An introduction to the 'Touched' project

Hi everyone!

Firstly, thanks for checking out my blog. I’m a Fine Art student studying at Liverpool JMU. This blog was created as a means of recording the progress of my current film project, but if all goes well I may continue with this for future projects too. Any advice or thoughts, good or bad, would be much appreciated, as I’ve never attempted a film art piece, nor a blog for that matter.

The theme of this project is ‘Touched’, the same as this years upcoming Liverpool Biennial. Sixteen of the first year students are working alongside the Wolstenholme Projects company (11 Wolstenholme Square) for the Biennial, and will have an exhibition in late April.

What I like about the theme ‘touched’ is that the word has several meanings to work with. So hopefully the exhibition will be quite diverse. It could allow us to work with physical touch, sexual touch, touched in the head (lunacy and mental states). I however, would like to explore the emotional sense of the word by giving my work a sense of nostalgia. I will make use of sentimental objects or memories of people, objects and places. At the moment I imagine my work will be in the form of a film, possibly combined with installation.

Several artists have influenced my work to get to this point.

Joseph Cornell’s boxes have a strong sense of nostalgia. He would carefully juxtapose found objects from charity shops and jumble sales in glass fronted boxes. His lack of personal attachment to his props means that his creations are quite abstract and helps to trigger the memories of other people.

Cornell’s Aviaries series is my personal favourite. Perhaps it is because it triggers memories of my own porcelain bird collection. They bring forward old memories.

I was lucky enough to visit the Venice Biennial in 2009, where I saw the work of Steve McQueen in the British Pavilion. I found his piece Giardini really incredible. It was a two screened, 30 minute film, depicting the famous Giardini gardens in mid-winter.

I felt that, although his chosen media was film, which can be a cold, detaching and unforgiving media, there was so much life and depth to the work. The transitions between night and day, sights and sounds, man and nature, even the changes in the weather all absorb the viewer and make his film an experience. If you closed your eyes the sounds alone would be enough to make you feel as though you were there, and if you opened them again, all the textures of the Pavillions’ walls, due drops on grass and glistening of the occasional beetle’s wings were as clear as day.

Another aspect I admired about his filming technique was his choice to keep the camera perfectly still. One would think that a static camera would give a cold impersonal feel, however I believe in this case it achieved the opposite. There was so much movement in McQueen’s chosen settings, and yet if the camera itself was moving the viewers could miss this. By detaching himself from the process he has allowed the viewers to connect with the places more. We are given no real focal point, and so each viewer interprets his work in a different way. The combination of the two neighbouring films strengthens this. The contrast of magnification, colours, etc between films gives the piece as a whole a constant stream new interesting events and focal points.

Other artists whose work has inspired me for this project are, Annette Messanger, Sophie Calle, David Lynch's 'Interview Projects' and director Jean-Paul Jeunet.

I intend to keep uploading my films and ideas onto this blog to record this project progress and changes.