Absent But Not Forgotten: 2

On Halloween night we staged a one-night-event as part of my ongoing collaboration with artist, Jacob Whittaker. After days of rain, we had a clear night here in the hills of Carmarthenshire where the work was shown in a stone barn in a remote location - so thanks to those hardy souls who ventured out to join us!

We made new work for the event including a sound piece which built upon ambient sounds from the location and questions and silences recorded as part of a ghost-hunting EVP session. We also projected waveforms taken from sound readings along with screened and projected white noise.

The project has a strong inclusive element, and from the 50 word ghost stories submitted by participants in our first show earlier in the year we developed a film and sound work which was projected onto furniture. I'm very interested in the significance of personal objects and possessions - the way we project our personalities onto them and mediate our lives through them.

This time we asked our visitors to pose for us under a white sheet (ghost-in-a-sheet style) for a series of Polaroid images - everyone was most enthusiastic and inventive in their performance! I'll post some images when they are available. Meanwhile you can see more images and find out about the project here: www.absent-but-not-forgotten.co.uk 

Absent But Not Forgotten: 2

The second in my ongoing art project with Jacob Whittaker is happening tonight in Carmarthenshire. Following our show at The Last Gallery earlier in the year, we are having a one-night-only Hallowe'en event this evening, Absent But Not Forgotten: 2:

An installation combining projection and sound with textiles and furniture @7pm. Later...Sound performance from Jacob Whittaker with Halloween classics.  PLUS: We want you for our spectral collection – come and be photographed (under a sheet) for our Polaroid ghost gallery...

We'll be showing a new piece of work which is based on the 50 word ghost stories that were contributed through the website as part of the project. It's going to be spooky! www.absent-but-not-forgotten.co.uk 

If you are in the area - you are welcome to join us from 7pm...

Absent but not forgotten 2: Trailer from jacob whittaker on Vimeo.

Over Your City Grass Will Grow

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow - Sophie Fiennes film of Anselm Kiefer's studio estate - seen here

This interview with filmaker Sophie Fiennes about Anselm Kiefer's extraordinary project in La Ribaute, south of France was on The Guardian website this morning. Shown this year at Cannes, Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, is a documentary film about the artist's work and processes in the labyrinthine structure he has created in an abandoned silk factory he took over in the early 1990's. The project has now reached a halt, Kiefer has moved away from the site to Paris leaving it, for now to the elements.

I was torn as I watched the interview. The opportunity, as an artist to spend 10 or so years obsessively building a space, a monument like this is immensely beguiling. In his review of the film also in The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw quotes from Heidegger's essay on boredom "It is only when one is bored, that one's consciousness settles, reluctantly or even fearfully, on oneself and the nature of one's own existence." seen here. There is a monstrous aspect to that idea alongside the glory of such project. It parodies the Nazi ideologies that Kiefer has spent much of his artistic career addressing, it embodies the horror of human endeavour alongside the pure inventiveness and obsession that drives us.

I like the idea of a woman making this documentary, in fact it seems almost imperative. Kiefer's structure is arguably a masculine adventure. She brings her gaze to bear upon it, initially as a kind of servant to its brilliance, but ultimately, as she says in the interview, she casts aside that subservience to the artist and his creation in the edit and brings her own ego to bear upon the finished film. Therein lies another layer of horror and irony, which Fiennes highlights, that of Leni Riefenstahl and Triumph des Willens, her documentary film of the 1934 Nuremburg congress of the Nazi party.

Anselm Kiefer and Sophie Fiennes - seen here

Naomi Leake

Naomi Leake - Wind Street - Image copyright of Naomi Leake

Outsider at Oriel Myrddin Gallery includes the video work of Swansea artist, Naomi Leake. Her film, Wind Street is set in the street of that name in the centre of Swansea, notorious for its abundance of weekend revelers. Naomi, dressed in a very benign looking sheep costume, approaches the street from the darkness. She walks slowly passed the clubs, pubs and drinkers with various responses from cuddles and strokes to an incident where the cameraman receives a punch in the head. At the end of the road she walks back into the darkness whence she came. The backing track is a piece of beautiful choral music.

