From dark to light

Here I am back in 2022, stumbling around in the dark in front of a night-vision camera, hoping to receive a signal. It was part of a field trip to Durlston Country Park in Dorset with Megan Calver - and it's found its way into our new moving image work The Signal and the Noise.

Recent years have been quite a struggle for me (and I know I'm not the only one) - earning a living while sustaining an art practice, collaborating with others while holding on to some space for myself, and making endless applications for funding, commissions and shows...quite apart from the difficult life (and world) stuff that's been going on.

When I became seriously ill last year and was forced to take time out, I thought twice before re-entering the fray. But I'm glad I did because 2024 has been such a creatively enriching year. I was lucky enough to be awarded ACE DYCP funding to explore moving image practice. Over 8 months, it feels as if I've been topped up with the energy I need to create and develop new work, when previously it felt like every new project was a further drain on an almost-empty tank.

I've had amazing contributions from my long-term collaborator Megan Calver, who did a lot of the groundwork for this film with me during our previous projects Clouded Border and Delicate Instruments, as well as joining me to generate new footage and giving valuable feedback during the editing process - all this, while coping with her own challenging circumstances. Thank you, Megan.

The film has also benefited enormously from the generous mentoring and support of Luke Hagan, Liberty Smith and Kate Paxman, as well as the many discussions I had with the DOCLAB group at Exeter Phoenix and my peers at CAMP. And a special mention for Jez Riley French, who really opened my ears on a field recording course last October.

It's not all been plain sailing - from time to time, I've been very stressed, tired and lost. I also know that when the DYCP ends (soon), there are considerable hurdles ahead.

But I'm looking forward to 2025 with some personal optimism - and hoping the wider world turns out to be a brighter, kinder place too.

Sharing the time of talk

The whistle draws attention to the signal | 2024 | Work in progress, painted objects

Looking back to the group exhibition Through Line, curated by Adam Garratt, which ran 14 July to 3 August 2024 at Maltings Taphouse Gallery, Newton Abbot.

The whistle draws attention to the signal was a site-specific piece inspired by the Belgian philosopher of science Vinciane Despret and her observations on pausing and listening in birdsong. Referencing bioacoustician Bernie Krause, she says that birds are ‘sharing the time of talk'. She suggests they use territory as a pretext for making song and may sing to create ties with neighbours rather than to ward them off.

 

Megan Calver and I drew on imagery from bird identification and railway signalling manuals to reimagine human-avian interactions in the local environment. We set out to make tools for coordinating sound and movement, seeing parallels in train signalling and dispatch systems, and also the rules of sport. Our collection of objects - including bats and whistles - offered the potential for performance or play and were designed to invite reflection on ideas of joining in and taking turns.

Placed in the vast space of the Maltings Taphouse Gallery, they included symbols for the herring gull, feral pigeon, blackbird and pied wagtail - all spotted around the station when preparing for the show. There are also references to the old-fashioned 'distant' and 'home' trackside warning signals.

Some of these objects were presented close to hand, ready to put into play, and some far away across the deep, dark depths of the warehouse space. During the private view, Megan and I did a series of call-and-response tweets from our own two whistles.

Disclosing signals for DECENNIUM

Clouded Border (Gorse Cone) | 2022-24 | Detail of vitrine

 

Clouded Border (Gorse Cone) | 2022-24
3m 23s of 16:9 digital video with sound, vitrine with monoprint on paper roll, photograph, laser-cut card maquette, cricket clicker, falconry whistle, upturned glass and ampoules of gorse scent

Looking back at DECENNIUM, Hestercombe Gallery's 10th Anniversary show. which was also Tim Martin's penultimate show as curator there. Megan Calver and I showed Clouded Border (Gorse Cone), a video work made at Durlston Country Park in 2022, alongside a new collection of objects accumulated over the previous year as we reflected on the legacy of the influential World War Two engineer and paranormal researcher Alec Harley Reeves.

The video records the intervention of a paper cone in the landscape that both amplified the interaction between gorse and wind, and drew the attention of passing bees. We were responding to the site’s history as a lookout and World War II signalling station. Traces of the wartime ground station with its large receiving dish have all but disappeared. The work reflects on the layers of history that lie over and under the site and discloses signals from the more-than-human that might pass beneath normal human perception.

DECENNIUM ran from 23rd March to 7th July 2024 at Hestercombe Gardens, Cheddon Fitzpaine, Taunton, Somerset TA2 8LG. It also included work by Tania Kovats, Helen Sear, Simon Faithfull, Alex Hartley, Mariele Neudecker, Philippa Lawrence, Sarah Bennett, Trish Morrissey, Susan Derges, John Newling, Feral Practice, Brendan Barry, Sophy Rickett, Liz Nicol, Jo Lathwood, Lucy Soni, Fiona Hingston, Simon Bayliss and Rebecca Partridge.