Field is an artist run, non-profit organization based in Peckham, South-East London. Our main aim is to facilitate emerging artists by offering opportunities to create and exhibit work, and to establish mutually beneficial links with like-minded individuals and organizations.
For our take over of Curfew Tower we decided to split the residency into 2 halves: the first half hosting Maria de Lima, Mike Davis and Craig Dow, and the second Natasha Bird and Alicia Logan.
Below are a few shots of the first leg of the residency, from the ferry caf to pints at the local…
Natasha Bird at Curfew Tower – December 2010
During my stay at the Curfew Tower I produced work in two strands. Both were related to the unique architecture of the building, also drawing on the surrounding landscape and folklore of the area.
Inside the top floor room of the tower I produced string sculptures that formed tunnels between the windows. These yellow twine structures enclosed the openings in the space, creating a line that cut straight through the space – almost bringing the outside all the way through the room. These experiments were made in response to the experience of staying in the tower – of feeling very aware of being inside. In its past use the tower enclosed those who disobeyed the curfew and protected the keeper of the tower. These string tests were made while I thought on this history, and by playing with the amazing character of the architecture.
The main outcome of my stay at the Curfew Tower was a light installation based on a poem by W.B. Yeats called The Wanderings of Oisin. Alicia Logan, my fellow artist during the residency, had brought a volume of Yeats with her to the tower. Our first evening in Cushendall, we discovered that Ossian’s Grave (same mythological figure, different spelling) was only few miles outside the town. Therefore during our own wanderings we visited this place, so full of magic and legend! The piece that I produced at the tower took a line from this poem and transcribed it into code. The letter A was one second of light, B was two seconds of light and so on. I was interested in this (very inefficient) code as the most basic transformation I could think of to turn text into light. This light code was projected from the top-floor, sea- facing window of the tower, emulating a lighthouse or signal towards the sea.
This video began as a means to reflect on the idea of remote experience. I had become obsessed with figuring out how much information and, especially, how many images of Curfew Tower I could find online. I wanted to formulate a basic experiment to test my experience of reality once I had been confronted by its image for so long.
We arrived in Cushendall late at night, and as I looked at the tower spot-lit by street lights my response was muted. I felt no sense of familiarity, and much less any great revelation on my initial inquiry. I suppose the images I had spent so long looking at had become a part of the reality of this building, linked to the physical existence of the tower, but quite apart from it.
By contrast, the second half of this video was left to chance and some in situ inspiration. I found it within the tower as I looked through the art works accumulated over years and framed texts by Bill Drummond, the originator of this residency. Surrounded by papier mache towers, felted towers, photographed towers, drawn towers, painted towers, quilted towers, I felt a bit of a fool with a superfluous video tower to add to this motley collection.
Reading over Drummond’s manifesto I was reminded of how I’d come to be here. He did specify after all: selected artists are to make ‘work that is a response to the tower, the locality or the people of Cushendall’. Was that just a crap brief though?
In response to these constraints I have made a piece of work I never would have done otherwise. I see this as positive, however I still have strong suspicions about the quality of art that can be produced within such a closed brief. This really opens onto more general questions around current trends in residencies: should there be so much focus on making artists interact with the local community; how much compromise on artistic freedom does public funding involve; how do you quantify the outcomes of any residency?…
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Reading over this piece of text back in London I’ve been prompted to look over the material I had gathered at Cushendall, and make an alternative version of the original film. There’s definitely more of a focus on my current obsession, subtitling, here that briefly makes an appearance in my ‘Heart of the Glens’ video.
