Delicate Instruments Event

Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver | Delicate Instruments | 2023

Join me and Megan Calver at the atmospheric Devon & Exeter Institution to explore the paranormal experiments of Alec Harley Reeves (1902-1971). Reeves was a brilliant engineer, a pioneer of digital communication and the inventor of a World War II radio navigation system called Oboe; he also devised many practical experiments to demonstrate psychical phenomena. We've used our recent CAMP Research Residency to explore these experiments as a cue to finding new ways to tune into hidden signals from the more-than-human. This is an interactive session with opportunities to experience some of Reeves’ methods and the hints they give of multiple ways of knowing. There is time included towards the end of the session for informal discussion, with refreshments provided.

Delicate Instruments
Saturday 22nd April 2023, 5.30pm - 8.30pm
Devon & Exeter Institution, 7 Cathedral Close, Exeter EX1 1EZ
Open to all, free but booking via CAMP essential

If you can’t attend in person, you are encouraged to participate remotely in one of the experiments. Download the instructions

CAMP is a member-led support and professional development network for artists, arts producers, curators and arts writers in Devon and Cornwall www.camp-membership.org

The Magic Boomerang (Time Stands Still)

Gabrielle Hoad | The Magic Boomerang (Time Stands Still) | 2023 | 
Photo-silkscreen print 53cm x 15.5cm 

My four printing classes with Double Elephant Print Workshop in Exeter are now complete and I’ve been trying to make sense of what I've achieved. I have a long way to go to be in control of my screen-printing technique (too many smudges, blots, slips and uneven applications of ink) but I have learned a lot about the possibilities.

Rather than trying to make an edition or a perfectly registered four-colour prints, I was primarily interested in using screen-printing as a way of exploring time, sequence, layering and repetition. These long, thin images of overlapping frames are the result. 

I've been working with found images from a 1960's children’s TV programme called The Magic Boomerang. The series centres on a magic boomerang: when it flies in the sky all time stands still, but the thrower is still able to move. It felt like a fun way of revisiting my longstanding interest in work of the chronophotographer Etienne Jules Marey(1830 -1904), his fascination with capturing the motion of animals, and his pioneering work in the development of cinema.

I've enjoyed the ways the images acquire traces of the different processes through which they've passed, from scratching and wear on the analogue film to digitisation to halftone processing and physical printing with sticky ink. I hope to return to Double Elephant by the summer to work more independently and develop this work further.

CAMP Research Residency

 

Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver | Clouded Border work in progress | 2022

I am immensely grateful to have been awarded - with Megan Calver - the latest CAMP Research Residency. It gives us the opportunity to research the lesser-known experimental work of Alec Harley Reeves (1902-1971) as a basis for inventing new ways to tune into hidden signals in the landscape.

Reeves was a brilliant engineer, a pioneer of digital communications and the inventor of a World War II radio navigation system known as Oboe. But he also devised many practical experiments to investigate psychic phenomena. We hope to use these experiments as a cue for making our own actions and sculptural interventions that invite dialogue with the more than human.

We discovered Reeves last year while working at Durlston Country Park in Swanage on our exhibition Clouded Border. The CAMP residency means we can dig deeper into the archives and make contact with people and sites closely associated with Reeves’ legacy.

We will be supported by a Critical Friend, Kate Paxman and will be holding an end of residency sharing event in April, date and venue to be confirmed.

This work is supported by the CAMP Research Residency. CAMP is a member-led support and professional development network for artists, arts producers, curators and arts writers in Devon and Cornwall www.camp-membership.org

Time to play

 

Gabrielle Hoad | Time and motion - work in progress | Screen-print
2023

2022 was a gruelling year, both personally and professionally. Making work became a bit of a chore and a much of the joy and energy faded from my practice. I began to lose sight of why I was an artist.

So I decided to allow myself to play, to make without purpose. To leave behind my 'brand' as an artist (such as it is) and just go back to some of the activities that initially inspired me.

First up, I decided to 'dabble' in an activity that I had never tried before and would probably never do again, but which offered me a chance to be a beginner. I joined a three-day class in Chinese landscape painting. The tools and materials were unfamiliar - I didn't even know how to hold my brush properly. So I had nothing to prove and nothing to lose. 

Being a beginner is a precarious and yet comforting place to be. You feel vulnerable: you don't know what you're doing and you make lots of mistakes. At the same time, there are no expectations apart from participation. The tutor structures your time, has all the materials to hand, tells you what to do, solves your problems, suggests ways forward. No wonder some people fall into the habit of being perpetual students.  

Then, at the start of this year, I signed up for a screen-printing course at Double Elephant Print Workshop (DEPW) in Exeter. This got off to a bad (ie non) start when I contracted bronchitis but I am now underway. I'm rusty rather than a complete beginner, having first encountered screen-printing during A-Level Art. More recently I commissioned George Barron at DEPW to help me make some text pieces for an installation at Hestercombe House and later a limited-edition print.

