Illuminations

March 19, 2019

My exhibition with Sally Tyrie last year, Reflections & Revelations, marked the end of a two year project based at Wicken Fen. Sally and I were keen to work together again, but decided against another site-based project. The previous project revolved around a series of shared visits to the Fen while we developed the work separately, in our own studios. This time we have shifted the focus to our studio process. I have worked in Sally’s studio, trialling some of her processes, and she has worked in mine. We have made research visits to places together, but have also visited the same, or other places, individually. There are very few ground rules and the project is evolving as we work. We did not determine a theme at the start so it has been interesting to see how some common ground and areas of enquiry are nonetheless emerging from our investigations

Illuminations is not the final exhibition in this project. It represents a stage in our evolving collaboration. It is as much an opportunity for us to test out ideas for ourselves as to show finished work. Given the nature of this approach, it’s fitting that the venue for the exhibition is the gallery / project space area of Digswell Arts’ artist studios.

We will be showing photography and mixed media and plan that it will be as much an installation as an exhibition. We will be working part of the time in the space and adding to the work as we go.

Sally has written a couple of blogposts about some of our studio work on her blog here and here. Our plan is to work towards a series of exhibitions in 2019, for which we will publish details nearer the time.

Thorn

May 20, 2018

In between periods of working on the Wicken Fen project, over the last year or so I made a group of small works called Thorn. The making was spread out over the whole year with long gaps between stages and the thinking and process were quite different.

I was interested in making a group of pieces within a limited set of parameters: size, format and colour palette. In some ways this was quite a formal exercise in composition. The emphasis was on balancing the colour and texture contrast between the plain and printed sections to develop a group of pieces that work both individually and together.

Thematically, the group is related to the Blackthorn series. At the time I was working on this group, I was listening to Dowland and reading Peter Davidson “The Last of the Light”, while on my morning walks I was noticing the effect of frost, raindrops and mist on the hedgerows. I’m drawn to the way these phenomena both highlight and obscure the underlying forms.

Thorn detail Helen Terry October2017.jpg

There are 11 pieces in the group, which can now be seen in new exhibitions at Gallery 57 in Arundel and at Bircham Gallery in Holt. Bircham Gallery is also showing work from the Wicken Fen series. Exhibition details below. If you can't get to the galleries, work can be viewed on their web sites via the links.

Gallery 57: A contour, a curve, the lie of the land. 19 May -27 August 2018

Bircham Gallery: Spring Mixed Exhibition. 19 May – 13 June 2018.

Revisiting Hidden

April 27, 2018

Sally and I de-installed Hidden yesterday with mixed feelings. It was a beautiful day at Wicken Fen and we enjoyed seeing how the work had been affected by almost a month exposed to the environment of the hides. We photographed the work before we took it down. Paper had buckled, wrinkled and come loose. Rain had left water marks. Sunlight had faded exposed areas and altered colours. We found insects sheltering in folds or layers. And spiders had built their webs around and behind the work. It was beginning the process of becoming part of the fabric of the hide and it would have been fascinating to leave it there.

It was a bright, windy day and we were distracted by the effects of sunlight flickering through the holes in the walls of the hides. In Charlie’s Hide we stood for some time, filming one flickering sunspot on a piece of painted acetate we had taken down and laid on a bench. Sally filmed it flickering like a flame on the palm of my hand. In East Mere hide I photographed the patterns made by the sunlight shining through cracks and gaps in the walls.

Taking down the installations marks the end of this project. But not the end of our collaboration. It’s time to pause and take stock but we are thinking about the next phase.

In the meantime, we both have other projects. Sally will be teaching for FibreArts Australia in July. Some of my work from the exhibition in Ely will be included in Bircham Gallery’s Spring exhibition starting on 19 May. And a separate group of work, Thorn, will be going to Gallery 57 in Arundel for A contour, a curve - the lie of the land.

Apparitions, shadows and monochromes

April 21, 2018

This weekend is the last chance to see Reflections & Revelations, my exhibition with Sally Tyrie at Babylon Gallery in Ely. Sally and I will be there from 2pm on Sunday afternoon (22nd April) and will be taking it down at 4pm. Hidden, our installations in the hides at Wicken Fen continues until 25th April.

The exhibition includes a group of four pieces, Apparitions, which are the largest pieces I have made. One of the meanings of the word apparition is “an instance of something appearing; the act of becoming visible”. Perfect for these pieces that explore the theme of reflections and the interplay between true, distorted and false images. From a technical point of view, the work relies mainly upon screen-printing techniques, on old linen cloth that was printed both from the back and the front. A number of smaller works “Perception” explore the same ideas on a smaller scale.

The exhibition also includes a number of monochromatic works. This is the first time I have worked solely in black and white on cloth, though I often do in my sketchbooks. In fact this series derived directly from sketchbook collages I made early on in the project that explored the lines and marks of the reeds as they were reflected in the water on the fen. From a technical perspective, these rely upon relatively simple screen-printed imagery but incorporate transparent materials, such as lens tissue and organdy, which allowed me to reverse and overlay images.

The third group of work in the exhibition, Shadow Lines, bridges the other two. In this series, in contrast to Apparitions, where the reed imagery was encouraged to distort and alter in the process of printing, the reed imagery is printed in solid white, making the “reflections” into something solid, while the surroundings are allowed to dissolve and bleed around it.