It is a simple piece of performance, but has an amazing depth in its references. The Welsh sheep cliche is there but also the Lamb of God - reinforced by the choral soundtrack; the victim, the sacrifice. In her lecture at the gallery last Saturday, Sue Griffiths (Head of Visual Communications and Contextual Studies at Swansea School of Art) made a psychoanalytic argument for the piece as symbolising 'object loss', the infantile loss of symbiosis with the mother for which we continue to yearn but never find. She also made reference to the complicated layers of looking that are evoked by the piece - various manifestations of 'the gaze'. The identification of the viewer is interesting too, are we looking at the sheep or identifying with it? Is the sheep the outsider, or does it point up an other-ness in the drinkers, in their own form of Saturday night fancy dress?

The piece was originally part of a show at the Elysium Gallery in Swansea called Looking For Love. Another film piece in that show has Naomi attending a speed dating event dressed in a wedding dress - I haven't seen this piece yet - but I'm looking forward to seeing it sometime, it sounds totally intriguing.

Cross-fire

Cross-fire from Studio Mrmann on Vimeo.

This fascinating film is part of the Future Craft Exposition which, in turn is the result of a five year research project, Past, Present & Future Craft Practice (PPFCP), based at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design at University of Dundee. "The project explores new directions, practices and perspectives in contemporary craft with an ultimate goal of defining a new relevance for craft in the 21st century."

The film is directed by Geoffrey Mann and produced by Chris Labrooy:

"The focus of Cross-fire was to examine the intangible characteristic of the spoken word and investigate the unseen affect of sound upon its inhabited environment.

The project centralizes around the context of a domestic argument. In this case the event samples an audio excerpt from the 1999 Sam Mendes Film ‘American Beauty’. The slow building dialogue between the three central characters family dinner climaxes with a sound clash of emotions. The cross-fire of the argument traverses the dinning table but where previously the inanimate everyday objects such as plates, cutlery, teapot etc were unable to express their character, the intensity of the conversation deforms their once static existence into objects of unseen familiarity. "

Cross-fire (resin 'Sound Artefacts' from the project) - seen here

Absent But Not Forgotten

Absent but not Forgotten from jacob whittaker on Vimeo.

A film made from footage of the opening event at The Last Gallery in Llangadog.

Fright Night at The Last

Photo: Installation shot by Louise Bird

Absent But Not Forgotten opened on Friday evening - it runs until 4 April - open at weekends. Thanks to Jake for the collaboration, Mick and Julie at The Last Gallery for the opportunity, Louise for the gin, the love and the brilliant photos, Kirsty for her abiding support and amazing cakes at the opening...thanks all for coming along too!

If you feel inclined we hope you might like to write us your ghost story or experience in 50 words at the message board of our website, here's a few fabulous contributions to get you thinking:

The television is full of dark men again. Circling, eyeless, mouths are stitched. One time I caught them doing a pentagram and I lost respect. I prise invisible hands from my neck and slap at the remote for Eastenders. If Peggy loses the vic tonight it will not auger well.

By Kirsten Hinks

She lay down to sleep. But the back boiler was burping rhythms into the night. Surrounded by socks and tops, she rolled into her duvet and hid her head. But skeletal trees scratched the window in time and forgotten friends danced ahead. Pass the ectoplasm on the left hand side.

By Dan Anthony

Sitting in the corner of the empty nursery, still here I listen. Tonight no starlight pierces the black rain clouds, but I still hear their static hiss. Mother in their bed, more unconscious than asleep, father downstairs sits with an unopened book in his lap not drinking his cold tea.

By David Kilvington

Absent But Not Forgotten

My collaborative show with Jacob Whittaker, Absent But Not Forgotten opens on Friday 19 March at 6pm at The Last Gallery, Llangadog, Carmarthenshire SA19 9BR. The show runs until 4 April - but is only open at weekends. You are welcome to join us at the opening if you're in this neck of the woods!

Here's a short documentary piece about the show.

Belief in the paranormal can be controversial; but there is a strong human desire to find pattern and meaning in the unexplained. Absent But Not Forgotten uses video and sound experiments, textiles and technical objects to evoke the world of ‘ghost hunting’. The project considers the associations, clichés and influences of TV and films on the phenomenon.

