Interventions

As part of a two year research project in the department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University with neuroscientist Kia Nobre I exhibited work at the Ashmolean Museum.

I installed photographs from a new photographic series called Freshers; the complete series Heimlich taken during a TrAIN residency in Germany and Diorama (colour channels), a small object launched with the Multiple Store in different galleries of the collections.

The interventions were accompanied by a series of talks and workshops including a joint lecture with Prof Nobre in the Headley Lecture Theatre - Ashmolean Museum.

Approaching from the displays of ancient Greek pottery, visitors encountered the triptychs Freshers on the staircase opposite regency portrait busts by Sir Francis Chantrey. Since my installation and online project walkalone-neverwalkalone at the Harris museum responding to Greek and Roman Friezes of sport and war, I have been interested in their depiction of groups of people in movement and how this relates to my panoramic film-strips. There is an ambiguity whether the people in silhouette are instances of the same person over time or different people doing similar activities. These temporal and spatial shifts are evident in the ancient Greek vases at the Ashmolean showing silhouettes of mainly women in daily life and in the taking of the photographs of students in the same position over time and their juxtaposition into new narratives. The triptych of various combinations of students’ photographs are hung over several levels adjacent to portrait Chantrey busts.

The series heimlich, which consists of 19 photographs, was taken during a residency at Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral in Germany not far from the place where I grew up. The photographs of reflections on the surface of the river Lahn were installed along the small landscape sketches in the Oil Skech Gallery. The reflected buildings, landscape and sky are presented upside down as mirror images. The movement of the water creates movement in the images (distortions and abstractions) that take on the quality of an elusive memory. The juxtaposition of the inverted landscape photographs with the paintings create a dynamic instability and trigger a perceptual reorganization in our minds.

Diorama (colour channels) was shown in one of the Renaissance galleries where the transparent images of people walking overlap with multiples/objects and paintings of the time.

• http://blogs.arts.ac.uk/camberwell/2017/...