Tim Sandys-Renton
About the work in Transept:Traverse
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 produced an artwork within the Cathedral’s North Transept.
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Tim photographed himself in a 900 minute (15 hour) pinhole camera exposure over 2 days (22nd and 23rd July 2008). Planned for the Cathedral’s 900th anniversary, this photographic self-portrait mimics a tomb sculpture. Because of the time-span, the figure is blurred and ghost-like, a faint scattering of dust, an accumulation of all the positions he took during the sitting, and therefore about the eternity of the moment and endurance.
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This lack of objectivity will also be reinforced by the reversal of tones, i.e. The light from the window is represented as black. Both symptoms (i.e blurring and tone reversal) are in stark opposition to a recognised function of photography as providing ‘evidence’ of a distinct event.
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The plinth used to present the photo is the 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.
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In mythology reversals are often associated with ‘bad’; being upturned and back to front, the colour Black etc. But of course these opposites have been created by a chemical process, there is no ethical or moral decision in this! The image formed inside the box may seem ‘negative’, an anti-cathedral, an anti-Tim, but just like ‘anti-matter’ they are simply the invisible pairing to what’s always there, a balancing to what we experience.
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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). A church is a box for one type of belief, a computer is a box for a different type.
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The video on the computer is about a relationship. The screen brings her from a different time, a different space. She’s able to hold her pose effortlessly, blinking occasionally; her neck doesn’t hurt because it was only a 30 second clip, looped indefinitely. But she’s aware of being watched, of being the subject of the video camera. She’s a mother, she’s Tim’s wife
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The process of being photographed by a pinhole camera 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.
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Photographic images have never been able to represent the whole truth; Truth is a slippery subject.
Biography:
Tim Sandys-Renton is an Artist and a University Senior Lecturer. He trained as a sculptor, but also uses photography and video to involve time. He left the Royal College of Art in 1988 and has worked for the University of Chichester since 1995.
Determined to improve the infrastructure for artists in the Chichester area, Tim was a founding member of Artel in 1999, was a trustee for the Chichester Art Trust for 3 years, and was instrumental in setting up studios4artists which is now successfully campaigning for a large studio complex for artists & designers to be included in the ‘Graylingwell’ development in Chichester. (www.studios4artists.co.uk)
More of Tim’s work can be seen at http://www.artel.org.uk/artel-artists/tim-sandys-renton/
