Shadow Catchers

Floris Neususs: Be Right Back (1984)

"Shadow Catchers" at The V&A exhibits a variety of amazing camera-less photographic art works and techniques, but I was completely captivated by this photogram/installation by Floris Neususs.

Neususs creates images by exposing photographic paper without the use of a camera.  The method produces life sized shadow-like prints which require direct contact with the paper to produce the image.  These factors enhance the memorial aspect of the work – the viewer gets a definite sense that someone was there. 

In “Be Right Back”, the original chair shown on the image has been placed on the paper where it was when the photogram was taken, accentuating the absence of the sitter – who has not.

The title of this particular work draws our attention to the time elapsed since the event.  It becomes spooky that, as a viewer, you are looking at the exact positioning of a person who sat there over 10 years ago.  

V&A exhibition web page 

Preservation with wax

Wax immersed cardigans in the studio.  The wire hangers have been removed, leaving their impression on the set fabric.

Taking the focus back to personal objects, I experimented with immersing second hand children's cardigans in plaster, and also wax.  The knitted texture invites us to wonder whether they are handmade for a child or grandchild, giving them an added sense of personal history.  I feel the wax alludes to the attempted preservation of childhood items and memories.  It also reflects the fragility of the memories we try to preserve, as the wax can be melted again easily.

Close up digital photograph: Laying the object flat accentuates its rigid materiality.

The weave of the fabric creates shadows with a sense of depth.  Positioning the cardigan appearing to drip into the shadow links the two images and invites the viewer to question their relationship.

Ghost Tables

Plaster immersed table cloths, suspended in the studio with light.

Following a tutorial with Pete, I took the petrifying process to a larger scale and experimented with laying sheets of plaster immersed fabric over things and removing the original objects.  Above are 2 table cloths with the tables removed.  They are rigid enough to stand alone, though I suspended the patterned cloth just above the studio floor and lit it from beneath to accentuate the absence of the original table.

Creases in the fabric are intentional and exist to suggest a former human presence, as frozen impressions of their interaction with the object.

Subconscious of a Monument

Cornelia Parker: Subconscious of a Monument

In this amazing installation Parker suspends fragments of earth, excavated from beneath the Tower of Pisa, at waist height.  She creates a scene of dazzling stillness, and a memorial to these once buried and forgotten objects.

Frith Street Gallery website

Stillness & Preservation

I've begun to investigate the idea of creating memorial shadows of objects through 'petrification' using plaster.  I remember going to the petrifying well at Mother Shipton's Cave in North Yorkshire as a child and finding it really spooky seeing these everyday pliable items cast as unusable, frozen immortalities.  Minerals in the dripping water gradually build up on the hanging objects, encasing them in stone.  The fact that they're ordinary objects which you expect to see in use and in human contact seems to draw attention to their stillness.
Go to Mother Shipton's Cave website...

The Petrifying Well at Knaresborough: The two lumps high in the rock face are hats left there in 1853.

First petrification attempts using plaster...

Petrified glove

Petrified socks!

Ja Jetee

Following my tutorial with Robin, I watched the Chris Marker film La Jetee (1966).  It's a film almost completely made with still images.  The amount of time each still is shown for varies, sometimes an image will be present for longer and is accompanied by silence... at these points I found myself being forced to contemplate the image, it's as if time has frozen and you can observe every detail.  I also found myself waiting for something to happen at these points; there's a definate contrast brought to mind between movement and stillness.  The sense of time fascinated me throughout the film: The story is narrated in the present tense, but the use of still images reminds us that these are photographs, presumably taken in the past.

La Jetee

I experimented with series of still images as a creation of narrative for my shoes casts, but was not overly happy with the results.  When playing with the context and setting for the shoes it became too cartoon-like and seemed to take away from the emotional narrative I was aiming to create.

Christian Boltanski - Life and Death

Christian Boltanski: Sans Souci (1991)

Boltanski's "Sans Souci" is a collection of photographs of people who died in Germany during World War 2, they depict these people enjoying everyday western life, often with their families and loved ones.  The piece draws attention to two main aspects: As a viewer, and as a consequence of the progression of time and memory, we do not know which of the dead were Jewish victims and which were Nazis - inviting us to contemplate the point of view that any human 'just like us' is capable of atrocities.  The images also draw on the poignancy of the contrast between life and death - we are fascinated by these images of life because we know these people are now dead.


