Past Art Exhibitions
Norman Gibson, Liz Treacher & Lucy Treacher
MOVEMENT THROUGH LIGHT AND SPACE
Movement through light and space is a meeting of three different mediums: photography, sculpture and music. The exhibition comprises 8 to 10 black and white photographs of urban motion by Liz Treacher and 8 to10 sculptures by Norman Gibson. A looped sound-track by Lucie Treacher provides a musical environment for the street photographs. The sculptures each have their own individual melodies, also composed by Lucie. These can be listened to through mp3 players and head-phones, positioned nearby, thus creating sound-sculptures or three-dimensional musical events.
This inventive combination of photography, sculpture and music explores the kinetic activity of people and objects through an interplay of light and space. The photographs present figures moving through illuminated atmospheres. The sculptures are an intricate juxtaposition of shapes, textures and colours, with their own innate rhythm and motion. The music reflects and reanimates the movement expressed in the photographs and sculptures, so that all three mediums become part of a fluid dance of visible energies.
Photography
8 to10 black and white photographs printed on mdf in a 6 x 8 format. (60cm x 80cm or 90cm x 120cm depending on gallery space).
The photos are taken on the streets of different towns and cities. The low winter sun reflects off the rainy pavements, creating pools of light. The silhouettes of passers-by seem to be dancing in the incandescence. The heads of shoppers have a haloed glow and plastic bags take on a magical luminosity.
The photos are an exploration of how light transforms the everyday and the ordinary. Modern commuters become timeless marionettes and street textures are also changed; tarmac becomes toffee, pavements shine like glass.
The photographer is capturing a moment in time when light becomes another dimension. Figures seem to be swimming in bright liquid and this gives the images a strong three-dimensional feel.
Sculpture
Where motion in the urban photographs is that of swift and fleeting mobility, the sculptures suggest much slower paces, much longer durations. Some works hint at mechanical movement in the technical world while others point towards time and change across archaeological periods and terrains.
Black Box
Being spatial objects, there is an implicit involvement of the viewer’s own motion around and past them. Though many pieces have sources in the physical landscape, they are also abstract compositions that echo the pulses and rhythms of music.
Most pieces are constructions in wood with painted surfaces and these too enhance the suggestion of movement within and sometimes beyond their containing frameworks.
Taken together, the photographs, sculptures and musical melodies invite varied immersions in motion and duration, stillness and space, sound and silence.
Circadian Cycle
Music
Looped sound tracks have been composed for the exhibition. Art invokes music and music brings the images alive. The hypnotic fluidity of the inner-city melody, interrupted by city sounds and the rhythm of footsteps invites the viewer to join in the shoppers’ dance.
For the individual sculptures, the different melodies open up new emotive dimensions and provide the viewer with musical keys to unlock the different elements and set them in sonic motion.
Liz Treacher
A fine art photographer based in Skelbo near Dornoch, Liz is interested in light and its ability to transform everyday life. She uses a 35mm camera and does not manipulate her images. She is a member of Visual Arts Sutherland and shows her work at Browns Fine Art Gallery, Tain and has a permanent exhibition of her work at Starbucks, Buchanan Street, Glasgow.
Liz was brought up in Elgin and studied French at University College London, where she became immersed in film-making, using a 16mm Bolex. Film-making led to photography and, an exploration of the black and white medium.
Terracotta Army
On graduating, she taught languages for a while before marrying and moving back to Scotland in 1990. While living in Glasgow she took black and white portrait photos using a 35mm camera and using only natural light. She had an exhibition of photographs featuring the contrasting cities of Glasgow and Venice. Her work was purchased by leading central belt companies, including The Big Partnership, Scotland’s biggest PR firm, and Starbucks, Buchanan Street, Glasgow.
More recently she has been exploring urban street-life, using light and shadow to create atmospheric images. Her pictures have sold at Browns Fine Art Gallery in Tain and, alongside her photographic work, she teaches languagesand facilitates creative writing and film-making at Lairg and Brora Learning Centres,
Aladdin's Lamp
Norman Gibson
A sculptor and designer based in Brora, Norman has interests in landscape, archaeology and spatial memory. He was educated at art colleges and universities in Scotland and England and has exhibited at regional and national levels alongside a wide-ranging educational career north and south of the Border. His works are in many public and private collections in the UK and abroad and he has been involved in various cross-arts collaborations over the years, most recently as installation designer for Tabula Rasa’s dance work Hlysnan at Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen.