Colour and contrasts in texture were important in this group. The title alludes to the Joseph Conrad novel in which the “shadow line” is the invisible boundary between youth and maturity (I'm massively over-simplifying), though in this case it refers to the boundary between actual and perceived impressions.

Working on both sides of the cloth and transparency has been important in this project, both for the ideas it involves about the surface and from a technical point of view, and something I will continue to explore.

Our catalogue for the exhibition describes in more detail some of the ideas behind our work and their sources in the Fen. Copies will continue to be available from me or Sally after the end of the exhibition ... at least until we run out! Email one of us if you want a copy.

Title Exhibition Helen Terry April 2018.jpg

Reflections & Revelations

April 12, 2018

Our exhibition at Babylon Gallery is now open! Babylon Gallery is a wonderful space and Sally and I are delighted with how it looks. Sally and I have been working towards this for two years but it wasn't until we started laying work out in the gallery that we really saw our work side by side. Looking at work in progress spread out on our studio floors is not quite the same! From the beginning, this project was about two artists working from the same source to produce new work. In a sense we feel the exhibition represent the outcome of an ongoing "conversation" between us and it's fascinating to see both the similarities and the differences in our responses to Wicken Fen.

A glimpse of the installation chaos below ... !

Installation Chaos Helen Terry April 2018.jpg

And here it is all tidied up ...

Exhibition view Helen Terry April 2018-2.jpg

Photography has been very important to us in this project and, alongside the gallery work, there is a slide show of some of the many images we recorded that have informed our work. The slideshow also includes images from both our studios during the making of the work exhibited in the gallery. Alongside a display of some of our sketchbooks, we hope this will allow people to see some of the process behind the finished pieces on the wall.

Our photographs have been so important to this project that we are also exhibiting giclée prints of some of our favourite images. I can tell you that it was not easy for either of us to select just 15 each from the hundreds of images we have collected, but I think these represent some of the most important. The observant will notice direct correspondences between some of the photographs and individual pieces of finished work. The photographs are also for sale.

Exhibition view Helen Terry April 2018-4.jpg

Sally is also exhibiting some of her mixed media book pieces and some small collages. See below:

We have also produced a catalogue for the exhibition. This documents some of our ideas behind the work in the exhibition and includes images of work in progress. If you want a copy but cannot get to the exhibition, email Sally or me and we can arrange something. The cost is £12 plus postage.

Advice for visitors:

Meet the Artists: Sally and I will be at the gallery on Sunday 15th and Sunday 22nd April from 2-4pm. The exhibition ends on Sunday 22nd April.
Address: Babylon Gallery, Babylon Bridge, Waterside, Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 4AU.
Opening times: 12 noon - 4pm Tuesday to Sunday. Closed Mondays.
Parking in Ely is free. Forehill Car Park is a short walk away or there are a few spaces in Waterside almost next to the gallery.
Trains from London King's Cross take just over an hour. Ely Station is a 10 minute walk from the gallery.
Food & Drink: Peacocks Tea Room is next door. Sally and I also recommend Samovar Tea House on Fore Hill.
Hidden - our art trail at Wicken Fen continues until 25 April. See previous post for details. Sally and I will be at the Fen on Saturday 14th April from 11am until 4pm. Come and find us in the Learning Centre behind the tea room.

Hidden

March 30, 2018

"Hidden" is now open! Yesterday Sally and I installed a series of mixed media work in three of the hides on Wicken Fen. Boardwalk Hide is accessed through the National Trust Visitor Centre. Charlie’s Hide and East Mere Hide are on the edge of the Mere. Sally and I are worn out but very happy with how everything looks. We got very excited taking photographs of the work in situ yesterday evening.

Hidden will run until 25 April in parallel with our exhibition at Babylon Gallery in Ely, “Reflections & Revelations”. The gallery exhibition will open on Wednesday 11 April and Sally and I still have lots of work to do!

East Mere Hide - threads blowing in the window

Hidden is a celebration of the hides and the glimpses of the fen you receive from them. From our first visit, Sally and I were drawn to the hides. There are eight and they vary widely in age and state of repair. The newest, on Baker’s Fen, is bright with large windows, but most are dark timber structures with narrow, slit windows and in varying states of repair. The fen is very wet indeed at the moment and some of them are not currently accessible while parts of the reserve are closed to protect it.

The purpose of a hide is to allow people to observe wildlife at close quarters. They were once built chiefly as aids to hunting but are now mainly associated with nature reserves and birdwatching. What interested us was the experience of viewing the fen from within the darkness of a hide and the way the windows cut up and framed the view.

Woodpecker hole covered with printed and painted acetate

Many of the hides have woodpecker holes in the walls, in all shapes and sizes. The fragmentary glimpses of the reserve outside fascinated us but we were also struck by the way these holes admitted shafts of light into the dark hides. On a bright day flickering spots of light travel slowly across the back wall. Gaps and cracks around the windows make lines and sharp angles against the darkness.

We have made a series of small installations in each hide. Visitors may have to look hard to find some of the smallest – Sally was kneeling on the floor to fix some in place, while I was balancing on a stepladder to fix things to roof beams.

