Present: Roger, Linda J, Michele, Juanita, Alan, Elina and myself
Roger and Alan spoke briefly about the OCA Europe student exhibition which was via Kunsmatrix. I mentioned that the ROW group should also do a collaboration of sorts.
Roger is recovering from elbow replacement surgery as a result from a fall from his bike. Luckily it was his left hand and so can still do some OCA work while he is recovering. He is making an artist book for his work. He has created a few folios using copy paper to practice on and once he has ironed out the kinks he will use a thicker paper – probably 100 gsm. Alan mentioned he had used a very fine drill bit when he created his Japanese stab stitch book to make the holes – probably a 1/64″ bit.
Alan is on his last L2 module – Landscape. He recently took a printing course in his local area. He found it helped to create a bit of a network with Canadians – something I will need to pay attention to very soon. Unfortunately where I live there is no photography school, so I will have to be rather creative with establishing a local network. The instructor Alan had did Josef Karsh’s printing so he definitely knows his stuff. He went through use of different papers and processes, to name just a few things covered in the course.
Juanita is almost finished L1 Creative Writing. At moment she is doing a few exercises/assignments on script writing. She has to watch a lot of films for this and then go and reproduce different scenes. She is finding it quite challenging as she has to think of images, but can’t describe it. She has to just provide enough information for the location scout or producer/director to know what type of scene to show or action to portray, e.g. picture of Sahara desert.
Roger is finishing up the first part of L2 and about to move onto the second part. He mentioned the work The Nam by Fiona Banner where she had described various movies on Vietnam textually and put this together in book form. See the press release for more details. Interestingly not all the pages are clearly legible. Some look as if they have been carbonized so the text is extremely faint. Roger is also working on Harold MacMillan’s Winds of Change speech (1960) which features large sections on the embargoes against South Africa. He is also working on Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech (1968). He is translating both speeches into paintings, which is quite interesting to see. He finds that both speeches are quite relevant in today’s topsy-turvy global political climate and after so many years having elapsed between both speeches and today not much has changed really. Society has just brought in prohibitive laws about commenting on issues today.
Linda is mid way in L3.1 with her destruction photography. She is about to start her lit review. She is learning how to do interpositives (a negative image created by a positive process) and internegatives (a negative of a negative that produces a positive image). She mentioned that these processes have to be entirely in the dark in the darkroom and has had to learn by feel where everything is in her darkroom. She gave us a preview of some of the images that she has burned using a candle. It is pretty cool that some of the burned sections turn a yellow colour. Her body of work is about the destruction of film to represent the destruction of landscape as a result of bush fires in New Zealand. When asked why she wasn’t using colour film, she mentioned that B/W is easier to process and it is also easier to see the process. For her CS she is going to address ‘what is a photo – if you destroy it is it still a photo?’ That is going to be such an interesting read.
Alan mentioned an installation he had recently seen at the Contact Photo Festival in Toronto. The artist was using a transparent slide through which light was projected through coloured water which vibrated and then projected on to a screen. The vibrating water created the effect that the building (subject of the photo) was actually burning.
Elina who is on L1 of the Creative Arts path mentioned that she has to make an archive involving place and time. She has decided to create a memory box and create a story to go along with it on the side.
I mentioned that I had completed CS and BOW and was busy prepping my work for the November assessment.
Michele has finished all her printing for her exhibition. She is looking at frames to purchase, but will do all the mattes herself. She still has to decide whether to use the photo of the bay or the lighthouse as the central large image. The gallery where she is exhibiting in Featherstone only supports local artists which probably makes it easier to get a venue location.
Alan mentioned The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes, which he says is about the restricted land usage in Britain and how certain usage has been curtailed for the public in favour of the nobs. I seem to remember a L3 student is doing his body of work on a similar vein. Will go through my notes to see if I captured the name somewhere and pass along to Alan. Alan mentioned that he was interested in identity, memory and landscape and I made the following recommendation to him (and also forward it to Elina):
Bastian, J. (2014) ‘Locating Archives within the Landscape: Records, Memory and Place’ In: Public History Review 21 pp.45–59.
I also passed along another of Bastian’s articles to Alan as he will find the colonial aspect interesting:
Bastian, J. A. (2006) ‘Reading Colonial Records Through an Archival Lens: The Provenance of Place, Space and Creation’ In: Archival Science 6 (3) pp.267–284.
Next meeting 14/15 August, 2022.
Bibliography
Andujar, C. et al. (2022) The Falling Sky. At: https://scotiabankcontactphoto.com/2022/exhibition/claudia-andujar-gisela-motta-leandro-lima-the-falling-sky (Accessed 10/07/2022).
Banner, F. (s.d.) Press release for The Nam. At: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/188848?association=associatedworks&page=1&parent_id=186140&sov_referrer=association (Accessed 10/07/2022).
Bastian, J. A. (2006) ‘Reading Colonial Records Through an Archival Lens: The Provenance of Place, Space and Creation’ In: Archival Science 6 (3) pp.267–284.
Bastian, J. (2014) ‘Locating Archives within the Landscape: Records, Memory and Place’ In: Public History Review 21 pp.45–59.
Lynda Kuit Photography Level 3 