19.02.22

A collaborative dialogue using mark making and music with James Downs, Musician and founder of Cambridge Yoga Project.

Photographs by Toby Peters

Film by Toby Peters documenting ‘Just passing through’ performance.

February 2022

A long blank piece of paper set out like a stage in the centre of the room. Gentle music begins playing as a signal to the audience that the performance is beginning. James is standing at one end of the paper and I am standing at the other end, facing one another.

Charcoals and pastels punctate the paper.

I begin responding to the music using mark making and James responds with the violin. The performance lasts for ten minutes and is a call and response between the violin and mark making.

As the music comes to a close, the curator offers some charcoal to audience members who are prompted to join in the the performance as a new song starts playing.

The audience were not told prior to the performance that they would be invited to join in but so many people joined that there was no longer space on the paper. It felt like a moment of true connection.

Photo series of the materials I have been using to make pigments with.

After the ‘Just passing through’ performance, I reflected on the materials I worked with . The white paper worked well for the performance but to go back to the woods that has inspired me throughout the past two years. I walked a lot in the woods and collected rocks to make pigments from.

The tools and materials themselves felt like an important part of the work itself which is the reason I am including this small photo series within this portfolio.

Photographs of the pigments I have been making under the microscope in the grow lab.

These are photos I used to inform the next artworks - prints and paintings.

Pigments and gold leaf on paper

100 x 150cm

A painting exploring the pigments under the microscope as an image of space.

Short film focusing on the gestures made through the process of printmaking.

During the grad show I will be doing a live painting performance where I will make the pigments and paints from scratch before starting a large painting during the course of the show.

The film draws on this idea of process as outcome, documenting the natural sounds of the printmaking space as a part of the final work.

50 x 50cm pigment and gold leaf on paper

Natural pigment and gold leaf on Lokta paper. Forms inspired by the microscope pigment images.

Details of the gold leaf and pigments on the Lokta paper.

Ink and gold pigment on paper

50 x 50cm lithograph and etching overlaid with gold pigment.

Ink , gold leaf and pigment on lokta paper

50 x 50cm

50 x 50cm Ink, gold pigment and gold leaf on Lokta paper

45 x 45 cm ink, pigment and gold leaf on paper

Two monoprints overlaid with gold leaf. This piece is printed using the earth pigment to depict the idea of time suspended in space.

The orange textures inside the circle depict the oldest galaxy known to humans, GN z11. Considering the limits of space and time. I wanted the piece to feel like an ancient clock.

The piece is part of the series entitled ‘Epoch’ thinking about origins of life, and the time within space that we live in.

45 x 45 cm ink, Lithograph and collograph overlaid with gold leaf.

The second in the ‘Epoch’ Series.

Autonomous charcoal drawing taken from my art for wellbeing classes with collograph and gold leaf overlay.