angellspace

Helen Angell-Preece - Sculptural Installation and Print Artist

Location RED 2014

Location RED

The rich potential relations between thinking and the body, the way one person’s act can be an invitation to another’s imagination; the way every gesture can be imagined as a brief and invisible sculpture; the way walking reshapes the world by mapping it, treading paths into it, encountering it.                           Rebecca Solnit 2001. Wanderlust: a history of walking London: Verso.P276

The important thing is to be aware one exists. For three-quarters of the time during the day one forgets this truth, which surges up again as you look at houses or a red light, and you have the sensation of existing in that moment.                                                            Jean-Luc Godard quoted In Penz, Francois. and Thomas, Maureen. (eds), 1997. Cinema & Architecture, London: British Film Institute, P111

 

Location: Top Floor, Meadowmill – Formerly South Dudhope Jute Mill, West Hendersons Wynd, Old Industrial Quarter, Dundee, Scotland. 2011

RED:         Signifier of human presence – Map marker – “You are here”

This dual-screen video installation is a record of the last original, remaining floor of the Meadowmill building prior to renovation into Artist’s studios in 2011. Despite, and perhaps because of, its semi-derelict state, the video footage reveals the beauty inherent in Dundee’s Industrial Architecture - its symmetry of line, ranks of windows letting light pour onto the pattern of flagstones underfoot and the sheer grandeur of the vaulted roof and expansive scale room.

This scale is contrasted with that of the human form as we catch glimpses of the artist’s body in RED as she explores the space - her movements responding to the shapes and forms of the architecture, suggested by the exuberance of the open expanse of space or possible actions of former inhabitants and workers of the looms and spinners.

Yet despite the strength apparent in both the building’s and the body’s structure, there is a fragility and sense of loss in the peeling paint, the decaying damp walls - as well as in the skin and lines of the hand, the arm as it strives to measure itself against the rooms perspective. There is a vulnerability to the sound of the body’s breathing and footsteps within the echoing abandoned room, contrasting to the sounds of the busy city sirens and construction noises from outside.

In this exploration of the Space between Architecture and the Body, the artist hopes to question and reveal some of the Universal elements with which we make ourselves at ‘Home’. How do our own body armature, the structures we build around ourselves, as well as the emotional and historical aspects of Place interact to give us our sense of ‘Being’ in the world? Perhaps the answer lies in the Space we inhabit, falling somewhere between the Solid and the Void?

 

 

Location RED 2014

Dual Screen Video Projection. Duration 20mins, over 9 Sequences.

Always ‘there’ 2001

Always 'there'

The work is driven by a fascination with the issue of our ‘Being here’; of our awareness of ourselves as existing ‘within’ the world.

always ‘There ’ is a large-scale video projection immersing the spectator in a virtual world of movement through the urban landscape. A superimposed coloured ‘dot’ or map-marker becomes the hypnotic and constant presence or reference point throughout this exploration.

Distorted projection screens form a temporary architecture, installed to disrupt the viewer’s journey, forcing them to negotiate and become acutely aware of their own passage through space and time.

At once both playful and unnerving, the artist’s concern is to evoke an intensified awareness of self and environment using contrasting materials to disrupt/reorganise everyday spatial relationships.

 

 

Always ‘There' 2001

2 x 3 x 3m Video Projection

Step-up 2007

Step Up

proprioceptive adj. relating to stimuli produced and perceived within an organism.  esp. relating to the position and movement of the body.
[Latin proprius ‘own’ + RECEPTIVE]

Kinaesthesia (“the feeling of movement in all skeletal and muscular structures” ) is the first of 3 methods of proprioceptive signal generated and received by the body to give us our sense of self-awareness, of ‘being’.

As we look downwards into the viewing box of Step-Up, we experience abstracted images of body movement – shifting weight, balance, stepping, lifting and placing of feet. This hypnotic and rhythmic formation gradually induces a sympathetic reaction in our own limbs, the sensations of kinaesthesia.

Yet the movements we see performed within a formalised stage-like space are not clear and continuous, but are cut, shortened, repeated and distorted by reflection, becoming more akin to our own inconstant and fragmented awareness of body movement and of self, throughout the day.

In Step-Up we see a continuation of the artist’s on-going fascination with, and research into proprioceptive triggers. Her trademark manipulation of spatial organisation and integral movement is apparent, to create a fleeting sense of ‘being here’ now within the viewer.

 

 

Step-Up (Installation views) 2007

DVD (3 sequences 5min looped), plywood, paint, acrylic sheet. 50 x 65 x 70cm