Experimental Photography

 

Intermedia : Articulating Sensory Thought. Yard and Metre Event

 Cyanotype Project/Poetry Reading : Winchester College

Shroud

Richard Stillman

Yard and Metre Event, Winchester

As the marks resonated, did they sound true? 

Could we tolerate margins of error or latitude? 

Is there strength in that built by blue ink?

It is hard to see without certainty.

Why have they flown, gathered, shrouded? 

Is the date significant? A memorial?

Or is it white noise reverberating, 

striking parallels, refusing focus, insisting?

The shape of the cross is still distinct

but opening out, refusing definition,

never quite caught as an intention, 

pinned on dimensions it wants to refuse.

Cyanotype from a site drawing, Space for Peace, Winchester Cathedral 2011.

When objects or atmospheres collide energy is transferred, a new force may be created. And, as forensic scientists can attest, when objects touch they exchange traces, each leaves something of itself with the other.

This is why artists enjoy collaborating. Working with another artist can give a jolt of inspiration, a spark of creative thinking, a surge of new skill, the stimulus for a new work. And the experience will leave its mark in some way on each individual’s practice.

The specific ‘collision’ may also result in a work which has its own integrity, which does not belong’ to either party and where their particular contributions merge indistinguishably - in effect fusion takes place.

This is the thinking behind 10 days | Creative Collisions and for The Yard artists  and Hyde Writers it was the ideal excuse to come together, to let the shockwaves flow and see what new possibilities emerged. As with all the best creative practice, in science or in art, this has been an experiment, it involved risk, trust and open minds. Whether or not the outcomes are fully resolved they will be filled with potential - and with potency.

Stephen Boyce

The Hyde Writers

The writers  revelled in a close engagement with artists  and their work. Rather than respond to emailed images, the writers could immerse themselves in the artist’s world. Writers  could examine the artist’s  studio space, watch the artist working and feel with their own hands  the materials  in use. They  could smell the turpentine, feel clay under their nails  and trail their fingers  over the rippling textures of paintings. Some writers took artists’ work home, so that they could live with the work. Naturally some artists provided a response to the writer’s work and the non-verbal feedback was unusual and exciting.

Writers  faced a dilemma over which aspect of an artist to focus  on. Some writers  found inspiration in the personality of an artist and others were entranced by a part of the artist’s  process. The art itself, of course provided a rich source of creativity. Writers  found that the artists’ studios  and individual objects  within them were inspiring. A fractured shell of a first world war helmet might suggest several stories. Writers  could see familiar techniques, such as  collage being used by  the artists, but they  could also understand the strange dictatorship imposed by  physical materials. The materials  are often tricky  things  that impose their own rules  and can bring uncontrollability  into a process.

It was  an experience that changed the writers. For ever afterwards a small part of us will be noticing the world from a different viewpoint, such as  that of a painter or a sculptor.

Hugh Greasley

The Hyde Writers are a group of poets, novelists, script and short story writers  who meet every  first and third Monday  in the Hyde Tavern, Winchester.

Founded in 2007, the group aims to produce high quality, challenging writing across a diverse range of genres.

The group acts as a workshop to facilitate the development of an individual writer’s works through rigorous yet supportive critical comment

Our members  include prize winning novelists  and short story  writers, published poets and broadcasters, as well as young writers developing their craft.

The Yard Artists

When the studio management group discussed how to represent The Yard in 10 days Creative Collisions, we could not have possibly  envisaged the quality  and ambition of the project. Several months  later, following a successful proposal, speed dating event and BBQ, two thriving creative communities  in Winchester have collaborated, partnering artist with writer, and produced twenty  six  ‘creative collisions’ of new and innovative work. These projects  have been prepared for an evening of projection, performance and poetry  at Winchester College.

As  a collective, Yard and Metre fuses  traditional with contemporary, the analytical with the intuitive, the tangible with the abstract, in a collision of observation and enquiry. The breadth of subject and concept, as well as  the standard of work  produced, is  testament to the dedication and enthusiasm of those participating in the project.

Thanks  to  Beatrix  Kovacs,  this  beautifully  designed  publication  documents  the  collaboration  between The Yard artists and Hyde Writers and pays tribute to the significance of the event.

Jane Price

The Yard is a working studio environment in Wharf Hill, Winchester, established in 2007 by a group of local artists with the assistance of Winchester City Council. It provides affordable studio space within a vibrant, supportive community for up to twenty five artists and aims to promote contemporary fine art in the Winchester district

Cyanotype from a site drawing, Space for Peace, Winchester Cathedral 2011.

Studio Practices : Matter/Material/Making , thinking with flux and mutuality.

 

DSC_5566 Thomas Ruff/Linnaeus Tripe, V&A London.

 

Spatial Collage

 

Collage/Assemblage : Architectural Blueprint and Historical Garment (detail/archive) Winchester 2011

The Unfolded Garment

Embracing Subjectivity

Pierced Assemblage on Photogram

What is Philosophy?

Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari

Their book is a profound and careful interrogation of what it might mean to be a 'friend of wisdom', but it is also a devastating attack on the sterility of what has become, when 'the only events are exhibitions and the only concepts are products which can be sold'. Philosophy, they insist, is not contemplation, reflection or communication, but the creation of concepts

Assemblage/Garden Design : Architectural Plan/Victorian Corset

Blueprint, Photogram and Collage.

a thousand plateaus

Deleuze, Guattari

Assemblage

The beauty of the assemblage is that, since it lacks organization, it can draw into its body any number of disparate elements. The book itself can be an assemblage, but its status as an assemblage does not prevent it from containing assemblages within itself or entering into new assemblages with readers, libraries, bonfires, bookstores, etc.

Becoming

Body Without Organs

Nomad

Rhizome

Smooth Space

State

War Machine

Reflective Journal : Diffusion/Spatial Intelligence/Between Figure and Ground

Reflective Journal : Diffusion/The Time Machine. Borderline Projects/Strange Attractors.

rhythmanalysis : Space, Time and Everyday Life.
Lefebvre

Jannis Kounellis
Carlo Scarpa

"Translates the painterly relationship of figure and ground into the space of real situations"
The Visual Poetics of Jannis Kounellis, Suzanne Cotter and Andrew Nairne.
Modern Art Oxford, 2004-2005.

Spatial Intelligence
New Futures for Architecture
Leon van Schaik

Archaeological Site, Morn Hill, Winchester.



Psychogeography is an approach to geography that emphasizes playfulness and "drifting" around urban environments. It has links to the Situationist International. Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."^[1]Another definition is "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities... just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."^[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography

Seed Dispersal : Tidbury Ring/Indexical experimentation in photography

Mute utterences, air within the photographic experience

The Ceramic Process : Aesthetics/Objects hollowed out from within

Slab Built Ceramics
Rutile and Yellow Ochre  

Reduction Stoneware.

On Building/Making
The Painter Monk
Cinema
Collage/Assemblage
Tarkovsky, Andrey Rublyoz

Beach Firing :  St Ninian's Scotland

Heat Work : The Ceramic Process

Beach Birth : Objects/Appearances hollowed out from within

Beach Chamber (An Object is Born)
Causality/The Pot, its appearance and it essence