We're looking for a bit of interaction from you too - we'd like you to photograph or video the show if you visit - you can post to the website through our Flickr group Ghost Watch or send them to us mail@kathryndodd.com and we'll post them for you - tell us who to credit.

Also we'd love to hear your own stories and experiences - write us a story in 50 words or less and post to our message board - or add to this post and I'll transfer it. We will be developing the project and hope we can incorporate some of your stories.

http://www.absent-but-not-forgotten.co.uk/

Absent But Not Forgotten

This is the publicity image for my forthcoming show Absent But Not Forgotten a collaboration with Jacob Whittaker at The Last Gallery in Llangadog, it opens on Friday 19 March.

This is what it's about: "Belief in the paranormal can be controversial; but there is a strong human desire to find pattern and meaning in the unexplained. This multimedia exhibition uses video and sound experiments, textiles and technical objects to evoke the world of ‘ghost hunting’. The project visits the territory between belief and parody to explore the technological, psychological and aesthetically self-referent influence of TV and films on the phenomenon.

The Last Gallery is a contemporary art space showing work by artists from across the UK. Housed in a former Victorian cobblers shop in the village of Llangadog in west Wales, the building retains its original features. The gallery is un-manned, so visitors can experience the artworks completely alone..."

I'm busy finishing the works for the show as well as working with Jake on the technical elements - that's his expertise.

“The idea for this project came about on a drive from west Wales to Bristol. I was working with the idea that I wanted to use an old armchair that Jake had previously given me to make a kind of ghostly telephone/chair hybrid object. At this point Jake began to relate the tale of his Grandfather, Bernard, an inventor who had experimented with EVP techniques to make a telephone to speak with the dead. Just to seal the deal, we spent some of the journey driving on the M4 motorway alongside the black hearse used by Ghostwatch Wales.” Kathryn

“Aspects of the exhibition are loosely based on some of my Grandfather's research into EVP. As an electrical engineer and inventor he was convinced he could make a telephone that would communicate with 'the other side'. Oddly enough, he, like me, had a barn full of semi-working and broken Hifi and TV - interesting that we both share a fascination with what might be found in the broken, silent or noisy portions of recorded media.” Jacob

The Silent Village

Rachel Trezise text - The Silent Village

The subject matter of this exhibition at Ffotogallery in Turner House Gallery, Penarth is heavy weight. You need to spend some time with it and you need to feel ready to be moved, effected and appalled. I went yesterday with the particular agenda to see Peter Finnemore's series of photographs. I ended up spending time with every element of the show. Emma Geliot has written an excellent review on her blog, giving the background to the work.

Photographers, Peter Finnemore and Paolo Ventura and writer Rachel Trezise resond to the WW2 events in the Nazi occupied village of Lidice in Czechoslovakia which saw 340 villagers massacred, sent to concentration camps or, in the case of some of the children 'Germanised'. The village itself was razed to the ground in an attempt to obliterate it from the world in revenge for the death of the SS Nazi officer placed in command of the protectorate. In an attempt to contextualise the outrage felt internationally at the time, the events of this horrific war crime were transposed by the Film maker Humphrey Jennings (commissioned by the British Ministry of Information), to the mining village of Cwmgeidd in the Swansea Valley in his film Silent Village. Similar in its industry and ordinariness to Lidice, the film used no actors, just the actual residents of Cwmgeidd using their own names as they re-enacted the atrocity. The film is showing on a loop in the gallery, an extraordinary testament forming the heart of the exhibition.

It reminds us that we can chose to resist, and to remember; standing in quiet solidarity with the will towards humanity and empathy.

Peter Finnemore - Silent Village - seen here

The exhibition also tells us about a bygone era; when it was made Silent Village was a contemporary piece, it spoke directly to the people of the time. It is now a remarkable documentary of a Welsh Village in the 1940's, and there is another layer of nostalgia and melancholy layered into the film for a modern viewer. This is where Peter Finnemore excels. I found Peter's images deeply moving and incredibly beautiful, he is so adept at lightly touching his subject matter, allowing it to unfold obliquely and subtly in our minds. I always find myself returning to his images with new layers of understanding and meaning long after I have seen them. Never didactic, never blunt or clumsy, he lets us feel a little of his own vulnerability to let us get in touch with our own.