Installation - Helen in East Mere Hide (photo

 
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  … — Installation - Helen in East Mere Hide (photo © Sally Tyrie)

Installation - Sally in Charlie's Hide — Installation - Sally in Charlie's Hide

Hidden has given us both an opportunity to do something quite different to our usual gallery work and I like the way the installations have turned it into a “conversation” between Sally’s work and mine. If the sun comes out(!), the shafts of light will pick out details in the installed work or light up pieces fixed over the holes.

Sally and I will be in the Learning Centre at the Fen on Saturday 14th April from 11am to 4pm. We will have exhibition catalogues for sale and other things to see. It would be lovely to see anyone who can make it.

Advice for visitors:

Take your wellies - the fen is nearly always muddy.
A trail guide with a map of the hides is available from the Visitor’s Centre. There is a great café next door.
Charlie’s Hide involves a 15, 20 minute walk but is one of the most atmospheric.
Boardwalk Hide is the most accessible, especially if you need to keep your feet dry.
The reserve is open from dawn to dusk. The visitor centre and café from 10:00 to 17:00
Normal admission charges apply. Free for National Trust members.
Details on the National Trust site

Exhibition preparations

March 12, 2018

Sally and I met on Friday to review our work and discuss exhibition preparations. We spread our work out on the floor and had a critique session. I can't share pictures - we were too involved to take many anyway - but I am excited to see all our work coming together. And it was revealing to see both the differences and the similarities in our response to the same source material.

We both still have much to do and our deadlines our almost upon us now. There is a mass of administrative preparation to do alongside finishing our work. One of those is publicity, so above is our flyer with details of the exhibition. There will be two elements to this. The first is a gallery exhibition at Babylon Gallery in Ely, Cambridgeshire. The second is an art trail at Wicken Fen itself - Sally and I are thrilled that the reserve managers are willing to let us create some installations in some of the hides at the Fen. The hides have turned out to be an important source of inspiration for us - more on that another time.

In the meantime, a few glimpses of what's been going on in my studio.

Work in progress Helen Terry March2018.jpg

Work in progress Helen Terry March2018-3.jpg

Work in progress Helen Terry March2018-4.jpg

I can never resist arranging the edges as I pile up the finished work ...

Overlapping edges Helen Terry March2018.jpg

Reflections

March 4, 2018

First, some extracts from my notes:

Reflection. Noun.

The throwing back by a body or surface of light, heat or sound without absorbing it.
Serious thought or consideration
An idea about something
An image seen in a mirror or shiny surface
A thing that is in consequence of something else

The physical law of reflection states that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection - if a wave hits the surface at 36°, it will be reflected at 36°. When light waves hit smooth surfaces the waves are reflected uniformly and can form images. Rough surfaces, such as moving water, scatter light in all directions – but each tiny bit of the surface still follows the rule that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.

When light hits a surface, one of three things may happen:

It is absorbed by the surface
It passes through the surface to the other side
It is reflected back.

Materials may show a mix of these behaviours, with a proportion of light being absorbed, transmitted or reflected according to the properties of the material. If light waves strike the surface head on, i.e. at 90°, they will go straight through and come out the other side. There is a critical angle at which light will no longer pass through the surface but be reflected.

An image in a flat mirror:

is the same distance behind the mirror as the object is in front
is the same size as the object
is the right way up
is reversed
is virtual – it appears to be behind the mirror.

Symbolism:

The word mirror comes from Latin mirari – to wonder or marvel at. The Latin word for mirror, speculum, is related to the verb to speculate.
Many beliefs associate mirrors with a capacity to reveal the essential nature of a thing – its hidden or potential qualities.
Self-knowledge – what we see may depend on our receptiveness or resistance to the insights offered.
The sense that beyond the mirror-image of immediate reality might be something quite different.
Passivity – the surface reflects the thing but is unchanged by it.

So where does this get me ...

There is something about the image cast on the surface of the water, but not being part of the water. The image can be very distinct but is unreal, insubstantial, ephemeral. It is disrupted by any movement of the water or change in the light. Plants growing in the water cover or pierce it, disrupting your sense of figure and ground. It is a reversal of reality. It is a trace that cannot exist without the object it reflects but has no physical substance of its own. And yet, on the fen, it can sometimes present you with a clearer view of the things edging the water.

The aesthetic appeal is that the reflection is an abstracted image – a partial and distorted view of the original. A sort of drawing on the water. The reflections I've observed at Wicken covered the full range of clarity from clear, sharp image through every shade of fragmentation to a formless blur that is little more than a green shadow. It is interesting that reflections are traditionally associated both with deception and with a capacity to reveal the truth or hidden qualities of a thing. There is also something about indirect knowledge – many scientific measurements have to be taken indirectly – you get around the impossibility of measuring the thing itself by measuring its echoes or reflections in sound or light waves. Like this recent example. You know the thing by looking at its reflection

I photographed hundreds of reflections on our visits. It sometimes made for slow progress along the lodes or drainage ditches when the conditions were particularly good for this. These photographs have become the basis for much of my work for the exhibition. Reeds or rushes dominate because they are what is most often reflected. But the variety of marks and forms I collected is significant.

Initially I chose some of the clearer and more realistic images, but used printing techniques that introduced distortion. Later I introduced more distorted images that are more obviously reflections. The fragmentation and dissolution of the form reflected in the surface create a pleasing ambiguity. The resulting work is the most figurative I have ever made; but is constructed entirely from abstractions, reflections, rather than images of the reeds themselves.

