Place / Non-Place
Place / Non-Place
Location RED 2014
Location RED
The rich potential relations between thinking and the body, the way one person’s act can be an invitation to another’s imagination; the way every gesture can be imagined as a brief and invisible sculpture; the way walking reshapes the world by mapping it, treading paths into it, encountering it. Rebecca Solnit 2001. Wanderlust: a history of walking London: Verso.P276
The important thing is to be aware one exists. For three-quarters of the time during the day one forgets this truth, which surges up again as you look at houses or a red light, and you have the sensation of existing in that moment. Jean-Luc Godard quoted In Penz, Francois. and Thomas, Maureen. (eds), 1997. Cinema & Architecture, London: British Film Institute, P111
Location: Top Floor, Meadowmill – Formerly South Dudhope Jute Mill, West Hendersons Wynd, Old Industrial Quarter, Dundee, Scotland. 2011
RED: Signifier of human presence – Map marker – “You are here”
This dual-screen video installation is a record of the last original, remaining floor of the Meadowmill building prior to renovation into Artist’s studios in 2011. Despite, and perhaps because of, its semi-derelict state, the video footage reveals the beauty inherent in Dundee’s Industrial Architecture - its symmetry of line, ranks of windows letting light pour onto the pattern of flagstones underfoot and the sheer grandeur of the vaulted roof and expansive scale room.
This scale is contrasted with that of the human form as we catch glimpses of the artist’s body in RED as she explores the space - her movements responding to the shapes and forms of the architecture, suggested by the exuberance of the open expanse of space or possible actions of former inhabitants and workers of the looms and spinners.
Yet despite the strength apparent in both the building’s and the body’s structure, there is a fragility and sense of loss in the peeling paint, the decaying damp walls - as well as in the skin and lines of the hand, the arm as it strives to measure itself against the rooms perspective. There is a vulnerability to the sound of the body’s breathing and footsteps within the echoing abandoned room, contrasting to the sounds of the busy city sirens and construction noises from outside.
In this exploration of the Space between Architecture and the Body, the artist hopes to question and reveal some of the Universal elements with which we make ourselves at ‘Home’. How do our own body armature, the structures we build around ourselves, as well as the emotional and historical aspects of Place interact to give us our sense of ‘Being’ in the world? Perhaps the answer lies in the Space we inhabit, falling somewhere between the Solid and the Void?
Location RED 2014
Dual Screen Video Projection. Duration 20mins, over 9 Sequences.
Let Yourself Fall (Between the Solid and the Void)
Let Yourself Fall (Between the Solid and the Void)
The Meffan, 20 West High Street, Forfar DD8 1BB
26th July – 23rd August 2014
In this exhibition Helen Angell-Preece expands her ongoing fascination with Architecture and Space, and how Place gives us a sense of ourselves ‘Being’ here.
She will investigate the sculptural concerns of the Solid and the Void, by dividing the Gallery Spaces at the Meffan with her architectural constructions, creating a physical journey for the Viewer to negotiate and experience for themselves.
A new video projection will enable us to explore the vast, semi-derelict expanse of space of a former Dundee Jute Mill. We experience the space from the camera’s viewpoint, glimpsing the body itself exploring the area – an arm, shoulder or torso, moving through the exaggerated perspective of the Industrial scale room.
The artist intends to explore the Potentiality of ‘Being’ in a space – the feeling of inhabiting / becoming the space; and how much this has to do with materiality, boundaries and our own body movement.
Always ‘there’ 2001
Always 'there'
The work is driven by a fascination with the issue of our ‘Being here’; of our awareness of ourselves as existing ‘within’ the world.
always ‘There ’ is a large-scale video projection immersing the spectator in a virtual world of movement through the urban landscape. A superimposed coloured ‘dot’ or map-marker becomes the hypnotic and constant presence or reference point throughout this exploration.
Distorted projection screens form a temporary architecture, installed to disrupt the viewer’s journey, forcing them to negotiate and become acutely aware of their own passage through space and time.
At once both playful and unnerving, the artist’s concern is to evoke an intensified awareness of self and environment using contrasting materials to disrupt/reorganise everyday spatial relationships.
Always ‘There' 2001
2 x 3 x 3m Video Projection
Welcome 2002
Welcome
This work explores the issue of how we experience space, how we relate to our surroundings. In the construction of walls and the laying down of borders a sense of our own ‘Being there’ is also established.
