Waiting
Nothing in this film is genuine
Upcycling has had a revival from its past as a make do and mend because something new is beyond the budget. This idea has become especially popular during the pandemic when it is not as easy to access goods as it was although it can be said that online shopping has made it simpler. However, many people have time on their hands and upcycling something is more satisfying than clicking basket on the internet.
This work uses ideas that everything during lockdown is known, we cannot go anywhere, see other people or things, we can only view on a computer. Making artwork has become a challenge for my usual way of working which takes inspiration form what is around me, the thoughts and ideas that are generated just by being in a different place. It doesn’t have to be entirely new but not everyday. However, I have had to change my ways and look for the new in the old.
I began looking at all the work, the photographs, films, sound pieces I had recorded in the past and realised that it was an archive waiting to be mined. If it were a sketchbook, I would have had no hesitation but this seemed different. I took a series of six photographs and made them into a film, changing viewpoints as I went along. Picking out the salient features rather than looking a t the photographs as single entities and finished in their own right. To this I added a sound track made up of how I remembered the sounds that I heard .
The sounds were taken from the road to the beach on the Caribbean island of Tortola, from early morning at Highness Farm near Vadodara, India and from my own accompaniment to those sounds using a soprano recorder in an abandoned building, from birdsong near home in the East Midlands, England, underwater in the Mermaid’s Pool on Kinder Scout Derbyshire and from steps taken in an art studio in Stoke on Trent.