News: Library of Memory project

After many failed attempts to access my blog from various friends machines, success has come almost half way through the Library of Memory project so I've a little catching up to do. Yesterday was the mid-way installation in conjunction with the WW1 remembrance show and event of the 11th. The understanding of form, proportion and selecting just what is of importance in creating a portrait is exaggerated with the use of large paper stock and all of 60 seconds to create their work. Line tone and shadows are considered with all three coming together in the forth final drawing on toned paper. This drawing is finally applied to cereal boxes brought in by the children, sprayed black and a selected portrait from WW1 applied inside.

This is under half of the boxes which will be eventually produced, leaving me sometimes wondering if I should be a little less ambitious but it's a habit and one I wish not to loose if I can.

Having finished that, what was left was the cutting of a spy hole and the installing of the installation. 

It's difficult to know just what a 10 year old sees in the faces of those about to experience the undescribable from a hundred years before and what if any sort of link they have with them. But perhaps the simple trick of seeing anothers eyes in the image of themselves may just reach far enough to bridge this generation of comparative peace with those who laid the foundations of our lives today.

news: Library of Memory - progress report

"I was ere" - these more than any other set of words are what sticks in my mind from my childhood of scrawled or scratched messages around the schools I went to. No name attached, probably for obvious reasons but then I think the ego-centric culture we seem to be living in was perhaps in this dimension, in it's infancy. Instead it seems to me that these 3 words are a wish to understand what and how connects us to a certain place and time followed by a question, do these moments exist beyond the personal reference through whom they were enacted.

To put it simply, how do past moments exist in the present time and can we build a means to connect others to this moment from the past.

The memorials to the victims of WW1 with their often solitary military figures, dying, or in sorrow, metal hat tilted and shielding those lost stares into the inner landscapes of pain and horror. Often it was the heavy folds in their battle dress and labored bandage around the calfs which fascinated me as a child and still does to a degree even now. They seemed to alone express the significance of a moment, they transported me and the presented form beyond the stone or metal in which they were made, transporting all to a shared melancholic space.

first project book page for 'Library of Memory'

working often through visual references I'm fascinated in the ability of memorials to bridge both time and space with those far removed from the act in question. This ability and the language of memorial and remembrance is an interesting and exciting aspect for such a project which takes it's starting point that of the 100 year anniversary of the end of WW1.

Early consideration for how the work by the children could be incorporated into an installation. Consideration must be made for the time and economic limits of such a project.

I'm keen to explore not only through the visual arts this question of the language of memorial. The medium of words both specific and emotional, abstract or exact, factual and poetic.  Words would seem an exciting form both as text and speech to work with. It would be great to have the chance to work with perhaps poets or writers in parallel on such a theme but money and time are not endless. As we say, something for another day.

 < some notes on the intro session and how to link it in the minds of the children to the theme of the WW1 and then the act of remembering.

news: Development of the up and coming project- Library of Memory

I've been invited to create and lead a schools arts photography project in London this coming November and thought it may be of interest for those involved and maybe others too to get a glimpse of the development process. I've been asked to base or link the beginning of the project to the World War 1, exploring through this theme the nature of memories and memorial. For me the starting point was to find myself staring into the eyes belonging to the faces since long dead and ask, what have I done with the gift you have given me and how should I thank you?