Work in progress Helen Terry Feb2018.jpg

Reeds

February 18, 2018

It’s halfway through February and not long now until Sally and I present the work we have each developed in our Wicken Fen collaboration. I stopped posting regular updates of our visits to the Fen because they seemed very repetitive. And there have been a lot of them – at all times of year and in widely varying conditions. Although many visits seemed to develop their own theme – ice (visit 10); spiders and cobwebs (visit 9) …

The purpose of these repeated visits has been to experience the Fen at different times and seasons and allow ourselves to be led in new directions in response. We have used drawing, photography, talking and writing to record impressions and develop our ideas. That movement from gathering information to developing work is a difficult phase and this time at least I just didn’t want to blog about it. My ideas shifted over the course of the project and it was better to let them evolve in private.

So, here we are, less than two months until the exhibition, my studio filling up with work, and perhaps now it is time to talk about the main themes that I have homed in on. Let’s start with the reeds.

Reedbeds spring Helen Terry Wicken Fen.jpg

When I think of the fen, I think of the reeds. They are found everywhere and no matter what time of year you visit they set the character of the fen. When Sally and I first visited in early summer 2016, I was dismayed by the tall, thick stands of bright green reed that covered the fen, obscuring views of open water. At the height of summer, they close you in – you cannot see over or through them in places and you may even have to push through them where the path narrows. And the greenness merges into all the other greens, although the dark purple inflorescences are amazing.

But as the year progresses, the leaves fall, the stems slowly bleach and the low sun turns the seedheads pale gold and then silver. The fen opens out again and is filled with light. The silver reeds contrast with the charcoal greys of winter trees. It is more monochromatic but this is how I like to see it best.

Reedbed from Tower Hide Helen Terry Wicken Fen.jpg

Reed seedhead in winter Helen Terry Wicken Fen.jpg

Reedbed from East Mere Hide Helen Terry Wicken Fen-2.jpg

The sound changes too – from a soft, swishing whisper in summer to a dry rustling or crackling in winter. At some times and in some parts of the fen it is almost the only sound you hear. Often you also hear, though you may only glimpse, birds moving through the reedbed; while marsh harriers (or even hen harriers) glide over the top, hunting; and in the evenings flocks of swallows (summer) or starlings (winter) swoop over the reeds before settling to roost. I also love the sight of midges caught by the sunlight over the reeds - like gold dust.

Reedbeds and midges summer Helen Terry Wicken Fen.jpg

Common or Norfolk Reed (Phragmites Australis) grows up to 3 metres and is one of Britain’s tallest native grasses. Remarkably, there is more of the plant below ground than above:

“Strong horizontal rhizomes ramify the soil, sending up forests of vertical shoots that give rise to the aerial parts. The above-ground parts die each year, although the dead stems and leaf bases may remain standing for several years. The rhizome system however is perennial and potentially immortal, producing new growth and shoots year after year, perhaps for centuries.”

— Chapter 4"Reed beds", "Wicken Fen: the making of a wetland nature reserve"; TJ Bennett and L E Friday

Phragmites australis (illustration by D A Showler from "Wicken Fen: the making of a wetland nature reserve").

Reedbeds are essentially swamp and a transitional habitat between land and water. If the water is too deep aquatic plants have the edge; too dry and herbs and shrubs take over. At Wicken Fen a programme of cutting and burning is necessary to prevent the transition from reedbed to scrub and close monitoring and manipulation of water levels is essential to keep the fen wet but not too wet. What seems such a “natural”, unspoilt landscape actually depends upon human intervention to keep it in this transitional phase.

Reedbeds offer a diversity of habitat that is extremely valuable for birds and insects. Some British birds only breed in reedbeds and common reed supports a dazzling variety of invertebrates in every part of the plant. “Some of the rarest creatures on the reserve are also the smallest and least visible” is a remark made by one of the Managers at the Fen, that has stayed with Sally and me.

So where does this get me:

The reeds dominate the landscape, habitat, appearance, sound and colour of the fen.
They are a plant of the edge, neither land nor water, and constantly seeking to advance in either direction.
Seen vs unseen - they are highly visible but there is even more that is hidden. They have "secrets" in the form of invertebrates that live or breed within the plant or birds or mammals that hide in the reedbeds.
Light and colour - as ever I prefer the winter colours. Particularly the effects of the light in autumn and winter.

Reed imagery is featuring in most of my work, but I am particularly interested in the reflections they make in the water. More on this later.

More information:

Wicken Fen: the making of a wetland nature reserve - ed Laurie Friday (Harley Books / The National Trust. Colchester. 1997)
The Wildlife Trusts: Reedbeds
The Wildlife Trusts: Common Reed

A Marginal Space -Detail-Helen Terry 2017

New work

May 7, 2017

Although I have not been writing about it here, between visits to Wicken Fen I have been working away on a new group of work. It is a continuation of last year’s “Between the Lines” series in that it repeats the imagery and themes, but is sufficiently different that I have given it its own title, “A Marginal Space”.

There were several aspects of “Between the Lines” that I wanted to develop further so, over several days in January and early February, I filled a sketchbook with collage experiments. Working with paper and on a small scale meant that I could work fast and try out lots of different ideas without getting too precious or hung up on any one of them. And to help me think differently, I set a series of “rules” in opposition to my previous approach. I found it was relatively straightforward to translate what I learned from this exercise into cloth.

