theViewergallery report 2

multitude

theViewergallery had been invited as the inaugural artist in a new venture, The Art Shed, set up by Mel Hardwick who runs the Freespace Gallery in Kentish Town, London. The Art Shed was set up for the day on the Art Street, part of a festival organised by Mel, on Sunday 27 May 2012. 

Setting up in a temporary space requires trialling and anticipation, and flexible solutions which can adapt to changing conditions. Wherever the plank goes, theViewergallery exists, and there are additional reproductions of the plank in various sizes as signs. We brought everything – stands, easels, tables, a ladder, fixtures and fittings, adding to theViewergallery’s store of stuff.

Despite being a baking hot day, over 100 people spent time in theViewergallery shed, viewing the screening and reading the books. There is reasonable space for two to view, but at times there were four.

The stream of visitors had much to say about the films, enjoying the variety, and also asking further questions about the artists, and about theViewergallery set up.

The screening had been selected from a call for work, and further edited to a maximum of three minute excerpts. The whole screening was ten minutes, which is a long time to spend in a shed. I had made a further curatorial decision to show two films together, including their soundtracks. They were Moving Image of train journeys, through Berlin and Moscow. The effect together, both still with their soundtracks, was mesmerising.

Duncan McKellar. 48 Hours in Moscow. Animation still. 2010

Steve Fossey. Berlin – The Space Between. Digital video still. 2010

The audience also enjoyed the weird humour of Shared Stuff, where items move between different split screens, and the cartoon figures in Leaders of Men. They were suitably disconcerted by the insects piece with the alien-sounding music.

Elin Ahlberg. Shared stuff. Digital video still. 2010

Jonathan Kelham. Leaders of Men. Animation still. 2010

Eleanor MacFarlane. X4. Digital video still. 2006

The theme of Multitude linked the pieces in split screens, with works with two, three and four simultaneous frames, and multiplicitous views, and with morphing characters within one frame.

I had trialled the screening in bright light, which was just as well, as the heat made closing the door and attempting a dark space impossible. The screening was still clear and visible even while battling direct sunlight.

theViewergallery shop project was set up, a set of fold-out cabinets.

Overall, theViewergallery had a busy, eventful and successful day, making new friends and fans. Despite many opportunities for things going wrong or blowing away, everything went well, and the screening was enjoyed by an appreciative audience.

Multitude...Transmission 2...Works and Artists

Elin Ahlberg

Fine artist from Bristol, working in video and other media to create installations which explore the human experience of digital technology.

www.elinahlberg.net

Shared Stuff

Single channel video installation, depicting deficit and excess through the flow of assets.
Everyday objects transfer between three spaces.

Digital video.  1 minute. 2010

Elin Ahlberg. Shared stuff. Digital video still. 2010

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Steve Fossey

My arts practice is interdisciplinary in its approach, but rooted in site specificity.  I use elements from video, installation, and performance as supports for my questions.  I attempt to capture and rework observations of everyday life in a process of layering knowledge creatively as it is revealed.  The form of this layering is a palimpsest of moving image, audio and text that asks the viewer to dialogue experiences that foster a shared sense of Site.     

www.stevefossey.com

Berlin - The Space Between

This video was shot on a train above ground in Berlin. The experience of being in Berlin contains an inescapable duality of a resonant past and an immediate sense of an unfolding present. Behind the newly converted exteriors of buildings that will become apartments, shops and bars, there are creative ambitions to forge an exciting future that belies the bullet ridden exteriors that neighbour the developments.

The histories of Berlin fluctuate between the hidden and the revealed. As one travels between places on the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, a sense of suspended time occurs as the sound of the voice announcing approaching stations blends with the hum of the electrics. Shapes pass by and views of the city formulate histories in the minds of the traveller that produces a sense of space between points in history. As these sounds and shapes merge, an abstraction of location is caused and colour, perception, time and space become a moving image that allows the traveller to be lost in this space between.

Animation.  10 minutes. 2011

Steve Fossey. Berlin – The Space Between. Digital video still. 2010

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Jonathan Kelham

My work is based in drawing and spans painting, sculpture and film.

Jonathan Kelham was born in1986, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, UK. Receiving a BTEC Foundation Studies in Fine Art from Hull Collage [2006] & subsequently undertaking a BA [Hons] in Fine Art at Birmingham Institute of Art & Design [2009], being awarded  the Sir Whitworth Wallis Art Prize and Artwise Curators/British Airways Award. In 2010, Jonathan completed a MFA at BIAD, gaining a Distinction for both art practice ‘Leaders Of Men’ and research in the ‘Subjectivity of Utopian Philosophy: within the Realms of the Unreal and Nobson Newtown’. During 2010-2011, Jonathan completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Education which included a Research Residency at Meantime Independent Project Space, Cheltenham, UK on Art & Education’. The ongoing Leaders Of Men have been exhibited nationally including: Surface Gallery, Nottingham, Oxford House, London Flatpack Festival, Birmingham & BIAD/The Lombard Method [for The Event 2011], Birmingham, whilst being printed internationally in publications including: Yuck n’ Yum [Dundee, UK], Impulsive Random Platform  [London, UK] and Potroast [Auckland, NZ]. Forthcoming projects include: Leaders Of Men: Village Tour, [2012] Residency, MEANTIME Independent Project Space, Cheltenham

