Triparks update

The Triparks project is drawing to a close after touring the UK for the past 18 months. A final show of the work Bridget Kennedy and myself produced from our residencies in Northumberland National Park is being planned for Allenheads Contemporaty Arts Shop Gallery space along with an evaluation.

A publication to mark the completion of the Triparks project is available to buy from Blurb here

More information about Triparks and other Aune Head Arts (AHA) projects in rural communities is available on their website

Chimera, one of the works produced during the residency is now available to view in full on Vimeo -

Chimera (2008) from Paul Grimmer on Vimeo.

Triparks - Dartmoor Showing

The website to accompany the Triparks program is currently under construction, check for further information - http://www.triparks.info

Chimera

Chimera 2008, Iroko hardwood, MDF, Perspex, brass fastenings, 24" LCD monitor, computer equipment and HD video (22 min, 40 sec), 103 x 65 x 52 cm

Specimen case by Mark Burns and Tony Wiles

Chimera - Hybrid Specimen 1

The 5 body-landscape hybrids shown here as separate cycles and clips are combined to form the video component of Chimera (22 min. 40 secs.). The cycles follow the order indicated here on a continuous loop within the specimen case shown below. For the purposes of the blog they have been separated.

Time-lapse footage of cellular mitosis used with the kind permission of Susana Abreu Ribeiro at The Earnshaw Group, The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, Edinburgh

Chimera - Hybrid Specimen 2

Time-lapse footage of cellular mitosis used with the kind permission of Alexey Khodjakov, Wadsworth Center, Albany, New York

Chimera - Hybrid Specimen 3 (clip)

Time-lapse footage of cellular mitosis - interphase used with the knid permission of Dr. Yuko Mimori-Kiyosue on behalf of Shoichiro Tsukita

Chimera - Hybrid Specimen 4

Time-lapse footage of cellular mitosis used with the kind permission of John Daum & Gary J Gorbsky

Chimera - Hybrid Specimen 5

Time-lapse footage of cellular apoptosis used with the kind permission of Susana Abreu Ribeiro at the Earnshaw Group, The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, Edinburgh

Chimera - Specimen Case

Chimera specimen case constructed by Mark Burns (Burnie) and Tony Wiles, dimensions - 900 x 600 x 400 cm, constructed using Iroko hardwood, Perspex, brass fastenings, 24" LCD monitor and computer equipment.

This design had to be slightly modified by shortening the legs for the final piece.

Chimera - Production Stills

Up the Hill Backwards

Northumberland National Park is home to some of the most remote, uninterrupted, and unpopulated areas of land in the UK. It is a threshold space, a geographical and psychological borderland with a completely unique identity; it is a place of unquestionable beauty. My time in the park was largely spent alone, a sort of solitary release. The vast expanse of the landscape offers a rare opportunity, a time for silent introspection, a feeling of weight and weightlessness, perhaps a glimpse of your own mortality. It is something to do with space, the distant horizon and the big skies; you cannot help but ponder scale, your own existence and the connection you have to what is around you right now. The land seems to whisper to you…

The work I produced during my time in, on and with Northumberland National Park grew from a temporary symbiosis, from a relationship that began more like an infection - my own body as the foreign agent. Negotiating a relationship with the landscape takes time, and as certain systems and processes start to become clear, latent internal conflict becomes visible. It seems there are endless contradictions, a push and pull of opposites: timelessness and dynamism, natural order and the order imposed by man, to name a few. However, these opposites are held in perfect equilibrium, a balance between wilderness and control, an understanding that has developed through years of co-existence. Preservation of this delicate balance is explored in the works Chimera and Transhumation.

There is a profound relationship between the landscape and the body that transcends a singular definition. A hybrid of mythological, philosophical, scientific and spiritual connections must be considered. As my time in the park passed some of these connections were consolidated into a visual language of shared sets - bone and rock, layers that settle, cycles that blend together through time becoming part of a unified and balanced system. I explored the parks archaeological history as a way to communicate these connections, using traces of the body as source material. Though intact examples of human remains are rarely found in the park due to acidic soils I was able to work with archaeologists to examine human bones excavated from similar burial sites in the UK. Bones often ravaged by disease causing premature death or physical deformity, bones respectfully returned to the Earth which once provided life, completing a cycle. Working with scientists at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology and the Centre for Life, further traces of the body were collected. I was able to study time-lapse footage of human and animal cell cycles, in essence, existence expressed in its most universal terms. A highly ordered symmetry of process shared by all living organisms within the park, an order that represents everything we endlessly struggle to control and are helplessly at the mercy of.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank: Dr William Earnshaw and the Earnshaw Research Group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology (Edinburgh) and Professor Charlotte Roberts (Durham University) for their contribution. I would also like to thank The Centre for Life (Newcastle upon Tyne), The Institute of Design Innovation (Middlesbrough), and the Northumberland National Park Authority for their support. Individual footage credits for Chimera: John Daum and Gary Gorbsky, Alexey Khodjakov, Susana Abreu Ribeiro, Shoichiro Tsukita and Yuko Mimori-Kiyosue.

Interference

A quick update on the progression of ideas for the Triparks residency, more information on the blog.

I have been exploring the similarities between the body and the landscape, looking at thresholds and boundaries in particular. I am interested in the idea of the landscape as a
timeless wilderness and the body's transience within this landscape. Viewing the body as a viral agent, attempting to infect, affect, manipulate or assert control over the landscape. I have also been thinking about ideas of isolation and (personal) space, with areas of the national park being amongst the most remote in England.

With the video work I want to locate some of the most remote areas of the park and shoot some footage there. I want to capture some really slow 360 degree panoramic landscape shots, so you can hardly notice the landscape moving or changing. I might film in HD as the landscape itself is so finely detailed. Alongside this I want to capture or sample scientific footage of the body, both internal and external, perhaps looking at bruising, fingerprints, sperm, viruses. What I plan to do is introduce these bodily elements into the landscape in various ways as if they are faults in the film - lens flares, distortions or interruptions, quite pronounced but
abstract.

Triparks Residency

I am currently working as artist in residence in Northumberland National Park and have been contributing to a blog to fully document this period of work but will also add key information to this blog.

Triparks

a project of Aune Head Arts
with Somerset Art Week and Allenheads Contemporary Arts

Rural communities are re-making and re-defining themselves in ways that challenge many fundamentals about life in the countryside. Traditional agriculture is under threat of extinction, while small specialist food producers thrive and take back the means of distributing their produce. This is a period of destruction and re-building that leaves many voices unheard and villages and communities feeling vulnerable and uncertain about their futures.

Art can rarely solve these issues, but it can highlight them. Six artists will spend several weeks in the parks from which they will develop a series of artworks reflecting some aspect(s) of the places and lives they encounter. Artists are chosen not only for the quality of their work but for their ability to work engagingly and sensitively with people and with communities. This project is unique in looking at three diverse rural places, defined by political boundaries. Each place is distinctive, and the project will open a window on the differences and similarities of working and living within a protected landscape.