I’ve made fourteen pieces of work in this group and spent several days recently photographing them. I love these detail images. They really focus attention on the marks.

A Marginal Space detail 2 Helen Terry 2017

A Marginal Space detail 3 Helen Terry 2017

A Marginal Space detail 4 Helen Terry 2017

A Marginal Space detail 6 Helen Terry 2017

Several pieces from this group will be exhibited at Gallery 57 in Arundel for the exhibition, Gaze, Glimpse: A look at landscape (24 June – 6 August). This is a lovely gallery, run by Ann Symes, and I am thrilled to be exhibiting there alongside a wonderful group of other artists. In fact you can see a preview of the new pieces here.

In the meantime, I also have some work in Bircham Gallery’s current Early Summer Exhibition, which is on until 24 May.

Wicken Fen: fifth visit

February 25, 2017

Sally and I squeezed in another visit to the Fen last weekend. A shorter visit than our previous ones but we are keen to make the most of what remains of the winter. The weather was duller than had been forecast but at least it was mild.

The Workshop attached to the Fenman’s Cottage was open and so we went in to explore. The 18th century cottage was inhabited until the 1970s when the National Trust acquired it as a rare survival of a vernacular Fenland building. The workshop was filled with tools and examples of Fenland crafts. Tucked amongst all these were a collection of animal skulls and, bizarrely, a stuffed mole poking its head out of an enamel mug.

It was hard to take good photographs in the low light without a tripod. Sally and I were drawn to the collection of old photographs pinned to one of the walls. The photos were faded, speckled and curled with age. We were interested in what this did to the images.

Constrained for time, we headed towards Baker’s Fen which was less busy than the main part of the reserve. This time I was concentrating on the colours of the fen. On this overcast February day, the overall impression was paleness. Bleached reeds, withered leaves, silver water. The reeds have a warm red undertone but everything else is a cold grey. A pile of freshly cut willow on the other hand was blue-green and rust. A short-eared owl glided over the reeds, stopping us in our tracks. Its feathers matched the fen.

I deliberately over-exposed some of my photographs. This exaggerated the paleness, removed detail and created more abstract images. The results remind me of the faded photographs in the fenman’s workshop.

Abstract Fen-Wicken Fen-Helen Terry February2017

Abstract branches-Wicken Fen-Helen Terry-February2017

Reflections Wicken Fen January2017 Helen Terry

Wicken Fen: fourth visit

January 8, 2017

I left home early in an attempt to reach the Fen by dawn. Winter mornings, especially if there is mist or frost, can be lovely. But this was a grey, drizzly January morning, so it probably didn’t matter that I arrived later than hoped.

In summer the fen felt closed-in, opaque and overwhelmingly green. You couldn’t see past the lush vegetation. Now, it feels as though the landscape has expanded and opened out. I can see through bare twigs, reeds and trees. Areas of open water that had been totally obscured by the reed beds, reflect light even on a grey morning. The colours are winter greys accented by acid green or yellow (lichen, moss), pale blue (water, sky) and warm golds or ochres, where the sun catches the leaves.

This time Sally and I explored the southern part of the reserve to the edge of Burwell Fen. Winter crops were pushing through adjacent fields – undulating, dotted lines of emerald green against indigo-black soil.

Fields Wicken Fen January2017 Helen Terry

In places, vine-like plants have twisted and wound themselves together to create dense, matted coverings over fences at the edge of the paths. A little surreal. I particularly liked the contrast with the reeds behind.

Matted plants Wicken Fen January2017 Helen Terry

We remain interested in the hides and found two new ones to explore. Once again I was interested in the way reflections in the windows disrupt or overlay the view. Taking photographs through rain-spattered glass resulted in some impressionistic images too.

But the main thing that excited me on this visit were the reflections in the water. These varied according to the light, the water quality and any disruption in the surface. My favourite was one ditch where some disturbance had turned the water a milky blue-green, the perfect background for the shadows and reflections cast by the willows and linear marks of the reeds growing out of the water and fallen branches.

In the afternoon the sun emerged and turned the surface of Wicken Lode silver. Trees and reeds on the opposite bank were reflected up side down while reeds in the foreground cut across these images. Monochromatic, linear images. Positive and negative space.

Reflections Wicken Fen Helen Terry January2017-1.jpg

Reflections Wicken Fen Helen Terry January2017-1-7.jpg

Reflections Wicken Fen Helen Terry January2017-1-6.jpg

Reflections Wicken Fen Helen Terry January2017-1-8.jpg

There is something about these images cast on the surface of the water but not being part of the water. The reflection can be so distinct but is essentially unreal, insubstantial, ephemeral. They are an indirect way of looking at the original. And a reversal or distortion of what's there. Some are so clear that my photograph could be taken for the original. But I like those where there is just enough disruption to make you question what you see.

Diana Harrison: Working in cloth

September 25, 2016

The Crafts Study Centre in Farnham is currently showing an exhibition of textile art by Diana Harrison. I have seen individual pieces in the past – at Cloth & Memory in Saltaire in 2013; at the V&A’s Quilts exhibition (2010) – but this was a wonderful opportunity to see a comprehensive body of Harrison’s work, together with samples and reference material.