"We just can't preserve things, or save them from decaying.  And that's what my early work is about: Preserving objects while being aware of their transient nature."
Christian Boltanski (Boltanski, Time. Edited by Ralf Beil. Hatje Cantz 2006)


When I first bought the wellies, I photographed them in a domestic setting.  I liked the ambience created by the light in this particular photo, and the narrative played out by the setting of the wellies by the door.  I have since placed the cast in the same position in recent photographs - I feel the combination of the two states of the object in the same place creates an interesting juxtaposition.

Original Wellies

Cast

Interpretations and the creation of narrative

I've been reading "Brain Landscape: The Coexistence of Neuroscience and Architecture" by John Paul Eberhard, in particular the chapter on 'Memorials, Sacred Places and Memory'.  It gives an interesting view on how we experience and respond to emotive space, which I feel relates directly to the responses I've had to my sculptural casts.  According to Eberhard we first experience 'primary' emotions resulting in uncontrollable physical reactions.  The 'secondary' emotion we experience shortly afterwards is a result of our "...cognitive interaction with the object that has produced the primary emotion."

Applied to reactions to my casted sculptures, Eberhard's ideas suggest that cognition of the shoes as personal objects play a vital role in provoking the emotional reactions.  The association gives the objects a human connection, during which the history of the object becomes directly associated with the assumption of a human one.  The shoes and casts have inadvertently been assigned an emotional narrative by undergoing the casting process.


Exploring narrative through painting and location photography...
Studies of heel and shoe casts using bleach, tissue, charcoal & ink on brown paper:

I photographed the casts in outdoor and domestic settings.  Leaving space in the composition above the casts seemed most successful in creating the visual narrative that the owner was absent.  With this absence in mind, the casts took on a certain stillness as the viewer is invited to contemplate the contrast between the shoes as animated objects in use and inanimate casts of their former selves.

Cast and destroyed welly

Heel cast on steps

Destroyed shoe and cast on street

Memory making, sole destroying

"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.  This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence."
From 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' Walter Benjamin.

I've spent the past couple of weeks researching theory and aspects of memorial in relation to architecture whilst simultaneously creating casts in the workshops.  This has been successful in that each practice has informed the other, and has consequently changed the way I viewed my activities as they progressed.

Welly and plaster cast of the inside

The idea behind the castings came from my thoughts on the cultural obsession with creating and preserving memories, and how often this process is taken to such extremes that the methods of preservation or remembrance overshadow, distort or even eliminate the accuracy of the original event.  I decided to create memories of inanimate objects, in the forms of impressions, prints, photographs and castings, knowing that in order to complete this process the original object would inevitably be altered irreversably or even destroyed.

Whiteread's series of bath casts give these everyday objects a monumental quality. Slightly raised and slab-like, they seem suggestive of open graves and draw attention to the emptiness inside - a suggestion of absence, that something was there. What caught my attention about this particular series was the rust colouration which transferred from the original bath to the cast.  These casts have not just solidified the volume of the bath, but have also retained visual traces of its history.



Rachel Whiteread: Untitled (Orange Bath) 1996

http://www.nwdrizzle.com/drizzle/0401/

images/ci/OrangeBath.jpg

Shoes, although inanimate, carry a strong human connection and can be emotive objects depending on their context and my choice of them as a starting point was a conscious one. The shoes were purchased from various London charity shops, and were selected from the 'rag bags' of donated objects which were deemed unsellable due to their worn condition. I wanted the casts of them to show this wear and tear in order to transfer the human connection... so that the casts would not simply be impressions of the interior space, but also carry of some of the emotional connotations from the objects and have a sense of history. Continuing this theme I decided to explore a slower and more visually poetic way of removing the casts using exposure to heat rather than simply cutting them free, and intended to leave lasting impressions not just of the original object but also of this process of removal.

The welly cast beginning to be revealed

Shoe fabric melting and fusing with the cast

Under the heat, the materials of the shoes (especially the rubber of the wellies) behaved differently to how I had anticipated.  Rather than melting, the rubber tended to burn, bubble and discolour.  The resulting casts are horrific.  They seem to portray a narrative, evidence of a process or event which has occurred.  The emotional reactions provoked by them is interesting though... because so far they have been viewed within the context of the workshops and studio - everybody knows the process which they have undergone, but viewers still feel uneasy in their presence.