Please vote for me to become the official blogger / artist for an expedition to the North Pole!Image: Lampeter lantern festival, © Margaret Sharrow 2010
All images this site copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008-2010, unless otherwise noted
Showing posts with label alternative photographic processes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alternative photographic processes. Show all posts
Friday, 17 December 2010
Margaret Sharrow
Please vote for me to become the official blogger / artist for an expedition to the North Pole!
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Margaret Sharrow
Image: Guggenheim intervention (exterior), © Margaret Sharrow 2010
All images this site copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008-2010, unless otherwise noted
Greenland blog 02: How my art took me to Greenland, and a Danish tongue twister
Parting clouds, west coast of Greenland. Image copyright Margaret Sharrow, 2008
I mentioned yesterday about the grant that allowed me to travel to Greenland, generously provided by the University of Wales, on condition that I was engaged in some sort of creative project (drama, cinema, creative writing, or in this case, fine art) with a further outcome to enhance my educational experience. I was at the time pursuing a BA at the Aberystwyth University School of Art, having hurried straight into the second year and begun experimenting with alternative photographic processes. This means that although I started out making some digital work, my main focus was in the darkroom, first doing traditional prints, and gradually moving into different techniques and chemical processes until it became photography, Jim, but not as we know it. By the end of the year I was cheerfully pouring bleach over multiple-exposure prints then wailing when I discovered that Sigmar Polke had already done exactly the same thing in 1971. To cap it all I’d been awarded a massive travel scholarship, which made for an interesting summer. After I finished marking a million media studies A level papers I had flown straight into preparations: daily study of Danish, in hopes of being able to speak Greenland’s colonial language, if not Greenlandic itself, which is difficult to find recordings for the essential comic attempts at mimicry. Now Danish can be difficult for the English speaker because of its range of guttural sounds produced at the back of the palette. Though Danish is reasonably similar to English in terms of word order, linguistic roots, etc., and I’d spent hours making vocabulary flashcards in my favourite cafe, I found that when confronted with actual Greenlanders speaking their colonial tongue I had my usual reaction - I froze (metaphorically, as it was still summer) and forgot everything I’d ever learned. There was one exception - I was able to amuse people by reciting the never-to-be-forgotten tongue twister taught to me years ago in Toronto by a Danish-Canadian friend. It employed a string of the guttural sounds, and provided guaranteed hilarity, by dint of my pronunciation: rød grød med flød på - which is red pudding with cream, as I remember.
Somehow I have diverged onto Danish tongue twisters and puddings, which throws up the whole question of Greenland’s relationship to Denmark. But more political thinking would leave us both up in the air, ignoring the spectacular views unfolding out the window of the descending plane. I can assure you unreservedly that at the time I took the photograph shown here, I was as fully present as I have ever been in my life, allowing for the fact that a certain detachment is inevitable when taking photographs at a furious rate. By the time we landed I was convinced that if I never took another picture over the next three weeks, I would still have enough material for an exhibition. The land was chiseled out of the green-blue sea, its elaphantine wrinkles washed with rusty red. And here I must say something about the colours I experienced, and have passed on to you. As with all my digital photos from this trip, I have made no alterations to saturation, contrast, density, etc., avoiding the current fashion in advertising and on Flickr for playing with these mechanics in Photoshop, producing supersaturated landscapes that anyone who has been to the place will recognise as overhyped, and setting up anyone who has not been for disappointment. Suffice it to say that with my photographs, as far as colour goes, what you see is what you get. Unless of course I have rendered the whole scene blue, by printing it as a cyanotype...
26 August 2008 09:32 (Greenlandic time) recalled 6 January 2011
Want more? Then please VOTE FOR ME TO BE THE OFFICIAL BLOGGER & ARTIST ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE NORTH POLE http://www.blogyourwaytothenorthpole.com/entries/166
then lope over to my Greenland blog http://margaretsharrowgreenland.blogspot.com/
and stay tuned for another episode tomorrow!
archive of Greenland stories
Monday, 12 April 2010
See the photographic starstuff while you can: Aberration, Proud Gallery, London until 15 April
Aberration opening, London, 3 April. All photos this page copyright Margaret Sharrow 2010
Aberration
an exhibition of photography by staff, students and graduates of Aberystwyth University School of Art
Proud Central Gallery
32 John Adam Street
London
Until 15 April 2010
There's still time to catch this nifty little show, tucked away near London's National Gallery. Like baby stars in a nebula cluster, you can see the starstuff of the art school environment from whence I came... Everyone has developed their work further since I last saw them. Let's just say that the Aber Uni degree show this June promises to be an exciting and innovative event, if this show is anything to go by.
Directions to Proud Central Gallery
The closest tube station is Charing Cross. But I will begin my directions from the National Gallery, which would be nice to visit before or after Aberration.
Coming out of the front entrance of the National Gallery, bear left around Trafalgar Square and left again when you come to the Strand at Waterstones bookshop. Keep on the same side of the Strand as Waterstones, pass the entrance to Charing Cross station then turn right and find yourself in a little network of streets. John Adam Street is the first street running parallel to the Strand - turn left onto it, and the Proud Gallery is on the left. (Unless of course, you have carried along the Strand too far - Zimbabwe House is too far - in which case turn right on John Adam Street and look right. The good news is that the street isn't very long, so even I couldn't be wandering around for long.)
Apparently the post-event partying went on long after I sloped off to late opening at the Tate!
Monday, 11 May 2009
Margaret Sharrow's Degree Show: 'Numinous Family' opens 23 May at Aberystwyth University School of Art
Margaret Sharrow, Numinous Family (Joe), mixed media, 2009
Margaret Sharrow is a mixed media artist specialising in historic and alternative photographic processes. Her work attempts to represent the non-physical or spiritual aspects of existence within the two-dimensional plane.
During the past year she has explored a variety of means of producing photographic images, usually employing light sensitive chemicals brushed onto paper exposed in the sun.
All these processes have come into play for her degree show project, Numinous Family, a series of 'soul portraits'. The images evoke the mid nineteenth-century era of daguerreotypes, with glass portraits presented in luxurious gold framed cases. However, while evoking that distant past, the installation references more recent photographic techniques, such as the Kodak Box Brownie snapshots of the 1920s and the fading colour prints of the 1970s.
The subject matter of these images is a selection of people and places in Margaret's circle, sometimes but not necessarily earthly family members.
-Catalogue statement, Aberystwyth University School of Art Degree Show 2009
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