I saw a process that I wanted to use to pursue my longstanding interest in movement and sequence. Working with found imagery, I'm exploring ideas around motion, repetition, layering, and transcription from one medium to another (and the traces that leaves). Just working with colour and physical processes again is incredibly liberating. This is the happy medium between play and professionalism.  I feel refreshed.

HOW LONG

The One Minute Film Festival (which includes two of my films) is making a second appearance as part of HOW LONG during the visit of the British Art Show to Plymouth.  It was originally hosted by Maketank Exeter at Positive Light Projects on 24th September 2022.

The new iteration will be at Vacancy Atlas, 107 Cornwall Street, Plymouth PL1 1PA

Preview Friday 4 November 2022, 5pm-7pm

Continues 5 – 12 November 2022, 12noon-6pm 

HOW LONG is an exhibition and programme of events loosely held together around the theme of time. The One Minute Film Festival is a series of over 40 one-minute films by members of CAMP. It will be screened alongside an eclectic selection of wall-based work, each including details of how long it took to make. The show itself is open for 3000 minutes.

My two films are Two-handed timekeeper (Exeter v. GMT), which consists of two overlaid recordings of shadows moving across a playing field in Exeter. And ORBIT (out of play) which features photographs of abandoned toys spotted while on short daily walks around my home during the Covid lockdown of 2022, intercut with archive footage from NASA.

Clouded Border at Durlston Castle Belvedere

Clouded Border | Site-specific installation | Durlston Belvedere | 2022

Many thanks to everyone who came along to see Clouded Border at Durlston Country Park near Swanage, which closed on Sunday 25th September. 

It was an extraordinary privilege to be able to present our work in the Belvedere of Durlston Castle, looking out towards the distant horizon, surrounded by clouds and sea. On the final weekend we started broadcasting a sequence of Morse code signals drawn from the Oboe radio navigation system (developed and deployed from Durlston during World War II) alongside fragments of Paul Sartin's haunting 'moth theme' for oboe. The mingled sounds - past and present - drifted through the Castle and out of the open windows of the Belvedere. Crowds of swallows swooped past, making final feeding forays before starting their autumn migration. It was magical.

The exhibition was the culmination of around 15 months work, including two on-site field trips in June 2021 and March 2022 and extensive research into Durlston’s history as a lookout and signalling station. 

In developing sound for the project, we feel very honoured to have had the opportunity to work with the late Paul Sartin (1971- 2022). Paul died unexpectedly a week before he was due to perform a work he'd composed in response to the exhibition's themes. Instead we presented some fragments of recorded sound and text that we had from our time working with him. His oboe, signalling from the Belvedere, was always intended to be a vital element of the overall installation.  

Clouded Border: laser-cut plywood, woven polypropylene and wire, digital screen mounted on a cut log, felt, window film and window cleaner. The installation also included 7 minutes of digital video with sound (looped) and a separate sound and text piece played intermittently throughout the final weekend. 

Art in public spaces

Phoebe Cummings | Duties | 2022 | Commissioned by Honeyscribe

Out and about in Exeter this morning I encountered Phoebe Cummings' intricate clay work Duties that's being shown in the stairwell of Exeter's Custom House.  It's a sensitive response to the building's extraordinary 17th century plaster ceilings by John Abbott, and also to its history as a site for weighing and measuring. Deliberately fragile, it's made of unfired clay, which is destined to shrink, crack, break and turn to dust over time.  However, in a well-meaning attempt to preserve it, the work has been fenced in with various large pieces of signage and a rope, and its base tagged with a sheet of A4 paper 'Fragile - please do not touch'.

It brought home to me yet again the hazards (as well as the rewards) of placing work in non-gallery spaces. Showing work in heritage sites, gardens, farms, shops, hospitals and other public spaces means artists and curators reach a far wider and more diverse audience, but these are also places where there is no established structure or etiquette around the way art objects should be treated. They have to fend for themselves. Inevitably compromises have to be found, and the work can sometimes be lost or overwhelmed by what surrounds it.

It takes a certain amount of generosity to hand over your work in such circumstances and trust it will be looked after well - not just protected from theft or damage but presented properly too. I am full of admiration for an artist and curator who placed such a delicate, friable object in this public thoroughfare. In many ways, it adds to the tension and poignancy of the piece.  But I am also reminded how difficult it can be to make art that respects and responds to a context when there's no guarantee such care will be reciprocated.

Phoebe Cummings Duties
Installation & exhibition of works on paper 30 May - 24 July 2022

Exeter Custom House, 46 The Quay, Exeter, EX2 4AN

https://www.honeyscribe.org/custom-house