For many years I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that colour of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the colour of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. The aims of previous time-based work have been to locate an audience into a space whereby they can have a mediated psychological and an almost tangibly physical experience of a place. As my thinking develops, I am looking at ways in which I can embody or become a cipher for the audience, performing actions and realising thoughts and concerns that they might experience within a particular place.
It would seem that I am inexorably drawn to places I am not ‘meant’ to go. I am interested in what defines these places as forbidden or hostile, and to what extent my presence there is particularly alien. In selecting these places, am I challenging the status quo dictated by roles I embody as a woman or mother, or, am I simply selfishly pursuing an opportunity that others would struggle to enjoy or experience? Am I simply iterating the role of the curious explorer within all of us, obeying the lure of the unknown?
In my research leading towards this body of work, several artists have special resonance, working across myriad media: photography, installation, moving image, sound and sculpture. The photography of Edward Burtynsky delineates a monumental aesthetic and the mechanical sublime, pertinent both to my Weather Station project and proposed future work.
The very lack of information around this performance in this abstracted landscape, and the distancing of the viewer, increases my curiosity. This specific enactment appeals to me in the sense that although the performer’s body is central to the work, it is dwarfed in scale, almost peripheral. This sense of an ephemeral interaction with place is what I intend to convey in my film work for the Weather Station II project.
[1] A field guide for getting lost, Rebecca Solnit, Canongate Books, London, April 2006
http://www.osr-weatherstation.co.uk/
It would seem that I am inexorably drawn to places I am not ‘meant’ to go. I am interested in what defines these places as forbidden or hostile, and to what extent my presence there is particularly alien. In selecting these places, am I challenging the status quo dictated by roles I embody as a woman or mother, or, am I simply selfishly pursuing an opportunity that others would struggle to enjoy or experience? Am I simply iterating the role of the curious explorer within all of us, obeying the lure of the unknown?
In my research leading towards this body of work, several artists have special resonance, working across myriad media: photography, installation, moving image, sound and sculpture. The photography of Edward Burtynsky delineates a monumental aesthetic and the mechanical sublime, pertinent both to my Weather Station project and proposed future work.
The very lack of information around this performance in this abstracted landscape, and the distancing of the viewer, increases my curiosity. This specific enactment appeals to me in the sense that although the performer’s body is central to the work, it is dwarfed in scale, almost peripheral. This sense of an ephemeral interaction with place is what I intend to convey in my film work for the Weather Station II project.
[1] A field guide for getting lost, Rebecca Solnit, Canongate Books, London, April 2006
http://www.osr-weatherstation.co.uk/
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