jkelham.com

Leaders of Men

The hand drawn and rudimentary Leaders Of Men Animation incorporates the development of the juxtaposition through montage of specific English figures and the awkward, bumbling cartoon characters to develop this notion of the creation of alternative worlds, narratives, dialogues and spaces with a concern for a particular sense of the intentionally constructed portrayal of a romanticised Englishness. Whilst the use of the record by post-punk band Joy Division [An Ideal For Living EP, 1978. from which the work takes its name] references another nostalgic and specific English social and historical period, which provides a potential for creating a ambiguous narrative or contextualisation of the hybrid characters, generating a contradictory dynamism to these lumbering figures.

Animation.  3 minutes. 2010

Jonathan Kelham. Leaders of Men. Animation still. 2010

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Duncan McKellar

My work is based in drawing and spans painting, sculpture and film.

The scale of my work ranges from single line drawings capturing a moment to paintings and sculptures which can take years to complete, acting as physical and mental challenges. These large pieces form a constant from which other work can evolve. I find great satisfaction in both extremes, from the immediate to the obsessive.

www.duncanmckellar.com

48 Hours in Moscow.

A Pantoscope was a pre cinema entertainment device enabling a theatre audience to watch a continuous panoramic painting scroll by on tremendous rollers. For hours audiences would watch as scenes unfolded before their eyes. I created a portable version of this public entertainment device that uses a ten-meter scroll of cartridge paper measuring 28cm in diameter. Like handmade videotape, the paper scroll is wound from spool to spool and a drawing is created on each visible section as it passes by. This device enables a continuous image to be produced. When the drawing is complete, watercolour is added from memory and documentation photographs. 

The finished scroll is then recorded rolling passed a digital video camera. The animation can then be viewed as if riding the journey, continuing the tradition of an informative, entertaining public travelling artwork. 

Animation.  4 minutes. 2010

Duncan McKellar. 48 Hours in Moscow. Animation still. 2010

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Eleanor MacFarlane

Founder of theViewergallery and theProgressiveImage, I am an artist interested in Moving Image and art contraptions, scientific and optical ideas, and their meaningful implications.

I have a first-class BA in Fine Art and am currently undertaking an MA. I am an Artistic Assessor in             Visual Arts for the Arts Council, an arts book reviewer, an Arts Mentor for the Koestler Trust, and an            occasional tutor.

www.eleanormacfarlane.com

X4

Insects behave in ways which reveal deep parts of human psychology. Motives and anthropomorphisising aside, insects react to forces, they interreact and respond. They have the basic instincts of flight or fight. It is as if humans retain a primitive insect part of the brain, and so although we have a basic understanding of their behaviour, there is an inner conflict as insects are also linked to our repulse mechanism.

Digital video.  5 minutes. 2006

Eleanor MacFarlane. X4. Digital video still. 2006

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Multitude at the Art Shed

Multitude

Moving Image may be described as Video Art, terms overlapping into narrative areas, and into documentation of studio practices and events. Video Art may encompass experimental happenings and ephemeral events captured on video. The Moving Image also suggests Cinema, with its larger scale of filmic and collaborative concerns. Moving Image can comprise everything that moves in a film-type medium, including animation, home movies, historical street scenes, vintage broadcasts, early shorts, use of found footage, and more. Moving Image artists themselves borrow and use any and all of the media mentioned, and define themselves variously.

Multitude is a theViewergallery project, part of theProgressiveImage exploration of Moving Image.

theProgressiveImage...multitude

Multitude- a great number; a crowd; an assemblage; the vulgar or common people; the state of being many; a great number of individuals; numerousness.


Moving image and video art presents multiple views.

Different train journeys are juxtaposed, creating dual visions as if on inner and outer journeys.

Objects appear and reappear between screens – a contemporary take on one of cinema’s oldest tricks.
Cartoon figures morph through aspects of character and caricature.

Are insects individuals, or one unit of a unified multitude?

theProgressiveImage seeks to define Moving Image, and explore why artists use the medium. Why a photograph that moves? Why a film without a story? Perhaps artists use Moving Image to work with time, exploring the pace of thought - moments which can stretch out, and which journey on through the mind.

Digital video, film and animation techniques usually play at anything between 24 and 60 frames a second. They trick us into seeing a continual flow of movement, but really, they reveal to us that reality is similar – a series of events which our brains piece together into a sequence. Moving Image artists make and show a version of reality.