Welcome begins to draw out a personal space for the viewer to inhabit. 3 vertical walls delineate a minimum human space – the dimensions relating to a shower cubicle or phone box.
A circle on the floor marks the spot:
‘You are here’.
However, alike to awareness of one’s own presence, this architecture is only temporary and contingent.
Red pathways signal elsewhere. The transparent walls are distorted by light and the image of cobbles – that material most usually solid and stable beneath our feet.
It is this duality of attraction and apprehension experienced in a new place, intensifying a feeling of self-awareness, that the artist wishes to communicate in the work.
Welcome 2002
Screenprinted Acrylic Sheet 3 x 3 x 2.5m
Red Ring 2002
Red Ring
The warmth of the red and orange coloured acrylic is employed to create an inviting central point to the vast low ceilinged computer library in which it is situated. The ring form and lozenge shape can also be seen to represent the individual mental learning space of the computer user within the room, in the same way as a red dot often marks the spot ‘you are here’ within a map.
Red Ring 2002
Coloured Acrylic Sheet 3 x 2m
Chaos 2002
Chaos
chaos n. non-coherence, decomposition, disunion, discontinuity, random order, amorphism, unstructured, formlessness, scattering
To what extent do our surroundings give us a coherent sense of ourselves?
Do endless cuboids and delineated pathways of streets, corridors and roads construct a feeling of our being here?
In chaos, the artist subverts the image of cobblestones, a material most usually stable and enduring beneath our feet, rendering it sheer and unreal as it is screen-printed onto clear acrylic ‘walls’.
Instead of ‘supporting’, these walls move and sway, casting shadows and creating a disorientating yet alluring space for the viewer to enter; where their reflection distorts and slips reappearing again within the textures of the cobbles.
Shades of sheer cobalt blue and fluorescent orange act to dispel the reading of the image, referring instead to the emotive repel+attraction of a WARNING! sign.
Chaos 2002
Screenprinted acrylic sheet, acrylic paint 7 x 3 x 2.5m
Step-up 2007
Step Up
proprioceptive adj. relating to stimuli produced and perceived within an organism. esp. relating to the position and movement of the body.
[Latin proprius ‘own’ + RECEPTIVE]
Kinaesthesia (“the feeling of movement in all skeletal and muscular structures” ) is the first of 3 methods of proprioceptive signal generated and received by the body to give us our sense of self-awareness, of ‘being’.
As we look downwards into the viewing box of Step-Up, we experience abstracted images of body movement – shifting weight, balance, stepping, lifting and placing of feet. This hypnotic and rhythmic formation gradually induces a sympathetic reaction in our own limbs, the sensations of kinaesthesia.
Yet the movements we see performed within a formalised stage-like space are not clear and continuous, but are cut, shortened, repeated and distorted by reflection, becoming more akin to our own inconstant and fragmented awareness of body movement and of self, throughout the day.
In Step-Up we see a continuation of the artist’s on-going fascination with, and research into proprioceptive triggers. Her trademark manipulation of spatial organisation and integral movement is apparent, to create a fleeting sense of ‘being here’ now within the viewer.
Step-Up (Installation views) 2007
DVD (3 sequences 5min looped), plywood, paint, acrylic sheet. 50 x 65 x 70cm
Impression – a small space for you 2007
Impression - a small space for you
Delineated rectangular walls, the warmth of diffused light filtered through fragile, skin-like paper textures create an inviting space for the viewer to enter. Reminiscent of Japanese paper shoji screens, these walls however, are punctured and impressed with anamorphic body shapes.
Printed lines of paper clothing patterns hint at the intended body presence and shape.
In this installation, the artist explores the ways in which we inhabit spaces, making them our own, leaving our ‘impression’ and delineated markings on our surroundings, whether they be real or imagined, in our wake.
‘Impression’ can be said to be a structure of ‘being here’. An articulation perhaps of how it feels to ‘be’ in the world - sometimes a fleeting impression - momentary, fragile, passing and diffused.
The artist’s intention is to imbue the viewer with a sense of body awareness, rhythm, movement, ‘being here’.
Impression - a small space for you
Tracing, pattern & greaseproof papers, bias binding, acrylic paint, steel wire, bulldog clips.
2.5 x 2 x 3m