The show continues until February 27th and there is a beautiful cloth bound, boxed publication accompanying the exhibition.

Peter Finnemore - Glynn Vivian Gallery

Peter Finnemore - Birdwatcher - seen here

There is a show of recent acquisitions from Carmarthenshire artist, Peter Finnemore in Room 1 at the Glynn Vivian in Swansea. Birdwatcher is an installed film piece shown on five LED mini screens and they are also showing a series of projected short films.

A great bit of curation by the gallery, this show works in subtle tandem with the main exhibition, Willie Doherty's Buried, whilst also bringing a lightness of touch to difficult subject matter.

Willie Doherty - Buried

Willie Doherty - Buried - seen here

We spent Saturday in Swansea and made a visit to see the Willie Doherty exhibition at the Glynn Vivian Gallery. The show hosted the two video pieces Ghost Story (2007), first shown at the 52nd Venice Biennale, and Buried (2009), commissioned by and first shown at The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh.

The work is relentlessly dark touching as it does on the artist's own experiences of the The Troubles in Northern Ireland and in particular his witnessing of Bloody Sunday from the window of his family home aged 12.

"Buried is a show about landscape and memory, about repression and resurgence and the difficulties inherent in representing contested and bitterly painful events in a post-conflict situation. It steps away from the simple accretion of historical events or factual detail, instead pursuing oblique and poetic routes toward a truth, not of the grand sweep of history but the intimate and painful price it exacts on the individual psyche." seen here

Both films are deeply effecting. Buried was made as a companion to Ghost Story and seems to focus the intensity of the events alluded to in Ghost Story. The high quality of the film making lends it an exquisite depth and clarity. It is beautiful and poetic, and at the same time dank and scrubby. There is a supernatural resonance in the aesthetic, a sense of expectation and narrative tension which is not, ultimately satisfied. The glimpses of detritus and residue within the wooded space we witness are ambiguously horrific.

Here is an excellent review of the show.

Inside the Birdhouse

Kathryn Campbell Dodd - Poem House

In 2005 I began making a piece of work called Inside the Birdhouse which was originally shown at The Fire and Iron Gallery in Surrey and consequently travelled as part of an Arts Council of Wales project to non-gallery venues in Wales - here's a link to the website for the project. I began by commissioning a doll's house which I painted and lettered and then used as the setting for a strange little stop motion film peopled by my mother's collection of owl figurines (my profile pic is a still from the film) and animated by strange objects inspired and drawn from Welsh Halloween customs. The video was then installed within a white birdhouse into which you have to peep to view the film.

Kathryn Campbell Dodd - Inside the Birdhouse (installed with Economic Values 1 & 2)

In Crafts magazine last month (December 2009) I saw a lovely article about Beatrice Baumgartner and her stop-motion film La Maison Oubliée which is also set within a doll's house. A really beautiful piece.

Beatrice Baumgartner - Crafts Magazine (December 2009)

Nine Artists' Films

Jacob Whittaker - Tying Tone Arms - seen here

Tonight we went to see the screening of Nine Artists' Films at Theatr Mwldan in Cardigan, part of the 2010 Film Festival. Seven locally based artists, working with film showed a series of nine short films.

The show was really well attended and it's been a topic for conversation today. The filmmakers were invited onto the stage after the showing for a Q & A session with the audience, this really helped to give some context to the works.

Simon Whitehead's work Anemos was commissioned by the BBC. Sean Vicary's Sea of Glass was commissioned as a response to music in an audio-visual performance. Rueben Knutson made his film 1000 Days as the outcome of a residency in the haematology department of a hospital. Jacob Whittaker and Penny Jones' Taith Cranogwyn operated as a documentary. The other contributions were made as art films. One possibly needed this background to interpret the films in relation to each other; the different approaches made the dialogue between the selection a little problematic.

