Gwithian Chapel Residency

Day 2

Today I did not actually spend time in the chapel.

Instead I found myself thinking about what had happened at the end of yesterday. Before leaving the space on the first day, I placed a few empty frames on the floor and began moving them around, simply seeing how they might sit within the room. It was a small and instinctive action, but it stayed with me afterwards.

This act connects to a piece I am currently working on for an upcoming exhibition. I began to make the piece while clearing out my studio and trying to make sense of the chaos I regularly create there. While tidying, I came across a discarded square frame, and I was reminded of quadrat observation we did in school.

A simple method used in ecology where a square frame is placed on the ground and everything inside it is observed and recorded. I always enjoyed the quiet focus of that activity. It was a way of looking closely at a small section of the world and noticing things that might otherwise be overlooked.

I began arranging and rearranging the objects within that frame, allowing me to observe what was happening in the studio, in my process and sometimes in my own thinking. It was a helpful way of noticing connections between different strands of work. A way of looking down into a small field of my studio. Ceramics, nails, bones, fragments, dirt, tools and a sketchbook are gathered together there. Different threads of work sit side by side. Some unfinished, some waiting to be developed, some simply left over and some still a mystery to me.

It feels natural that the same idea has followed me into the chapel.

The frames I placed on the floor yesterday may become small zones of attention within the space. Places where fragments from the studio can gather. Ceramic shards, tools, notes, unfinished pieces or other materials I am thinking with. This is the joy of a residency, the space, both literally and in my head, allows this.

Rather than presenting finished artworks, the frames might hold the residues and components of the practice itself.

For now this is only the beginning of an idea. But it feels like a useful way to think about the space over the coming days.