in one of the Royston hotel/Inn rooms on the Ermine Street (Royston High Street) as no relevant spaces are present at journey ends.
Way I and II relate to a number of previous works such as Joseph's Drift (2015), Isobel’s Progress (2016-17), 60 markers (2005), Pilgrim Piece (1994) as all relate to walking experiences and relationships with our physical landscapes.
?? to Preparatory drawings
A: A5 book on Argo Wiggins Conquer paper with Canon black pigment ink photographic images
Trimmed A5 digital prints using Canon black pigment ink on Somerset Rag paper
Date: November 2016
B: Two LCD digital screens 330x230x80mm
Date 2015 and 2016
Link to location images
E R A S E D L I N E S I (v1.1)
2016 Total time 6'22" including front and end matter (5'40" without these element)..
16X9 ratio @ 960x540 format @25fps. Colour and single channel sound. Video codec H264
Erased lines concerns N/S and S/N walks along a historic boundary that must be at least some 1100 year old but due to the modern interventions in the landscape at the southern end, this line has been effectively erased or rather buried. The work could have been called Erased Passages but its reference to line relates to both the process of drawing where a line is never erased and the lines that established the direction and location of this route/boundary found in maps from the C18 until the late C20..
By burying and re-drawing the boundary line and its accompanying route, what has in fact actually happened is an erasure of the line and its location, Effectively denying 1100 years of existence. Furthermore the newly drawn route and the landscape interventions now create in some cases a dangerous life threatening passage from motor vehicles in contradiction to the routes former safe passageway, in addition there is also the denial of the remains of the remnants of the boundary through modern commercial activity that further strengthen the lack of any continuity with the original lines relationship to its community.
The contrast between individualistic urban activiities, privatisation of land use, against the lack of personal human interactive relationship with the landscape and one another is stark.
'Erased lines' is then part of a number of works that explore boundaries and divisions in the landscape as reflections on the human condition as well as exploring components of visual language (in this case line).
The footage was filmed over a two year period 2015/2016 and its mode and context of presentation is as yet not fixed.
Link to ERASED LINES I on Vimeo (opens in new window)
D A Y O N E
December 2015 17'.03" multiple formats. 16x9 ratio and bound A5 book.
Day one is both an intervention and a related film and concerns itself about moving from the unknown to the recognisable. Both pieces are in a private collection in Birmingham (UK).
The intervention is an A5 bound book of prints for a library taken from the film frames. The concept takes some reference from the interests and formation from the particular library it was to placed within (C19 prints/ French symbolist painting / Blake / Seurat etc.) but also references a particular event in the life of the librarian/collector/scholar. Five languages are used in the book that also form a reference to that personal event of the recipient that nevertheless can also be seen by others. It is not a private event although has to be searched for.
The film uses three key points which have been designed for the small screen (tablet of laptop) and can be viewed independently of the space of the library, or within it. As such the film is designed to be sat with and looked at, even forgotten like wallpaper if so desired. The sequence moves from the unknown, through a signal in the darkness, into an awareness of light and water, before starting to move into the realm of the recognisable and tangible in the world. The film uses 16x9 ratio but with 4x3 ‘windows’ inside it.
A: Bound book: Prints on 100% Cotton rag mould made paper (archival quality)/Pigment and dye based inks / Body and interleaves: permanent quality acid free papers.
Size: A5 (145x206x12mm (WxHxD)).
Date: December 2015
B: Digital Video for PC and tablet screen (16x9 ratio)
Dates: December 2015 and January 2016
Duration: 17.03 minutes
File size: 3.68Gb and 515.4Mb
Link to DAY ONE video on the Vimeo site (open in new window)
J A C O B' S D R I F T
Work for a Walking person
2015 Total time 57' (two screens running alongside one another at the same time). Two LCD screens (16x9 ratio) colour and Audio two single channel
Joseph's Drift is for two screens and was filmed on a walk along a straight line that is part of the pre-historic Icknield Way corridor in Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, England, using the natural chalk springs as punctuation points. The journey started at the Black Peak on Bran ditch an early medieval (C6) if not earlier territorial boundary (which now has alongside it, a new barrier in the form of a solar energy installation) and worked westwards towards the Ashwell Springs (an area of former ritual significance). The work is in the form of dyptich and as such references the late medieval dyptichs that were once used as travelling ritual artefacts. The content concerns itself with the symbolism of journey as well as the stops at important life sustaining sites.
Much of terrain south of the line started as chalk heathland, and prior to the C19 Enclosure Acts used to pasture sheep and cattle. The springs would have been important points for shepherds and animals alike at different times of the year, especially as much of the surrounding landscape is ‘dry’. The change from communally accessed terrain in this zone, to private ownership has now meant movement is contained and held within certain bounds. Even the travelling community that still pitched up at certain points on this route at the end of the C20 have now vanished.
The sequences on the two screens are staggered so that one screen starts with the springs at Black Peak and just before that sequence ends, the journey starts on the adjoining screen and so on. The two screens explore differing significances found during the walk.
