This small exhibition took place in the cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral. The participating artists was myself, Evie, Sam Turff, Louisa Clements, Ken Cousins and Milos Biberovic.
The sculpture 'Temporality'.
From this angle, the way the fragments are suspended compliments the arch of the cloister walkway.
On the day the weather was overcast and so no shadows or strong light was being produced. We went with our colour printed acetate and made strings from which we suspended to represent the stain glass windows. As no colour shadows were going to be produced we opted to leave the sculpture bare of materials to gather the shadows. We let the suspend, delicate fragments of colour play and move in the wind within in this abstract structure that then played with the space of the cloisters and the image of the Cathedral tower in the background.
The acetate was coloured by silk screening onto it, we wanted it to look like stain glass so made the ink thin so we could overlay and give it texture. The blue, yellow and orange colours are inspired from the colours we had seen painted on scaffolding. We painted the end caps these colours and painted over the dotted writing which is painted onto the poles.
I personally say the piece was more of a research project with figuring out an offsite exhibition and creating a piece that responds to the site direct. I found it intriguing to create a work which was based entirely on the location and it has enthused me to think about creating art direct from locations.
The interesting thing about the piece it that it was thinking about the location and time, we played with many shapes for the scaffolding so we could capture the sun to play with the shadows. We knew what time the sun came in and what time it left, so the piece was time specific to make it come to life, but it still worked when the sun wasn't shining. We also thought about the evening darkness, so we used glow in the dark ink on some of the acute so parts of it would like up at night.
With the the piece being time specific and the exhibition being very short and abrupt, how we all manage to create this space that never existed before and erase it again the next day, the piece was called 'Temporality'.
Here's a copy of our statement :
We are both artists who are interested in architecture, space and light and, walking around the Cathedral we discovered that we wanted to explore these characteristics further. This piece of work is designed to respond to Canterbury Cathedral in its current state; taking what people may see as a negative aspect about its current restoration and turning it into a positive feature. The abstract scaffold structure becomes a skeleton from which to suspend fragmented ‘shards’ of colour, both inspired by and resembling the Cathedral’s amazing stained glass windows. The Cloister’s arches act as a frame for the piece, which is situated so as to utilize the natural light that floods in to the cloister, using light to create shadows and impressions which are detached from the material presence of the structure.
The Poster has incorporated the title into the meaning and fit in the poster. The shadow features the arches to represent the cloister area.
