Det Grafiske Værksted & Tolne Gjæstgivergaard - Residency

November 7th - December 3rd 2017

During my residency at DGV I have been exploring radical new possibilities within printmaking, using the surrounding landscape of the coastline of Hirtshals and the forests of Tolne to begin a deep conversation between earth and body.

Monoprints, carborundum, cyanotype, etching, photography, film & performance are the mediums I use, one influencing the other. Together they show the flow state inside the rhythm of walking.

Etching is a powerful process to evoke the place, meaning, and feeling of the continual shifting environment.Using my body as an instrument, weathering etching plates in the landscape.  And in such a way, heightening the feeling of exposure, scale, time, and human presence on earth.

Capturing the shift in the ever-changing shoreline through moving etching plates across the tidal patterns of the stones using my feet.

Using the weathered environments shaped by the surrounded place questions how I move throughout the world. My body’s relationship to this interaction and how we inhabit ourselves. To nature, objects, trace, reflection.

Northern Denmark's dynamic and shifting terrain is oscillated as a bodily experience, an unpredictability to embrace. Where the rhythm of my walk meets the day, the weather, the etching plates on the land. Representing the season to the relationship of cold and what the cold is to the land. 

At this moment I felt all I could do was to walk backwards. This is how my feet gripped onto the plates. I then traced the lines made by following with the camera these paths made.

Documenting the nature of the weather and the nature of change. I am walking backwards, it’s not easy but it’s crossing the possibilities of what is behind and the threshold of the future.

Uncovering the edges of the shore, I walk to catch the last of the light. The time drawing my legs closer to the edge where the sun is gold, sitting within the clouds. My one focus catching it. I get closer to the edge on the sand and set my camera on the tripod. This time I also carry with me a smaller camera to place around my neck, capturing the closer details of my movements. I had ropes and tape to stick my feet to the plates, however in the moment of being pulled into the land beneath, it lured me into simply, using my feet, my toes to grip.

Feeling my feet again, toe by toe.

Feeling my body come alive with movement.

These acts of engagement move with the world into thoughts collected as a way to make known the ways I am thinking through the world.

An act into knowing the world.

The movement of my body to the waves forces. The love of action of intimate presence with the reality of moments.

To view a clip of the film visit my Instagram

On colour:

I close my eyes and think of the colour of the sand that evening. Of how it felt on my skin and the noise it made rumbling underneath the etching plates. A soft colour against a harsh feeling of the hardness of the stones. A way of connecting to the world and the land around.

Talking to observers, passer by’s is just as fascinating to me as it is to them.

A dog walker: ‘Can I ask what it is you are doing?’

I replied: ‘A dance with the sea’.

‘Resembling the inner fight with a motion that is reflected out, out into the open, out into the sea, out on the edge, the edges that see me’. – Sharon Blackie - 'If Women Rose Rooted'.

Thank you for the support of DGV and Tolne GGG. For allowing space and time and welcoming me so warmly. 

http://www.hgv.dk/

http://www.tolneggg.com/