Diana Harrison: working in cloth, Crafts Study Centre 2016

So often, all you see of an artist’s work is the completed, final piece on a gallery wall – the resolution of the process. You don’t see the things that inspired them or the trials and experiments they worked through on the way to that piece. Nor do you often get to see several pieces of work that cover a sufficient period of time to allow you to see how one piece has grown out of another or the themes that recur from one to the next.

I often think that this leads to a distorted view where all the focus is on the final product rather than the process that led to it or its wider context. And so far my own experience has been that that is not an effective way to work. All my best ideas have come out of the process of exploring and experimenting without necessarily knowing where it would lead.

In Harrison’s case, it is particularly valuable to see a more complete picture because what came through for me was how her work is underpinned by a deep and thorough engagement with her materials and techniques and a consistent interest in edges, structures, folds, worn surfaces and transitions. A long, low shelf displays collections of objects and samples – material references – worn, flattened, packaging with marks collecting in the folds and creases; creased or folded papers; small samples and trial pieces that provide a rich context for the finished work on display.

Diana Harrison material references Crafts Study Centre 2016

Harrison’s work creates an impression of strength, simplicity and quiet sophistication. This is achieved through a complex layering of repetitive and sometimes intricate mark making and surface treatment using dye, print, discharge and stitch. In several pieces, the cloth is pierced or burnt away so that only a framework of stitches holds the piece together. This is fascinating to examine close to, but when you stand back, the focus shifts to composition: simple forms, subtle tonal progressions and contrasts between light and dark. I love the interplay between simplicity and complexity in this.

Line (2011) was my favourite piece. Six long, narrow panels (12cm x 640cm in total) that reference separate decades of life. Each panel was different and could have stood on its own; but there were delicious transitions from one to the next. Trying to photograph all six panels together, the image read on my camera screen as a single line. I even tried to see if I could persuade myself to read the actual piece as a single, continuous mark, like a stroke of charcoal drawn lightly across a rough surface, but could not quite - there were definite breaks and changes in the rhythm and texture that resisted this. Which of course mirrors how many of us actually experience different decades of our lives.

Pillowcases (x6), a new piece of work, was another favourite. Six ordinary pillowcases that had been deconstructed and alternately dyed, printed and stitched. The fascination was in the way the cloth had been folded over and back on itself, exploiting the contrasts of dark and light to make different forms and shapes. I loved the way the folds interrupted the flatness of the cloth and the juxtapositions of different tones and textures.

The V&A produced this video of Diana Harrison talking about the inspiration for her piece, Box, in 2010.

Diana Harrison: Working in Cloth is on until 8 October 2016. Diana is giving a lecture on 5 October and there is an excellent and comprehensive catalogue, available from the Crafts Study Centre.

All the work shown in this post is by Diana Harrison, please give credit accordingly if you copy or share these images. I am grateful to her and to the Crafts Study Centre for permission to take photos.

Mirrored view: Wicken Fen project August 2016 Helen Terry

Wicken Fen: third visit

September 4, 2016

Sally and I made another visit to Wicken Fen earlier this week on what turned out to be an uncomfortably hot day. There is little natural shade, there was virtually no breeze and, although the hides provided some shelter, as well as being hot they were also stuffy! Not the most comfortable conditions for our third research visit, but we did our best and stayed until evening, drawing and taking photographs. By 7pm the light was glorious and golden … and the heat was finally relenting.

Wicken Fen at early evening. August 2016. Helen Terry

The Fen is still overwhelmingly green. The reeds and sedge have grown up above our heads in places so you cannot see over but are left to peer through. The leaves on the willow, alder, birch and hawthorn look dull and tired. To me, all this foliage is a barrier – it conceals the underlying structure and I find it rather uninteresting. I am impatient to see the leaves off the trees and all the greys and browns of late autumn and winter. But greenness is so characteristic of this place that I may need to make peace with it and see what I can do.

Wicken Fen hide. August 2016. Helen Terry

I don’t think I wrote about our second visit, but every time we’ve been so far, Sally and I seem to be drawn to the hides. We have been photographing through the holes in the walls and the slit windows. One hide has opaque plastic windows and partly conceals the view in a way that interests us. Other visitors were clearly bemused to find us kneeling on the floor pointing a camera at a hole in the wall or drawing what we could see through a closed window!

Opaque windows. Wicken Fen. August 2016. Helen Terry

I am interested in how the hides cause you to see the Fen in sections or fragments. Pursuing this idea I took a small mirror with me this time, propped it against the window and started photographing the reflection. What really interested me though was the juxtaposition of the reflection and the view through the window – and in some cases a secondary reflection in the window too. The result is a combination of landscape fragments that is definitely something to explore further.

Mirrored landscape. Wicken Fen. August 2016. Helen Terry

Mirrored tree. Wicken Fen. August 2016. Helen Terry

In process: screen printing

August 27, 2016

Reviewing a new set of screen prints. Each time I do this I think of different angles to try - one of the advantages of working on several at a time rather than just one piece. I'm about to do some more so am thinking about colour, format, marks, layers.

Screen print and dye book August 2016 Helen Terry

As a way of organising myself I wrote out a list of all the steps I needed to take in order to print these. It was salutary to notice just how much of the process relies on the relatively mundane preparatory tasks - cutting up cloth, mixing dye, sampling, rinsing. Making the screens and actually printing the cloth is only part of the whole. It is useful to remember that when I am managing my time as it is frustrating when I have set aside time for printing to find that I need to do some preparatory tasks first, that could have been done in those small chunks of time between other things.

