Moving Through

Moving Through

The summer holidays are nearly over now, just one more week and it is back to routine again. A couple of days ago I revisited the Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate to see an exterior art installation that I had only seen once before at dusk.

Art installation, 'Dwelling', Margate, at dusk.

It is called ‘Dwelling’ and is one half of a piece of artwork by Krijn de Koning. The other half is on exhibition at the Folkstone Triennial, which opens tomorrow and runs until the 2^nd of November.

On a previous visit to the Turner one Friday evening a few weeks ago, we came across this installation.

 

As seen in context with the Victorian seafront.

It is situated on the terrace and nestles between the rear bulk of the building and the concrete access ramp and steps.

Concrete ramp up.

It is a series of spaces that are human scale and allow access in and views through the artwork.

Human scale art installation.

That in itself was interesting, but to see it on a sunny day in its Technicolor glory was even better.

 

Lido-esque colour and forms.

It reminded me of a lido, colourful, fresh and fun. 

 

walk through space.

Tomorrow we will venture to Folkstone to visit the Triennal to see the other half of his work. The location there couldn’t be more different. The work is situated in Cliffside Victorian Pleasure grounds. ‘Dwelling’, Folkstone is on the zig-zag path within a Victorian cave-like grotto on the seafront. For me and my interest in how we encounter situated objects in the environment and especially in the landscape as we move through it, this is a great project to visit.

The sky yesterday evening, beautiful layers of clouds.

Skying

There are lots of things I like to watch, clouds are one of them. It seems I am certainly not alone in this preoccupation. Apart from the superb Mondrian exhibition currently at the Turner, there is two other artists work on display.

 

'Atmosphere', by Edmund de Waal.

Downstairs in the wonderful double height space is an exhibition by Edmund de Waal named ‘Atmosphere’.  He has created a space which encourages the viewer to lie on the floor and experience his work from underneath. There are many large linear clear boxes hanging from the ceiling which are filled with his porcelain vessels.

 

Looking out to sea from the gallery.

These boxes seem to float and create a feeling of clouds and changeable atmosphere depending on the light and weather conditions outside. He has named the boxes or vitrines as he prefers to call them, after cloud formations and requests that you

 ‘Lie on the ground as you do your own skying’.

 

Skying.

The 19^th century painter John Constable, refers to the act of ‘skying’ in a letter sent to John Fisher in 1821.  

‘I have done a good deal of skying’, is one of the many quotes, that De Waal has also used to create a large wall piece.

Lovely description of atmosphere from Ruskin.

I think this is a quietly impressive piece of work and would like it in my home!

Then if there were no clouds on a dull grey day to watch I could look at the wall and find inspiration, moving my gaze from one quote to another and following the horizon line the De Waal text makes.

Text horizon.

No Touching!

Upstairs in the Spencer Finch exhibition the luminous cloud is not for touching. 

 

Spencer Finch's untouchable cloud.

This seems pretty unfair as it is easily within my and my children’s grasp and teases with its construction.

Cloud detail.

Wooden pegs hold it together and if they aren’t tempting to touch, then I don’t know what are. The curator quickly encourages us to feel a sample of the sheet material that is crunched up and held together by the pegs. We have done this many times before, but still ask her what it is and feel it again. It does allow the tactile experience of such a teasing object, but I wonder if on the last day whether they could just turn their backs for a few minutes…

 

Evening clouds over the Isle of Sheppey.

 (I completed my MA last September and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called www.thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)

The space between things

 

Summertime

Summer holidays are busy times and routine flies out of the window. This is in itself a refreshing break.  It can be seen as the space between things, time to breathe and take stock. In reality though, more often than not, it can include frustrating times, recognising that the flow forward of any project is not moving at the steady pace which was set a month ago. The space between things is something that I have always been interested in within aesthetics and a design context but to recognise it with time in mind is a new phenomenon for me.

The space between things.

Obviously, Summertime sits between the Spring and Autumn seasons and school summer holidays are within that space. As I have two fairly young sons this time is lively and full, project plans slow down and I know that I will have to jump aboard onto the flow forward soon enough.

Moving forward

I believe how we encounter space and what emotions it stirs in us is fascinating.

A bridge, a safe path to follow.