I am easily seduced by classy production, and in this vein I enjoyed Anemos, a visually rich film of a choreographed performance which personifies the element of the wind and the production of wind energy. The choreography was compelling and worked beautifully with the costume of grey-blue silk dress and coat, the rich lighting created narrative. Some of the small gestural hand movements in the piece were exquisite . Sean Vicary's Sea of Glass was similarly classy, a sophisticated stop motion piece animating out sized shells spinning against the Cardigan coastline.

My personal favourites were Jacob Whittaker's Three Vinyl which "...uses found (Hi-Fi and sound equipment) objects, and my aim is to use them, as much as is possible, in the state in which they are found. Basic repairs are made merely to achieve some sound, with any problems leading to their being discarded playing an important part of the composing process. With turntables (the artist) often intervenes further by tying the tone arm back in order to interrupt normal play. The work is then produced live without headphones or post-production, using randomly selected loops from often randomly selected records."

Of the three pieces I had seen Tying Tone Arms before, an aesthetically beautiful, slightly voyeuristic, nostalgic film of decks backed with the drones of stuck vinyl; cacophonous music that develops its own rhythms and tensions. The middle film Shaky uses a faulty record deck that shakes and shudders the needle across the vinyl making a bizarre visual effect as the tone arm vibrates alongside the boings, scratches and tremblings of the sound track. It has a peculiar tension and a curious sense of passive-aggression in the juddering malfunction of the machinery and the fate of the vinyl it reacts with.

I enjoyed Penny Jones' Rant, a silent short of the artist in various outfits and in various locations raging and ranting at the camera about unknown grievances. It is important to know that Penny is an older woman because it completely alters the contexts of the work. A young woman behaving in the same manner would convey completely different signifiers. It was uncomfortably comical and had resonances with the inflential Carmarthenshire filmmaker and photographer, Peter Finnemore.

Rowan O'Neill's Menyw a Ddaeth o Gatraeth / A Woman Came from Catterick had some lovely motifs within it, a nostalgic, symbol laden film utilising props and film techniques that took the piece into the realm of folk tale. "My Grandmother moved from the area close to Catterick in the mid 50s to settle in rural West Wales. In my Grandmother’s suitcase I keep the relics of a long forgotten strife…” Rowan references the militaristic contemporary and historic roots of Catterick with a repetitive sequence showing a soldier rhythmically cutting a huge pile of carrots with her Grandmother's kitchen knife - a beautiful but disturbing vignette.

Well done to Theatr Mwldan for the initiative, more please!


Left to right: Penny Jones, Jacob Whittaker, Simon Whitehead, Rueben Knutson, Sean Vicary, Ruth Jones, Rowan O'Neill

Willie Doherty - Buried

Willie Doherty - Still from Buried - seen here

As soon as the snow has melted and I can travel again I'm heading off to Glynn Vivian Gallery in Swansea to see their latest show Buried by Willie Doherty. Irish artist, Doherty is showing a selection of films and photographs including a new film Buried, made and shown in context with an earlier film, Ghost Story.

Doherty has made work throughout his career that address The Troubles in Northern Ireland with particular reference to his witnessing of Bloody Sunday in 1972.

"...Doherty's focus on place, on the landscape which can no longer contain its histories and memories, avoids simple resolutions, acknowledging instead that long histories never die. In Doherty's work, the past is buried but ever present. Doherty's work blends fact and fiction, history and memory, and has an odd sense of timeless urgency - that these are concerns affecting us all, issues that will not go away." seen here

Tacita Dean - Still Life 2009

Tacita Dean - Still Life - seen here

I would have liked to see Tacita Dean's show Still Life at Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in Milan earlier in the year; an ambitious project featuring 14 film works.

I am particularly drawn to a new piece made in 2009, Day for Night for which the artist gained access to the studio of painter Giorgio Morandi in Bologna where he worked for over 50 years. She has filmed the objects, including the bottles and vases that the painter spent his life meticulously studying and reproducing as still life paintings.

Tacita Dean's slow, melancholic style of filming is a perfect vehicle through which to revisit the obsessively particular, pre-minimalist work of Morandi. Her serendipitously random approach however brings a contrasting richness to the rigour and economy of Morandi's original studies.