Screen prints on the wall August 2016 Helen Terry.jpg

I pinned up some of the prints on top of some plainer painted cloth to get a feel for possible combinations. This is all work in progress - much more to do before these become finished pieces of work.

Explorations

August 14, 2016

I seem to be both revisiting ideas from earlier this year and investigating new ones.

I’m working on two separate strands at the moment and they each present a different challenge. In the first, I’ve gone back to the themes and techniques I worked on for my exhibition in February. There were lots of loose ends – things I wanted to take further – so I’m starting to develop a new series of prints in the Between the Lines and Transience series.

I had to overcome a surprising reluctance to this. Having done so much work before I think there was a sense of going back over the same ground. I didn’t want to repeat myself. But of course it doesn’t work that way and as soon as I actually started working on this again, new things emerged. New marks, new thoughts. It’s like my daily walk – when everything is so familiar I can take it for granted. But when I pay attention, there is often something I hadn’t noticed before or something I hadn’t expected to see.

The other strand is the work I’m doing on the Wicken Fen project. This is very different. At the moment everything is exploratory. Sally and I have now made two visits to the Fen and I am playing with my photographs, drawings and making collages. I have no idea where I’m going yet. Well, perhaps I do, but it’s too soon to tell whether it will lead somewhere.

I'm reluctant to share too much yet. These images give a flavour of how I'm working but none of them represent a fixed idea at this point. I think what I'm really trying to do is generate lots of interesting beginnings.

From Clarke's Hide Wicken Fen June 2016 Helen Terry.jpg

Wicken Fen: a new project

June 19, 2016

I am very excited to be starting a new collaborative project with artist Sally Tyrie and on Friday we made an initial research visit to Wicken Fen. This is one of the National Trust’s oldest reserves (acquired in 1899) and one of the last remaining un-drained areas of the East Anglian fens. It is an exceptionally rich wetland habitat.

At this time of year, the dominant impression is greenness. The fen is a mass of tall sedges, grasses and reeds in brilliant emeralds and yellow greens, threaded through with traces of red and rust orange. Flashes of yellow, magenta, blue violet from the many marsh flowers – including orchids. It was gorgeous … but I am really looking forward to seeing the Fen in the winter when the green is bleached out and the underlying structures are exposed.

I’ve visited Wicken before but it was a long time ago and therefore it was like discovering the place afresh. There is that initial phase of orienting yourself within a place – finding your way around, noticing what you notice, what you choose to focus on. As ever, I was consistently drawn to details – marks and traces – reflections, linear marks, particularly of the reeds and sedges at the water’s edge.

But it’s interesting to experience a place with someone else – two pairs of eyes. Sally noticed things that I might have passed over – expanding my awareness, widening the range of things I noticed.

We were drawn to the hides – both the structures themselves and the experience of looking out of them. As well as the viewing hatches, many of them had random holes in the walls (Birds? Knot holes?). So there were lots of ways of looking out, looking through, peepholes, slits, cracks.

Worn and weathered plastic windows veiled and obscured the view – they simplified what you could see into shadowy outlines, veiling and obscuring as much as they revealed. –partial information, selective. My attention moved between the marks on the surface of the window itself and what you could see through it.

Marks on the surface and shadowy landscape beyond

(By the way my new “dream studio” is a wooden shed on stilts, with hatch windows and a good view … although maybe not for wet work.)

No preconceived ideas about what work might result but lots to think about. There will be more visits, visual research, drawing and thinking with a view to developing work for an exhibition sometime next year. So expect to be hearing more about the fens over coming months.

Visit Sally’s web site to see her work and follow her side of this collaboration.

The Broomway

May 15, 2016

What is it like to walk in emptiness? The wet sand reflecting the sky until the two seem to merge into one. Clouds moving across the ground. Vast. Luminous.

Horizons on every side. The edge of the land you've walked out from visible as a narrow, grey-green line ... but distant. The edge of the sea not visible, not audible, but always present in your awareness as the greatest source of danger all the time you are out on the sands. Ships moving slowly along an invisible channel. The coastline of a different county drawing a pale blue ridge line between the sand and sky.

Few sounds. The wind. A cuckoo calling on the mainland. A gull's scream overhead. The constant fizzle of the oozing sands. Feet splashing through water.

Small details that would normally be overlooked. Worm casts dot the sands as the water retreats. Tiny white crabs. A solitary Dunlin. Isolated poles. A broken breakwater drawing a charcoal line in the distance.

The Broomway is a public right of way over the foreshore at Maplin Sands off the coast of Essex. It runs for six miles along the Sands some 400 metres from the present shoreline. The track is extremely dangerous in misty weather as the incoming tide floods across the sands at high speed, and the water forms whirlpools because of flows from the River Crouch and the River Roach. Under such conditions the direction of the shore cannot be determined.

Like the similarly dangerous path across Morecambe Bay, the Broomway has a reputation as “the most perilous byway in England”. It owes this reputation to the disorienting nature of its environment in poor visibility and the near inevitability of death by drowning for anyone still out on the sands when the tide comes in. The Foulness Burial Register records 66 bodies recovered from the sands since 1600, which is only a fraction of the total who have drowned.

The Broomway was formerly marked by a series of markers resembling brooms, but is now unmarked. There is no actual track and access is restricted by the MoD.