Design is a powerful process that can be used to influence how people feel in a space. An example of this in its very basic form is to imagine a room, quite bare but at its centre on the floor lays a brown standard brick. Now, imagine how this would compare with the same room, again quite bare except in the centre there is a beautiful vase of colourful flowers. Each encounter would feel very different. This is what encouraged me to explore Spatial Design all those years ago, yet over time I have become more interested in our movement through space to the destination. Factors such as orientation of the building, circulation flow of its occupants and how spaces relate to each other through doorways, over thresholds and with the people who inhabit them are significant in my design process. Moving forward and recognising the space between is physical and temporal.

Desire Paths

My MA led me to research ‘Desire Paths’, these are paths which humans make to take shortcuts when the constructed paths are too awkward and perhaps longer to take.

Desire Path, a  shortcut to the seat

I saw a great example of a couple at Kent and Canterbury hospital last week.  Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo but I should think that institutional places are probably the best places to spot them. If anyone can make themselves feel individual by walking a different path, then it would be on this land. I wonder whether if in the country, it may feel safer to follow a path, amongst the wild but the opposite may be true in urban areas as planned pathways may be overlooked, except in the rain, and our wilder instinct of following the best route may prevail! It would be interesting to see whether any town planners, architects etc have left the paths until last and then create more solid and permanent pathways from the desire paths of the inhabitants. Their construction would follow the trace of pedestrian use.

Trace and Traversal

This was the title of my final project last year. I created a design methodology to trace forgotten ancient routes in the landscape and bring them back to life through the act of walking, connecting people to place. I wrote that geographers and archaeologists search for these traces in the landscape, which can in turn inspire artists and designers.

Old 'No Swimming' sign painted on the prom.

Personally I have always been inspired by the idea of layers. This could be translated as a poetic nostalgia when looking at the wear layer on industrial archaeology such as canal lock gate mechanisms to perceived colour layers seen when observing a landscape or urban scene. So the idea of searching for a layer of human trace in the environment, added to my existing interest in encountering space as we move through it to a destination was of great interest. Add to this a love of maps, walking and being married to a topographic surveyor, my project choice seems obvious now!

Layers

Yesterday, on a quest to highlight the text in this blog by looking for thresholds and entrance ways to photograph, I walked East along the promenade past brightly painted beach huts towards Herne Bay.

Path down to prom, heading East.

The weather recently has been a steady mix of strong winds, bright sunshine and torrential rain; this has created the most wonderful cloud patterns, layer upon layer of confused cloud cover, each moving at their own speed, high above me.

layers and layers of cloud

Last night I went out into the garden and looked up at the stars for a long while. The more I looked the more I saw. It reminded me of the depth in the sky that I had recognised during daylight hours whilst looking at the clouds.

Detail

Whist sitting on the pebble beach yesterday, I saw mustard coloured lichen on the wood groyne post.

Lichen on post or map of terrain?

It formed a rising layer of texture on a wooden element which had become worn and cracked with age and exposure to the elements. It looked like it could have been an aerial photograph of a sparse landscape or a medieval map fragment, awaiting monstrous beasts to be added by imaginative cartographers. The huge Sea Kale on the beach looks monstrous in itself. It must be about 3 foot in diameter and about 1 foot high, but throughout the year it is a delight. Its early shoots are purple in colour and emerge optimistically from the pebbles, it has blossom in the freezing spring months which turn into globular seed pods and about now it takes up a lot of space on each beach.

Sea Kale, Crambe Maritima

I love the green-blue leaf colour and its wobbly shape. I found a specimen on my promenade which had a Horned Poppy growing next to it, using the giant mass to shelter it and its delicate yellow flowers.

Delicate Horned Poppy

Vistas

From small details to the bigger picture, the question is what next?

Where next?

Well, to enjoy the last of that time, the space between things: to appreciate the details and look at the depths, to squint at the vast vistas and know that I will get there, eventually.

The ancient vast vista from Long Rock towards the Isle of Sheppey.

The path isn’t clear at the moment, but once I get the opportunity to jump onto the flow of the project again, it will find its own way. As the inland water flows out to the sea, forward movement is inevitable. Give me a week and I shall be ready for it!

 

(I completed my MA last September and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called www.thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)

Lammas

Harvest

It is now Lammas-tide, the time of harvesting. Lammas used to be celebrated with a festival at the beginning of August in rural communities. I recognise that this is significant timing for my project too. I am now surrounded by an abundance of information that I have gathered. 

 

An abundance of flowers harvested from the garden.

