9 November – 10 December 2011Wed-Fri 11-6, Sat 11-4 T I N T Y P EThird Floor18 St Cross Street
info@tintypegallery.com 5 minutes walk from Farringdon/Chancery Lane Underground Palimpsests and left-over traces can be glimpsed every day, particularly in a city: pieces of time left hanging. SHADOW LINES features the work of three artists who source the material presence of past fragments.
Maya Ramsay works with buildings due to be demolished or renovated. She is currently working at Bletchley Park in the huts used by the code-breakers. Ramsay has developed a process of lifting pigment, debris and the texture of surfaces to create a kind of epidermis. These are presented, like paintings, on the wall but they are simultaneously archaeological documents. Their titles, which refer to military conflicts and death tolls, suggest a political undertow in Ramsay’s presentation of rejected, left behind strata.
Anne Harild’s stop frame animation, Looking Glass, uses discarded window frames to reflect an entirely different architectural space: the Victorian church in which she was working. The film evokes glimpses of a place and the passage of time. Harild describes it as a performance she has set up in which it is the space that performs.
Rose O’Gallivan’s work pivots on the idea that the mute can be presented. Contradicting the presumption that a work has a message or needs to inform, O’Gallivan is more interested in absence creating a presence. Leftover traces, that can be as minimal as the mark left in a piece of folded material, become part of print/paper/fabric/sculptural installations. She often crops or obstructs images in a way that foregrounds textures and materials.
Following my residency at The Florence Trust I have been working on a project entitled STATION X.
STATION X is collaboration between an installation artist, a photographer and a sound artist.
Three artists have been granted access to make work at Bletchley Park, also known as STATION X, home of the code-breakers. 11, 000 people worked in secret at STATION X during World War Two and were sworn to secrecy about their work for the following 30 years. It is also where the first programmable electronic computer was invented.
The artists will be working in some of the Grade 1 listed buildings in which the code-breakers worked, which have always been inaccessible to the public due to their dangerous state of disrepair. After decades of decay there is an ongoing fundraising campaign towards their renovation.
The artists will be documenting these highly atmospheric buildings prior to their renovation; working in extremely harsh conditions in rooms that have been unventilated and occupied only by pigeons and rats for decades.
This project will provide an insight into these previously unseen buildings and the remnants of their secret past. It will offer a contemporary interpretation of arguably one of Britain’s most important 20th century historical sites and document the visual and aural histories imbued in these buildings before they are lost due to the renovation.
An exhibition of the artists’ work will be held in Milton Keynes Gallery Project Space from March to April 2012.
Caroline Devine is a sound artist who will be capturing the sounds produced by and within the decaying huts, exploring the spatial aspects of sound. Caroline is interested in voices that may be obscured, silenced or absent such as the employees at Bletchley who were sworn to secrecy for 30 years after the war.
http://www.devine.co.uk/linernotes
Rachael Marshall is a photographer who will be conducting photographic documentation of the buildings. Having previously studied architecture, Rachael has an ongoing obsession with the way in which we value and preserve certain buildings.
http://www.photographedbyrachael.com
Maya Ramsay is an installation artist who makes works using a process to lift pigment, debris and texture from surfaces in the built environment, in particular from buildings that are due to be demolished or restored. Maya specialises in making works that reference war through the associations that abstract marks can create.
The culmination of a years hard work is here at last..The Florence Trust Summer Exhibition is on daily 12-6pm untill 18th July.
With exactly a month to go before the Florence Trust Summer Exhibition opens nerves are starting to fray, but nothing that a BBQ under the cherry blossom with Japanese style pork can’t solve..or the ever extending lunch/tea/dinner break conferences where a friendly ear is always waiting to share your biscuits..
Theres been a long standing competition in the studios to see who can make the most artful polythene ceiling for their space.
(All images courtesy of Rachael Marshall)
Making some new work using the walls of Andy Jackson’s studio, surrounded by his brilliant paintings, check them out at www.andyjackson.org.uk