T mounted within two hinged frames
Size: each panel - min 330x230x80mm (WxHxD)
Dates: March - October 2015
File size: screen A: 14.51Gb / Screen B: 12.95Gb
Link to Frame images
CANTICLE OF LONGING
2012-2013
Canticle of Longing is a proposal for two screens and projected images, and accompanying the proposal, is a small A6 booklet. This part of the proposal is in a private collection in London(UK).
Canticle of Longing concerns itself with a search for light. Two locations were filmed a year apart, one in the mountains of northern Spain and one in the mountains of southern Spain. The form of the northern mountain is one that suggests a sentinel and holds for me a similar, perhaps obsessive attraction, that the Mountain of St Victoire had for Cezzane. The mountains of southern Spain are represented by a ‘pass’ although in reality they are only a fold in the terrain from where dawn breaks. The images then end with sunrise breaking against wild Spanish broom. That search structured by footage from day through evening and night to back into dawn and sunrise also loosely references the poetry of San Juan de Cruz (especially ‘Songs between the soul and the bridegroom’ - translated by Roy Campbell 1951).
The A6 book also uses various plays on words that represent different locations. From the Asturiana, Canto which is associated with mountain sides (and is present out of frame in the first view of the mountain) and the Castellano, Canto, to sing, as well as the use of Castellano and English words used on opposite pages (e.g. Sol and Sun). Pages represent sequences of the video.
A6 booklet: Arjo Wiggins Acid free 100gm laid permanent paper,
Cover 160gb white board in turn covered in GF Smith’s Yellow ‘Grande’ 120gm paper, believed to be acid free from FSC sources (c1965-70).
Inks are HP pigment and dye based on HP Photo gloss (archival quality) hand tipped for the colour images
HP pigment versions onto body paper.
14 STATIONS - (seven stations for Shetland)
Work for a Walking person
2010-2014. variable duration
Fourteen colour digital video sequences (4x3 ratio) on LCD screens mounted within free-standing boxes 260x230x200 mm. (W.x H.x D)
Audio: Seven single channels.
Duration: Varying time durations.
Siting: Each screen is distributed approximately 2m - 4m apart and approximately 1 -2m from the floor.
Dates: 2010-2014
Only seven sequences are shown on this site (the seven stations for Shetland). Images on this site are taken from frames from these sequences. Seven stations for Shetland was shown in Shetland during 2014 as part of the St Magnus centenary celebrations.
The relative small dimensions of the screens are to provoke a sense of intimacy to contrast with the public movement between each event. As such they are intended as a meditation and can be read either in a secular or a spiritual sense. The installation also offered small mementos that were taken away, parts of visual memory that can be used to remind the participant of the event. Sound is present and is all 'found' rather than from musically composed sources.
The text that was used to focus on an event, is almost exclusively from Mark's gospel and unlike traditional stations, these events often use only part of a sentence that has been dwelt on to provide the location of the imagery. The sequences are not intended to offer a narrative of the gospels pericopes. The whole series, focuses on experiences that are undergone in everyday life, a journey from anguish, separation, marginalisation, rejection to loss. Events that inform the visual spaces used.
Go to frame images from:-
Station 1- Gethsemane, The Agony in the Garden. 2010 - 2012. 2.53 Gb. 30 minutes.
Station 4 - Denial 1. 2014. 822 Mb. 7.5 minutes.
Station 5 - Trial 1, Indictment. 2013-2014. 1.22Gb. 8 minutes.
Station 8 - Trial 2. Waiting 2013. 1.51 Gb. 11 minutes.
Station 9 - Simon. 2013-2014. 2.2 Gb. 13 minutes.
Station 13 - After death - . 2014. 1 Gb. 7 minutes
Station 14 - Golgotha - Burial. Links to Golgotha on Vimeo 2011-2012. 831Mb 17 mins (page will open in new window)
Frame images can also be found along with Stations 1-13 .
60 MARKERS
2007
60 markers were the number of fence posts that were filmed along a perimeter walk of agricultural land in southern Spain over a two day period. The land clearly showed the remains of fruit and olive trees, figs, prickly pear and wild wheat that had migrated from the old threshing floor located in one part of the site. The land had in essence lost its heart. Parts of this film were shown as projections at ‘Digital Light’ in London during December 2005 before the full sequence was finally developed.
Each post was filmed for about 1 minute looking outwards from the site. Due to the terrain the camera was hand held but the slight movement was important in registering my movement against the permanence of the post despite the fixed structuring of the filming schedule. There is also a progress from dawn until dusk that is represented in the tonality of the images.
The completed work is for an installation of four screens and four projectors mounted on plinths in front of each screen. Each plinth not only supports the projector but also a container of grain. Consequently there is only limited viewing area available without having the image interrupted. However as people enter and leave the installation and block the image, their passage also represents the loss that this landscape has now suffered. The image titles on this site only relate to a selected sequence of frames.