I have made many very interesting and useful contacts, had conversations about funding, projects, ideas and now need to harvest it, gathering it together, sorting out the wheat from the chaff. It feels similar to the feeling that crept up on me whilst doing my MA, as I realised I had to stop researching, focus on the end goal and write my own project up. It is a form of being overwhelmed, but in a very excited and relieved way as the major background work is coming to a temporary end. It will never be a final end as the design process is an ongoing, changeable beast, with projects like this. Good design requires feedback, use and adaption to become its best workable solution. But this harvesting will signify a step onto the path. I am at least moving forward.

Route-finding

The path that I follow now has to be found. As far as I am aware, this project doesn’t exist anywhere else. So I shall have to find my own way.

 

Direction is needed to route find.

Route-finding is an early part of the design process for the pathways project. So it is with excitement and trepidation that I will now set off and work out the route for the project itself. I know the outcomes I want from my project and these will be clarified as I fill in specific fund raising applications. I have been given advice and contacts from the many individuals that I have recognised as being significantly supportive through my research period and I thank them all.

The Old Ways

A couple of days ago, one of these generous individuals sent me a newspaper cutting from The Guardian newspaper. It was a book review by John Mullan on Robert Macfarlane’s ‘The Old ways’.

A wonderful leisurely read.

I have written about Robert’s books before on this blog, so I know of his writing. I read sections of this book early on in my study. Unfortunately, I was under time pressure then and the text didn’t feel academic enough to allow myself to enjoy reading it all the way through. For whilst studying I had so much reading to do that to read something for pleasure, amongst the background of writing quotes, using the Harvard referencing system and putting everything in context, seemed like an improper use of time! But in this newspaper cutting what I liked best was the phrase John Mullan uses to describe this type of writing. He called it ‘Perambulatory writing: a type of descriptive text that follows the path of the writer.’

Perambulation

This word conjures up images of Victorian prams and piers. The pram that I used for my two sons was a Silver Cross Perambulator.

 

Silver Cross Perambulator.

It was about 30 years old when I first used it and didn’t look too out of place in Whitstable, but it would look unusual now as in the last 10 years it is more fashionable to own a highly engineered, colourful, transformable ‘buggy’. Perambulation was something that people did then and we do now, but have a simpler term for it.

Victorians built piers just for this purpose, to perambulate on for pleasure, out over the sea, to experience a panorama at the end, which was also often used as a landing point for paddle steamers. The pier was designed as a place to walk out on, a path to follow, out, around and back.

 

Deal Pier, not last week.

We walked out on Deal pier last week, to the restaurant at the end where we enjoyed the waves all around us and felt that we were on deck of a ship. But it was safer than that, we didn’t roll and heave with the waves, we enjoyed the experience without any discomfort. As I sat there enjoying the view I understood even more the appeal of pier building to the Victorians. A mixture of grand engineering gestures to embrace technology of the time and pleasure taking for those who could afford the time to perambulate.

Walking App

There is an opportunity to design a walking app as part of this project. Again, I have been given invaluable advice from professionals that I have had contact with over the last few months. But still it feels daunting, mainly because of the technology, which I know nothing about.

Walking...

I design to a brief from the client and as yet I haven’t received one for the walking app. So in the meantime I will need to research other apps and see how they work, then I will work out the best way to use this app with the project I am working on. The production will be a collaboration I expect and may be seen as relative to the Victorian model, seen above. It is also a mixture of grand engineering gestures to embrace the technology of the time and pleasure taking for those who can afford the time to perambulate! I could name it a ‘perambulation app’, if one doesn’t exist already!

Blog

It takes time to write this every week. I enjoy doing so as it is a chance to reflect on my progress with the project. It has become a way to gather thoughts and scribblings and put them into order. Since reading ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron about 12 years ago I have written ‘Morning Pages’. These are one of a number of creative tools that the author advocates in the book to keep personal creativity flowing.
 

Another reminder of the way.

Writing the blog can sometimes be inspired by these early morning scribblings, but often I sit in front of the computer and desperately try and make sense of my wandering thoughts to create a worthwhile read. So it was with interest and amusement that it was suggested that I should write a book. That is some thought. But, in the past, when I have taught spatial design, I have encouraged everyone to think about the contents of their homes. What do the objects signify? Is the home full of original collected artwork, is this a hint that the person would deeply love to create art themselves for example? I mention this as yesterday; I went to the local library to take back a few books and bought 4 more books from their ‘withdrawn’ section.  My house has too many books now for the overloaded bookshelves. Maybe this is the hint I need to think seriously about writing a book. Or maybe I just need to buy more bookshelves!

(I completed my MA last September and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called www.thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)