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Collaboration 2

Exchange 12

July 2nd 2020

The Russian doll images prompted my initial response. I scanned the doll images onto sheets of paper and used them to make a series of origami folded boxes with lids. They fitted into each other the same way as a stack of Russian dolls and in the smallest box I put the words: When, Was, Girl, Free, Yes and Why, which I cut from the printed poster I was sent. 

[viv-allen]

Collaboration 2

Exchange 11

June 18th 2020

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Collaboration 2

June 8th 2020

Exchange 10

I photographed the lamp different coloured backgrounds (one blue the other green) showing through the bubble wrap and printed the photographs back to back on single sheet of paper. From newspaper I cut the words which were used in the the dream-catcher response (see exchange 7) Where, When, Why, Free, Girl, Alone, How, Was and Yes. I glued each word to a single bubble of bubble wrap and then glued these to the printed image with a blue background. 

In a similar way I glued bubbles onto the image with a green background but this time using words I felt fitted the mood of the image:  Wind, Look, Dreamy, Universal and Spell.

[viv-allen]

Collaboration 2

May 13th 2020

Exchange 9

A single word bird returned to me suspended by wires. The whole piece worked as a lamp made from a string of fairy lights, the shade was made from large bubble wrap and the bird nestled in it’s centre. Inserted inside occasional bubbles were single letters or words cut from text.

[viv-allen]

Collaboration 2

February 27th 2020

Exchange 8

I unthreaded the origami birds from the dream catcher, and cutting words and letters from printed text I extended their wings.

I took pencil rubbings of the words which were stamped onto the metal tags and cut the words and glued them on some of the other birds wings. 

The coloured paper bird which was from the centre of the dream-catcher hoop I also extended its wings but this time using coloured text. 

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Collaboration 2

21st January 2020 

Exchange 7

My word birds were returned to me threaded on embroidery silks and in the form of a dream catcher. The three strands which hung were weighted by metal tags at their ends, and a further six tags were bent round and bound to the hoop. Each tag had a word stamped into the metal, their were a total of nine words:

Where, When, Why, Free, Girl, Alone, How, Was and Yes

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Collaboration 2

December 18th 2019

Exchange 6

In response to the work I received, I tore out pages from the book and made origami cranes with them. I placed them between the pages and sent the work back in the post. I feel the intervention I took was responding to the bound, restricted and fixed qualities of the work when I received it. Somehow the freedom which birds symbolise seemed to redress this and by cutting the knots and allowing light and air into the book it became more about liberation and possibility to me.

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Collaboration 2

November 20th 2019

Exchange 5

An intriguing response which I really loved, a book the cover of which had been removed and sections of pages were folded and secured tightly with knotted embroidery silks. It felt secretive or private because I couldn’t access the piece fully. 

I waited for several days to see if I felt I should dismantle the work to see if there was more or if I felt that was too intrusive and make my response only to what I could see as. My curiosity got the better of me and I decided to cut the threads and open the pages

Inside, within the hidden pages were a number of scribble-like images, some like small drawings others of writing. None were recognisable as either a particular thing or words I could read. They had a wonderful spontaneous quality, expressive and childlike.

[viv-allen]

Collaboration 2

October 11th 2019

Exchange 4

The exchange 3 which I was responding to felt so complex that my best response it felt was to capture what I saw and felt using words.

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Collaboration 3

Walk 4

June 18th 2019

This walk started at Norwich livestock market which lays on the outskirts and South of the city. It felt we were very much on the overlap between human activity and nature 

We were heading for the 4th bridge of the walk and between here and there we took in more sites of the urban/natural hinterland.

Until we arrived at the bridge which allowed the A140 to pass over the River Yare.

It was raining hard and the combination of railings and tall vegetation meant it was not possible to access the bridge at a level much lower than the road.

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Collaboration 2

June 14th 2019

Exchange 3

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Collaboration 3

Walk 3 June 13th 2019

We saw three bridges on this day, and used the car to cover some of the ground in between due to inaccessibility on foot and therefore a long walk away from the area of interest to us.

The first beautiful brick bridge had water gently flowing under it. We could only view it from the road above as there was no access point.

This is the fourth bridge along the Yare as we leave Norwich centre

This huge brick red engineered bridge spans the railway line with three archways. This was nearest we could get though we could see a set of steps beyond us but we were in an industrial yard enclosed my a fence and the steps seemed to be beyond the industrial area and had no obvious access point.

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Collaboration 3

Walk 2 June 11th 2019

In the pouring rain we revisited some of the route of the last walk, to get more of a sense of the area. The cold and the heavy rain meant that I have only a limited record of the walk and I didn’t even make it to the bridge because there were lots of cows in the field.

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Collaboration 2

June 8th 2019

Exchange 2

I chose to cut away sections on three photographs. In first image I removed parts of the image that were not foliage

In the second image I cut away anything that wasn’t a tree

In the third I cut away an area of sky to accentuate the pattern of the twigs and branches

I included a leaf skeleton from our garden and sewed thread through and along it’s surface

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Collaboration 3

Walk 1 June 4th 2019 

Here is some of the photographic material we gathered during our first walk. We chose to start our walk from the point at which the River Wensum joined to become the Yare. This point was really hard to access due to the gravel works and the over grown, disused and abandoned nature of the area.

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Collaboration 2

First response 14th May 2019

Exchange 1

I received my first response from CC to my suggested collaboration send four months previously. The following were all sent in a parcel.

A tube of two lengths of photographs, the layout reminiscent of the printed images I had sent initially, wrapped in brown paper and secured by knotted lengths of coloured embroidery silk

The lengths of photographs of trees from varying view points and times of the day or night. The length of printed fabric was returned with additions of lengths of coloured embroidery thread knotted at points along it’s length.

A pine cone with lengths of embroidery silk wound 

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Collaboration 3

May 10th 2019

Just over a year ago the seeds, of what has turned out to be an exciting collaboration with GB, were sown. It began with me sharing a web link I found by chance about river bridges in Norwich. It showed small thumbnail photographs and information of bridges between the early 1930′s to 2000 along the Rivers Yare and Wensum,

http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Website/index.htm

Following an initial meeting we felt we had the bones of a collaboration project. We identified a section of the River Yare from Norwich city centre as far as Bowthorpe and chose 7 dates in June to meet and walk the chosen route in sections. Our initial aim was to collect experiential and observational material using any media we chose to include sound recording, photography, film, video, sketching. We would spend time together and apart to gather the material.