Live Artist Event
Dear Artist
I am doing a pinhole photo in the cathedral on Tuesday all day 7.30am - 7.00pm, and Wednesday 7.30am - lunchtime approx. Please come along to say ‘hi’ if you’re in town, I can still chat and stuff!
details below
Tim.
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Transept: Traverse; Contemporary Art in the Cathedral
As part of the ARTEL exhibition Transept: Traverse, forming part of the celebrations for the Cathedral’s 900 years of consecration and the 50th anniversary of the death of Bishop Bell, artist TIM SANDYS-RENTON is producing an artwork within the Cathedral’s North Transept.
· Tim is photographing himself in a 900 minute (15 hour) pinhole camera exposure. Planned for the Cathedral’s 900th anniversary, this photographic self-portrait mimics a tomb sculpture. Because of its’ length, it will no doubt be very blurred; an accumulation of all the positions he takes during the sitting, and therefore about the eternity of the moment and endurance. This lack of objectivity will also be reinforced by the reversal of tones, i.e. Tim’s light clothes will be represented as black. Both symptoms are in stark opposition to a recognised function of photography as providing ‘evidence’ of a distinct event.
· It will also question truth by representing the political shift from a hierarchical knowledge/power structure when the Cathedral was built 900 years ago (the pinnacle of which was the church) to a democratic knowledge/power structure (as represented by digital culture and the internet).
· The box is a pinhole camera. It doesn’t have a lens, so it can only let a tiny amount of light into the darkened box. Inside the box is photographic paper, not film. This means that the unique large-scale image comes out negative and takes a massive amount of time to expose.
· The process of being photographed in this way is strange because one has the distinct feeling of being drawn, as if one is a life model in a drawing class. Changing position will change or blur the image; but equally you can scratch and get back into the same position without really affecting the image very much! Such a process is physically like drawing as the more light that’s directed into the pin-hole the blacker the paper becomes; just like using a pencil or charcoal.
· Photographic images have never been able to represent the whole truth; Truth is a slippery subject.
For more information go to www.artel.org.uk
Exhibition open Weds 30 July to Tuesday 9 September
