Foxhole radio

Foxhole Radio (work in progress) | 2023

Following on from my work with Megan Calver at Durlston Country Park, a location that played a key role in the development of radio communications, I've become interested in making the simplest possible radio receiver. And this is it. No battery, no amplifier, no real tuner ... just some copper wire, a razor blade, a safety pin, a pencil lead and an earphone. (It also needs to be connected up to an aerial and an earth.)

Different versions of this receiver were built by soldiers during World War Two. Traditional radios could be traced by the enemy, so soldiers built crude radios (using blued or rusted razor blades as diodes), which were capable of receiving AM (amplitude modulated) transmissions. There are relatively few AM broadcasts these days, but it feels like some kind of magic even to hear static on it.

Edward Krasiński

Edward Krasiński | Spear | 1964

Returning to my own preoccupation with movement and the strange business of trying to represent it, I was delighted to discover this work by Edward Krasiński in Tate magazine. 

'Spears hung from the wires stretched between the trees created an illusion of movement. They were swishing [in the air]. It was all about preparing the spear to perform its function. Once prepared it could act on its own.’

Delicate Instruments - CAMP Research Residency

Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver | Delicate Instruments (work in progress) | 2023

My CAMP Research Residency with Megan Calver is now concluded, but the ‘Delicate Instruments’ work we conceived while supported by them (and our insightful critical friend Kate Paxman) continues.

The two-month residency proved to be an invaluable and intense period of collaborative research and making, and also gave us the opportunity to share our findings with the public in the extraordinary surroundings of the historic Devon & Exeter Institution.

We used our time to explore the work of Alec Harley Reeves (1902 -1971). Reeves was a brilliant engineer, who also conducted experiments to test psychical phenomena. By reconstructing some of those experiments, we’ve been seeking new ways to connect with the more-than-human.

We began our research process thinking about Reeves’ pioneering work in digital communications and how he had applied his engineer’s rigour to “mechanising the process of mediumship” as his colleague Richard Epworth put it.  As a radio and telecommunications engineer, Reeves spent his professional life attempting to extract signals from unwanted ‘noise’, and his digital innovations were one way of achieving this. However, when it came to the paranormal, Reeves seemed to be attempting to deliberately generate random ‘noise’, assuming that ‘spirit’ would be able to influence it and that, when properly translated, it would convey meaningful messages. Reflecting contemporary developments in science and technology, these experiments involved everything from Geiger counters to cathode ray tubes.

As new work evolves from this residency, we’re hoping to take our discoveries about Reeves back out into the landscape and to tune in to the ‘noise’ emanating from the more-than-human.

This work was 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

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.