For seven years he was lecturer and director of studies in art and design education at Warwick University and three years as head of Arts, Design and Performance at Manchester Metropolitan University. During this period in universities, he undertook research for a PhD on the interplay of visual and verbal arts and delivered associated papers at international conferences in Finland, Canada and Portugal. He returned to Scotland in 1997 where an interest in the historic landscape was extended by studies for Aberdeen University’s Certificate Course in Field Archaeology and a Master’s Degree in Archaeology and Heritage at the University of Leicester.
Lucie Treacher
Lucie is a young composer, singer-songwriter and pupil at Dornoch Academy. Although only 13, she has already attracted a lot of interest. She sings and plays guitar, piano and violin. She records and produces her own compositions and performs regularly in venues throughout the Highlands.
Over the last 12 months Lucie has played at various venues including:
Water-rats, London
Hootenannys, Inverness
Go North Music Festival, Inverness
The Outsider Festival, Aviemore
Red Shoes Theatre, Elgin
Little Theatre, Lossiemouth
TIMESPAN EXHIBITION REVIEW
March – May 2008
MOVEMENT THROUGH LIGHT AND SPACE
Open till May 15
A looped sound-track by Lucie Treacher provides a strong, fast paced musical backdrop when you enter Timespan’s gallery foyer. It was composed as the accompaniment for Liz Treacher’s high contrast photographs of urban pavement pounding activity through sun lit illuminations. The music works really well with the images which are not quite agitated, but a percentage up from brisk. Stunning high energy may best describe them.
The photographs could be placed in any big city environment (except London’s hideous Oxford Street) and have a 1950’s, almost Cartier Bresson feel to them. Totally beautiful. Remarkable too, when reminded that to capture these images would have taken not just skill, imagination and flair but the patience of Job. The right light at the right time of day just after a good rainfall on a busy street with enough variety in High Street footwear to tell a thousand stories. There is a lot to see in these photographs and much to fuel the imagination. Where are these people coming from and going? They are faceless but strangely, this doesn’t make them any less vulnerable to curiosity.
Lucie also composed 14 different little tracks for each of Norman Gibson’s sculptures. On a busy day in the gallery (there are only 6 MP3 players available) you may have to view the work without the musical accompaniment. Which is normal of course, because not many artists can boast their own personal musician! However. Do not leave this exhibition without the full sight-and-sound experience.
This isn’t a bespoke collaboration – the sculptures of course, predate the music (some even predate the musician), but there is something absolutely magical about this combination. The music feeds through the headphones creating an immediate immersion, and it has to be said, an implicit directive to concentrate for the duration on the piece on the art in front of you.
Each composition is a sense reflection of Lucie’s feelings when she thought long and hard about the sculptures and they are a wonderful mixture of funny, perceptive, sad and moving. Part instrumental, part song and part dripping tap, a wail here and there and a simply stunning whoosh of summer waves. Whatever you read into it, this is music created by a very talented musician who (because we know she is only 13) has almost certainly got an astoundingly successful future ahead of her.
Norman’s sculptures with their detailed intricate shapes, textures and colours reflect his interest in landscape, archaeology and spatial memory. They are dense and complicated but fascinating too, so not intimidating. Taking the collection as a whole there is the sense of nature struggling to morph into low tech mechanics with a hint of a hi-tech accolade. A sort of grandee Malevich meets genius Heath Robinson.
Most pieces are constructions in wood with fragments of land and seascapes. There some painted surfaces, lots of movement - some implied, some real and some transient as with the light and shadow.
You’ll see something different each time you look at this work and it will be a joy to those familiar with Norman’s brilliance to have the opportunity to revisit it. Although everything he creates conveys precision, nothing is left to chance, it does not deny spontaneity. The sculptures are jam packed with ideas – but those that survived scrutiny are meticulously executed.
SHEILA ROBERTSON
Sheila Robertson who lives in Ullapool where she is part of An Talla Solais art centre, is Timespan’s artist of the month. Her work is on display in the downstairs foyer and café and is a welcome return as Sheila has exhibited very successfully with Timespan in the past. Those familiar with her paintings, will see quite a different portfolio however. We are used to huge canvases and bold colours from Sheila but this current display is softer, gentler and the images much smaller. But very dramatic as well. They are definitely worth a special visit, just to see. And buy of course!