Giorgio Morandi - Still Life (Natural Morta) - 1953 oil on canvas, 8 x 15-3/4 inches - seen here

Rodney Graham - Rheinmetall/Victoria 8

Rodney Graham - Rheinmetall/Victoria 8 - 35mm film [colour, silent], Cinemeccanica Victoria 8 film projector, 10:50 min. loop - seen here

Thinking about beautiful film and prompted by a recent conversation about the beauty of old typewriters, this piece of work came back to mind. I saw Rheinmetall/Victoria 8 by Rodney Graham as part of An Aside, an exceptional show of works curated by Tacita Dean at The Glynn Vivian Gallery in Swansea in 2005.

The piece is held in the collection of MOMA, New York and here is their description: 'This film depicts a 1930s German typewriter made by Rheinmetall that Graham found in a junk shop. "It was just this incredibly beautifully made, solidly designed typewriter. Not one key had ever been pressed on it," he has said. His filmed homage is projected with a 1961 Victoria 8 projector issued by the Italian company Cinemeccanica, a mechanical wonder that Graham has described as "very beautiful, kind of overly powerful." "It's these two objects confronting one another," the artist has said of the installation. "Two obsolete technologies facing off." ' seen here

This still image is lovely, but the experience of the film in relation to the noisy mechanics of the projector is sublime.

"The sheer size and loud mechanical noise of the Victoria 8 projector in Rheinmetall/Victoria 8 both diverts the viewer’s cinematic gaze from the strangely seductive and compelling image of the typewriter. On screen, the projector’s cyclical drone embellishes the silent film with a soundtrack appropriating the repetitive, and all but forgotten, noise of a typewriter in use. Looking away from the screen, we are offered a view onto an industrial machine usually relegated to and hidden by a rojection booth located at the back of the theatre so that its sound would not interfere with the power of the moving image and its accompanying soundtrack. Alternately glancing between the typewriter and the projector, the viewer begins to realize a shared trait between the two “duelling technologies”: obsolescence. The recognition of this shared characteristic is not without humour and is typical of Graham’s wry touch". Seen here

Whistle and I'll Come to You

M.R. James story - adapted by Johnathan Miller - starring Michael Hordern 1968

I watched Whistle and I'll Come to You earlier in the week, a beautiful and highly regarded short film adapted by Jonathan Miller for television in 1968 from the original M.R. James story. Originally part of a series of Ghost Stories for Christmas screened on television in the 1970's. Spare and elegant, the film has a grainy, melancholic style. Michael Hordern brings some levity to the plot with his charming characterisation of a Cambridge professor on holiday in Norfolk. The film relies on suggestion and expectation rather than any revealed horror; it is of its time - rather naive to modern sensibilities, but it remains artistically prepossessing.

SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution

On Sunday morning I visited SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution at Somerset House. I've had a page on SHOWstudio.com for a few years now and I really enjoy its energy and vibrancy. Headed up by legendary fashion photographer, Nick Knight, SHOWstudio "...has pioneered the most imaginative and exciting forms of fashion for the Internet. These have both informed and inspired the current fashion revolution. In championing the new medium of fashion film in particular, SHOWstudio.com has harnessed the potential of new technology and the Web to completely reinvent the fashion image and the way we experience it."

By democratising the processes of fashion and opening the forum to all comers, Nick Knight has challenged the notions of exclusivity in the fashion world. In utilising digital platforms, embracing and experimenting with the new technologies, the business of fashion photography has expanded to incorporate performance, film, music, art - SHOWstudio has pioneered a 'richer landscape' for the fashion universe.

Event Horizon

Louise Bird - Event Horizon (installation - Rhondda Heritage Park) seen here

Louise Bird's Event Horizon project continues. Having recently been accepted as a member of Fibre Art Wales, she is exhibiting with the group at Rhondda Heritage Park in the Welsh valleys. Made up of hundreds of black crocheted pods, the piece explores the science/art themes that inform Louise's practice. This installation includes a DVD of the pods being created. In Crafted - Contemporary Craft and Fine Art at Oriel Myrddin Gallery earlier this year, Event Horizon appeared without the film.

Louise Bird - Event Horizon (installed in Oriel Myrddin Gallery) seen here