All that Glitters - Unus Multorum 2020 - Plas Bodfa, Anglesey
A fifth principle. Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that isolates them and makes them penetrable at the same time. Foucault.
On first acquaintance, the dusty shadows cast by the play of winter light that swathed the interior of Plas Bodfa beguiled the senses, enticing a response replete with indeterminate possibilities. The fragments of what remained as human and architectural palimpsest spoke of the gaps and interventions imposed on the house over the century, and the collective remnants of a public and private interior that pervaded its decline and forthcoming revival.
These elements came to rest within the folds of failed emulsion; a mechanical disturbance evident in the series of Polaroid photographs I took during my visit late in November 2019. The images gathered from a space between times with their twilight palette and scarred edges, were indexical of a faded past; the personal and universal sensibilities of memory, time and place, and the process of becoming.
On first acquaintance, the dusty shadows cast by the play of winter light that swathed the interior of Plas Bodfa beguiled the senses, enticing a response replete with indeterminate possibilities. The fragments of what remained as human and architectural palimpsest spoke of the gaps and interventions imposed on the house over the century, and the collective remnants of a public and private interior that pervaded its decline and forthcoming revival.
These elements came to rest within the folds of failed emulsion; a mechanical disturbance evident in the series of Polaroid photographs I took during my visit late in November 2019. The images gathered from a space between times with their twilight palette and scarred edges, were indexical of a faded past; the personal and universal sensibilities of memory, time and place, and the process of becoming.
The innate possibilities that lie within the images I collect are often transformed through other means. Traces of Polaroid origin are re-stated through the intaglio print process to reflect and disturb their outcomes, evocative of Plas Bodfa as a site of heterotopia and my embodied encounter with its present and missing spaces.
The ruptured fabric of the house caused by the reductive and additive processes that have defined the multiple layers of its character and temporal narrative, also prompts a further transformation. Lifting the emulsion from a selection of the Polaroid photographs, the delicate manipulation of the watery, image-laden skins and the unpredictable aftermath of their re-homing on other substrates implies a parallel alteration the house is yet to endure.
Unus Multorum was to have opened as an exhibition in Plas Bodfa in April 2020 with 111 artists selected by Julie Upmeyer, the project's Initiator and Curator, from her Open Call to creatives in 2019. A hugely diverse range of art forms, installations, performances, sound works and the multiple editions of Plasbodfa Objects were ready to be revealed to the public just before the Coronavirus Lockdown was announced.
The ruptured fabric of the house caused by the reductive and additive processes that have defined the multiple layers of its character and temporal narrative, also prompts a further transformation. Lifting the emulsion from a selection of the Polaroid photographs, the delicate manipulation of the watery, image-laden skins and the unpredictable aftermath of their re-homing on other substrates implies a parallel alteration the house is yet to endure.
Unus Multorum was to have opened as an exhibition in Plas Bodfa in April 2020 with 111 artists selected by Julie Upmeyer, the project's Initiator and Curator, from her Open Call to creatives in 2019. A hugely diverse range of art forms, installations, performances, sound works and the multiple editions of Plasbodfa Objects were ready to be revealed to the public just before the Coronavirus Lockdown was announced.
I had already made several visits to Plas Bodfa to prepare the space where my work, All that Glitters, was to be installed but I was stopped in my tracks hours before travel, just one of many artists who would experience the same aftermath and opportunity of all that has ensued. The original Polaroid photographs, the series of solar plate etchings and emulsion lifts on panel, and the beautiful, degraded wall that beckons them home to Plas Bodfa, remain in waiting.
Constraints of access to physical sites and spaces I have been researching have long been part of my practice; the process of waiting embedded in the temporal narrative and performance of place. As the Unus Multorum 2020 community of artists we are grateful for this time and to Julie Upmeyer for the gift of the evolving project which has now expanded into the digital realm and found a new life with possibilities far beyond its original intent.
Al that Glitters, Unus Multorum, Plas Bodfa
https://www.plasbodfa.com/unus-multorum
Steph Shipley
April 2020
Constraints of access to physical sites and spaces I have been researching have long been part of my practice; the process of waiting embedded in the temporal narrative and performance of place. As the Unus Multorum 2020 community of artists we are grateful for this time and to Julie Upmeyer for the gift of the evolving project which has now expanded into the digital realm and found a new life with possibilities far beyond its original intent.
Al that Glitters, Unus Multorum, Plas Bodfa
https://www.plasbodfa.com/unus-multorum
Steph Shipley
April 2020
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