This last week we all attended to arrive in the MK204 room ready for the presentation of a five minute slide deck to detail what we have done so far in our practice this year.
First Up
I volunteered to go first as Sylvia had my presentation already lined up on the screen. I thought I’d get it done first and out of the way super quick.
Liminal Practice
My practice is currently playing with Liminal Spaces and taking photographs in places that are transitional, where people pass through with no real regard to the place itself. A person or thing might travel through the space to get from the car to the shops, the upstairs to downstairs, the inside to outside etc. In some cases they are even places where someone was born and came to life, or died and went on their way to become stardust.
My first slide of the show was to show some of the spaces I’ve been taking photographs of that I consider liminal spaces. Over the last few months I’ve snapped photos of all sorts of places, the progress was mentioned on the next slide. One of the things I noticed during the practice of photographing was that I have captured some interesting images from my workplace of 35 years, a factory in Shrewsbury, I seem to be homing in on this as the possible future direction.
Shoot One
Shoot 1 was a late in the evening shoot at my place of work, after everyone else had left for home. I had been wandering around taking pictures of assets for an asset management task, but I took my Leica Q2 with me to snap some atmospheric photos as I travelled around the factory site.
You can see from this slide that the stair cases I walked around are lit by unnatural lighting and in the case of the interior stairs, the emergency light’s green LED was enough to flood the whole stairwell with the alien-like light.
Other shots from my shoot are seen on the slides that followed too, each using strange lighting to capture odd views of the factory buildings and surroundings.
Second Shoot
Shoot two was made up of images from Margate after a November journey down to Gillingham, Margate and Southend On Sea. The images showing pink lighting are in the Turner Gallery Margate as I appreciated the strange light from the handrail area acting in a gradient fashion up the wall.
Detailing the abstract nature of the pink lighting on the stairs in the gallery, I included a silhouetted figure in the gallery too, as well as an upward looking perspective on a multi storey car park’s spiral ramp. This ramp was the one that my peers preferred from this shoot and it was well received.
Further Shoots
For the last part of the slide deck, and it was only supposed to last for 5 minutes, I chose some of my other work that I’ve captured this year in different locations. Some of these were appreciated too such as the guys on the escalator and the man walking into shadow under the bridge.
Research
Research is obviously important too with reading and looking at other artists’ work being necessary to evaluate one’s own work and see the benefits of doing it a particular way, then learning from the amassed knowledge.
My slide on research was made using the RefWorks and MyBib to pull out some of the references I’ve used this year so far. Some of the artists that I’ve been studying are listed on the left side of the page and there are other documents. books and journals that I’ve used to get my head around liminal spaces.
After research is the slide that tells Sylvia what comes next, at the end of all of this I have to create an exhibition piece or series that i want to display in the Eagle Works. It’s time to explain what I need to continue doing and what steps I’m planning to gather more work and research ahead of the exhibition and submission.
More To Come
As you can see, I’ll continue to look into the photographers that I appreciate and I’ve recently bought the book accompanying the exhibition I saw at the V&A in 2022, by Maurice Broomfield, Industrial Sublime which I think is an immense body of work. More research about deserted spaces and even using movies as references such as Blade Runner 2049, Dune, Matrix and lots more will help me gather some words around my practice.
The other item mentioned on the slide is my trip to Tokyo, Japan. This is planned for the 13th January and will see me spend a week with my cameras snapping away at the usual touristy spots and seeing if I can capture any unusual images. Just had my Yen turn up this week too, I’m getting excited…
Sylvia said that out of all this work she was most interested by the factory at night images, and I’m in full agreement. There is a lot of information that doesn’t come across in the images, being that I’ve always worked in the same place, and started as a snot nosed apprentice and have now recently changed job into a senior management role at the same facility. I’ve gone from being sheltered by the buildings to being responsible for the buildings. I’m now their custodian, where they have always been my custodian up until August 2023.
I think I’ll continue to examine the place I work and use the strange lighting and sounds that emanate from the locations. In fact I did create a short video whilst walking around taking photos. The sounds and the visuals are important to me as it does capture some of the strange sounds that can be heard in and around the buildings.
Peer Presentations
Shellie also suggested that I watch a Netflix series called Tales By Light and also a movie called Kodachrome. I’ll deffo look these out and see what they’re about.
The other coursemates stood and talked about their practice for a while too before it was time for lunch.
Emma spoke about her work on the passage of time linking in with Eckhardt Tolle’s book The Power Of Now. Emma showed us some work capturing footsteps using long exposure and each forward step seemed to represent Past, Present and Future.
Noah talked about his car spotting a bit and also showed us some of his work.
Ieva’s work called HomeSick looked like it was based on old family photos and recreating them with some mixed media components.
Shellie talked about her work on Nostalgia, showing us some of her images of portraits using multiple exposures and digital overlaying, as well as some more regular portraits before Beth mentioned that it was a Fantasy photo shoot, and Shellie liked the idea of moving away from Nostalgia solely to use fantasy also.
Beth’s presentation was around Intimacy and Self Perception. She shared some work of hers which she’d made with some assistance from coursemates and then realised that she was needing to take some self portraits also. Some of the self portraits with her partner are very touching and make a wonderful image.
It was an interesting session with everyone having an input into each other’s practice and ideas about how we could focus or think wider about the topic we are looking at.
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