Adapted from Wikipedia

More information about the Broomway

Guided walks along the Broomway: Nature Break Wildlife Cruises

Rafael Perez at Contemporary Ceramics May 2016 1

Rafael Pérez: looking for the unexpected

May 8, 2016

London was bathed in sunshine yesterday and I spent a fine, if tiring, day visiting galleries, bookshops and sitting in cafés.

Among other things I caught the final day of an exhibition of sculptures by Rafael Pérez at the Contemporary Ceramics Centre:

“The driving force behind Pérez’s work is surprise and curiosity. He sees ceramics as an art form that offers a labyrinth of possibilities with infinite variables, making a viewer find their way through his pieces to search and explore. In recent years, his work has been focused on the desire to distance himself from the final object, on leaving the “authorship” as a matter shared between the fire and himself. The surprise of ‘non recognition’ between an object that goes into, and then comes out of the kiln, this ‘seeing with new eyes’ (as if the work was done by someone else) is what interests Pérez.”

Contemporary Ceramics Centre

Pérez cuts and layers clays with different properties, such as white porcelain and black earthenware. Some of these clays expand during firing, allowing the object to swell in the kiln. Layers peel apart. Surfaces crack. Forms twist and tear. The resulting forms are reminiscent of obscure archaeological objects – twisted, eroded and encrusted until only a sense of the original form remains. The layers were like book pages or layers of cloth in the process of coming apart from having been coiled and wrapped around each other.

Pérez says that with years of experience he can often predict what will happen but that invariably it is still a surprise with every firing … and it is this element of the unexpected that inspires him.

“… the backbone of my work has always been research and experimentation … I constantly pursue any sign, accident or occurrence with more of a sense of fun than scientifically …”

“ … test pieces clutter up my walls and shelves … but it is out of all this bustling, chaotic activity that my work springs. I am particularly interested in the “other use” of techniques and materials, maybe doing something wrong so as to discover new paths. I love the search in its own right and especially getting results which seem “alien” to me“

Rafael Pérez in Exhibition catalogue

Rafael Pérez at Contemporary Ceramics May 2016

Unexpectedly, this was a theme for the day. Earlier I had been to a discussion between Helen Carnac, who works with metal and enamel, and bookbinder, Tracey Rowledge, at Contemporary Applied Arts on the theme of how they manage, harness and embody “mistakes” in their work.

In summary, while Carnac feels that her work is all about the accidental, chance marks –“mistakes” – and not quite knowing what will come out of the kiln; Rowledge described a more problematic relationship with “mistakes”. On the one hand, mistakes in the construction of a book binding are a “no”, because they undermine its integrity. But on the other, she talked about looking for the unknown, the unexpected, because if the work is always “perfect” and predictable, there is something uninteresting about that and, what is more, your work never moves on.

In my own case, I love the accidental, unexpected marks and finding ways to approach the work so that I have less control and there is room for these accidental, unintended consequences is inherently more interesting to me. That's not the same as being “sloppy” – it’s important that the work is well finished. It’s a balance between practicing the knowledge and skill built up over years of experiment and practice and leaving room for the materials and process themselves to affect the outcome in ways I can’t completely control nor predict.

Drawing

April 10, 2016

Last weekend I set aside some time for drawing. None of these drawings are for their own sake but a way of testing ideas and I had some specific things I wanted to try. The results were mixed and I have some conflicted feelings about them.

First I did a series of ink drawings where the focus was on exploring layers of ink wash. I had not planned that they would turn into a series of “mountain-scapes” but they did. The first was simply an intuitive response to what I was doing at that moment, but then with the next few it became progressively more deliberate … and I became progressively more dissatisfied. I’ve been pondering the reasons for this dissatisfaction.

What I don’t like is that the drawings became more explicit, more literal as I went on – too much so for my taste. They are unequivocally mountain-scapes, leaving no room for alternative interpretation. Yes, they are atmospheric and “pretty” … but in a way I find rather predictable – even trite. They encourage a superficial response. The ones I like best are the simplest and also the more ambiguous.

Piling up drawings - some of the accidental combinations were far more interesting than the individual drawings

It’s as though I had followed a path that, while perfectly pleasant, was not leading me somewhere that I wanted to go. Although I sort of recognised this at the time, it was hard to change direction rather than continue to follow the track I was on. Once my initial crossness with the drawings had passed, over the ensuing days I started to think of ways I could take the method I had been using and push it in a different direction.

The second set of drawings was something I’ve had in mind for a while. They are based on photographs of recently cut hedgerows and inspired in part by Brice Marden’s Shell Drawings. I was interested in developing the calligraphic qualities of the twig shapes.

Hedge drawings - Indian ink, ink wash, charcoal

Curiously I didn’t enjoy the process of making these drawings that much, although I forced myself to do enough of them to expose a reasonable range of options. I do like the results better. The challenge here is how to develop them further. Initially it felt like a dead end – how on earth could I use these? Their monochrome character, which is part of their appeal, is problematic with dye. But gradually I have been identifying some ways forward.

If I had written this post last weekend it would have been a stream of irritation. It’s lovely when I do something and it just works, but there are lots of times when they don’t. Sometimes I need to allow some time to pass before I can see where to go next. And sometimes I have to recognise when I’m going the wrong way and need to retrace my steps.