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Go to frame images for 60 markers
Buscado el Paradiso 1 - The fruits that we have lost
July 2005 - 2006 8m.16 sec @ 1.9Gb (720x576 PAL)
Buscado el Paradiso 1 (Searching for Paradise 1) is one of a small number of videos exploring the space of Paradise, or in particular, the frequently the loss of it. In this particular video it looks at the arcadian paradise from fruit to thorn
Historically paradise has been described as a place/state of existence that we desire to be part of, and yet a place that we exist outside of. This video explores a probably once sustainable if not wealthy Andalucian landscape, some of the fruits of which still inhabit parts of that space (prickly pear, grapes, figs, pomegranate, walnuts, Olive orchards and cereals etc). Alongside these fruits are ruined eras (threshing floors), boundary walls, menage and barns. Ironically this very region of Al Andalus is described by the Islamic poet Ibrahim Ibn Khafaja (1058-1139) as an Eden (paradise) and yet today it appears to be along way from that state. Today this particular landscape appears abandoned to the sub divisions of a housing scheme for a consumer culture (second homes) that are not in any way concerned with the topography and the way it was formed from such a difficult terrain nor are its fruits any longer gathered either for local consumption or distant markets.
The Christian visual interpretation of the garden (paradise) especially in the west has commonly seen this space of paradise defined by walls, screens and gates although the Hebrew text only defines the 'Way' or path to paradise as protected by winged creatures . A medieval altarpiece by Ramonde Mur (now in the Episcopal museum of Vic, Catalunya, Espana) shows these walls without windows or embrasures, whilst humankind exists within the walls, and with high opened embrasures (fortified against any of humankinds aggressive attempt to re-enter) after humankind has been expelled. Buscado el Paradiso 1 references this work through the use of a lack of colour and more abstracted imagery at the start and end of the video. The images were recorded as hand held looking into the space from outside and intended for the small screen if not framed like a traditional painting.
Go to Buscado el Paradiso 1 on Vimeo.
I WISH I COULD SEE BUT A DAY
Gallery intervention
2005
The concept of Utopia - the imaginary place that cannot exist - is traced through footage found in the places that William Morris played out his life and helped form his own Utopia "News from Nowhere.". That concept of an imagined place with no tangible existence except as chemical triggers in the brain has obvious correspondences with digital media that also has no recognisable existence until transcribed by complex technology. The work represents various stages in his vision and memory of places he visited and created, childhood, Red House and Kelmscotte .
The work was shown in the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow as part of the Event "News from Nowhere -Visions of Utopia". where Artists drawn from an international spectrum contributed a range of works placed in and around a former home of Morris.
The original presentation was a digital film on DVD shown on an LCD screen mounted within a timber and MDF cabinet painted a green similar to that used by Morris in some of his interiors. A preview was also prepared to be seen on the web and this is what is linked to from this site.
A revisiting of the project took place in 2014 which re-presented the work using a smaller screen deeper within the cabinet and using 'SDhc' card
Go to News from Nowhere (page will open in a new window)
Buscado el Paraiso 2 (1.1) Garden of Earthly Delights
2004-2008
This 2004 -2008 work continues the exploration started in Searching for Paradise 1 and was designed for small mobile device screens or small 7' frames that contradict the static viewpoint of the content.
The space is partly identified by this action of a fixed gaze from a singular viewpoint similar to traditional post-medieval painting. A gaze that only starts to slowly engage the spectator with the view through limited movements, before revealing details of that space. This gaze then reveals various delineated if not protected spaces that others look into, (including the viewer of the video) before passing back into a place that apparently reflects the 'naturally' created world. However the landscape that is seen is not the innocent landscape of Paradise and is a significant artifice. The trees and shrubs of the garden are not native to the landscape and the 'lake' was only completed in 1967 as a reservoir that eventually drowned the homes and lands of a community that must have been displaced further down the valley. The hotel also held murals of fictional arcadian subject matter that ironically were displaced by the reservoir.
There is a clear reference to Bosch's 'Garden of Earthly Delights' in the delineated space. Footage was recorded at both dawn and mid afternoon to explore the two differences in activity.
Go to video Buscado el Paraiso 2 on Vimeo (opens in new window).
Pilgrim 1994
Work for a Walking person
A number of unstructured walks (no time limits, and no predefined destination although destinations would often be Bow Locks or Waltham and locations between ) along the River Lee and its various side channels that were recorded on 35mm slide film before transferring to digital form led to a structured looped walk from The City of London to Waltham Holy Cross. These walks followed on from a series of walks that developed and circled the City of Hereford and provided an alternative view of that City from that seen by tourists. Perhaps offering a more real image. This alternative walk took in footpaths across factory roofs past abbatiors and silos, over unmanned rail crossings and observed differences in litter caught in different meshes of chain link fencing and between different manufacturing processes all traces of a live working community some of which were considered secret by their owners.
The structured walk found in Pilgrim was formed from a typical Pilgrimage route that once existed between the City of London and the Abbey of Waltham Holy Cross and probably used most during the Easter period. The intention of 'Pilgrim' was though to record images every mile and reflect on their modern day context and the tensions between human travelling and mechanical transport systems. The active recording then differed from the 'return' along the river Lee without stopping.
These accounts and books form part of the background for similar works that now accompany the video and their physical containers.