In a continuing series throughout the duration of The Walking Encyclopaedia, we'll be highlighting, daily, the works of three practitioners who employ the walk within their practice. Each of the highlighted artists and artworks were submitted for exhibition to The Walking Encyclopaedia. In each case alongside their artist statement, a link to the artist's website is provided for further exploration.
The Walking Encyclopaedia is a co-production between AirSpace Gallery and the Walking Artists Network
#1 - Aileen Harvey - Tarbet, 2013
.jpg)
Tarbet (Sutherland), 2013, Three black and white prints from
pinhole negatives, each 24 x 24cm
Three photographs, each of a narrow isthmus of
land that lies between two waterways, near the hamlet of Tarbet in Sutherland,
north-west Scotland. 'Tarbet', from the Scots Gaelic, means 'portage': so
perhaps this is a place that would once have been used to carry boats between
bodies of water, at a time when travel in the region was largely by sea and
loch.
The pinhole photographs record the direction
and duration of my walking across each portage on foot, and back again. The
relative density of each image shows how long it took for me to return and
close the camera. So, these are landscape images that look as they do because
of my walking pace, but in which I can't be seen directly: my human presence
being too transient to register on the negative. I think of the photographs as
a way of testing the practicality of this idea of how the historical landscape
may have been travelled.
Website - www.aileenharvey.co.uk
Harvey's practice is concerned
with the experience of place, from landscapes to more
intimate indoor spaces. The work is generally drawings, sculpture
or analogue photographs, and it is shaped by walking and often
the use of material abstraction. She takes small details and
structures from the landscape and combines these with a sense of a located
body in motion. Works also frequently refer to recounted experience
or memory, and to the role of visual imagery (whether primary or
supporting) in these forms of experience. In developing each new
work, she looks for ways to engage attentively with a place. Abstraction
is balanced by crafted aspects: an investment of time and hand labour
in the worked surface, which stands for close personal engagement.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#2 - Akram Rahmanzadeh - Sea Debris, 2010 & Details, 2011
Website - www.rahmanzadeh.net/biography.htmlRahmanzadeh was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to England in 1985, graduating with an MA in Fine Art Printmaking from Chelsea College of Art & Design in 1993.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3 - Alana Tyson - Linocuts
Linocuts is based of
people walking outside my house in Llandudno, North Wales. My
studio window looked right out
on the see and I would sit mystified as
people would drive up and then walk back and forth along the thin
strip of concrete between the road and the beach. I have been assured this
is a perfectly legitimate British pastime; I am Canadian,
grew up very far from the sea and do not get it at all!. I started
drawing the people and creating lino-cuts of them in an attempt to
understand their compulsion to walk in this space (I no
longer look upon this activity with irrational annoyance so I suppose it
worked). I have created over 50 linocuts of individuals and groups.
Alana’s manipulated fabric pieces formally stem from the repetition of simple motions or marks until complex surfaces are created. The pieces isolate a seductive sculptural language that seeks to rest between something 3-dimensional, yet is simultaneously flat almost painterly. Constructed of hand-sewn lining fabric, these artworks are reminiscent of coffin lining, chocolate boxes, and visceral entrails of the body. The pieces give import to that which is normally hidden away, both literally as in the above references and as a metaphor for the “soul”.
As a child Alana was constantly told by her mother, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts”. The artist believes her mother was referring to her playmates, but took this further into her tiny constructed fantasy worlds, some in shoe boxes, others as small as walnut shells. As a child the artist’s fascination with all things miniature was mirrored by her feelings of being safe and happy in these introspective “interiors”.
Alana feels that society today is becoming more and more obsessed with outer appearances; and as she feels no longer able to stay in her own tiny private world, she has constructed large scale pieces that leave the realm of object and become an environment for the viewer, sharing the quiet interior places she has always found solace in.
Alana Tyson was born in Calgary, Canada. She graduated from the Alberta College of Art in 2006, with a BFA (Hons) degree in Painting. She moved to the UK in 2007.
She has exhibited internationally and in the UK. Solo exhibitions include Oriel Davies testbed, Newtown; The New Gallery +15, Calgary; RED Gallery, Hull; and the Marion Nicoll Gallery, Calgary. Select group exhibitions are Fiberart International 2007 which toured the United States; Artist Proof Gallery, Calgary; Embrace Arts, Leicester; and Red Gate Gallery, London.
Alana currently lives in North Wales.
No comments:
Post a Comment