Jonathan Williams

'New York City Apartment Corridor/Ground Floor plus Staircase' - Do Ho Suh, 2000, Shown at Bristol Museum (2015)

When considering initial research for Maps and Journeys, the concept of exploring the space that we are actively present in fascinated me and instantly reminded me of this exhibit by Korean artist Do Ho Suh  I went to see during a spontaneous visit to Bristol Museum in the summer holidays.

To be honest I found this exhibition by complete luck. In one of the back rooms of the museum on the third floor I peeked in and  saw this marvellous structure suspended by thin little wires hung from the ceiling. Intrigued, I sheepishly shuffled into the room, and after a few circuits of the structure reeling in quiet admiration the clerk asked me if I would like to actually walk through this incredible structure. I shed my  bag and my hoodie and then, as I entered the space I realised that the structure was actually made entirely out of small bits of thread intricately woven together and supported by thin aluminium poles.

I love this work because it actively immerses the audience into a physical space that has almost become a shadow, or a thinly veiled representation of a space that exists thousands of miles away.

Suh sees space as infinitely moveable, saying that he experiences space through, and as the movement of displacement. "Space for me become intrinsically transportable and translatable" he says. It's like he is trying to trap fleeting memories by clinging to the ordinary stuff of life. I suppose that the fragility of the piece encapsulates the fleeting nature of memory, and also made me so incredibly aware of the space around me, and I was suddenly concious of how I could easily trip and destroy all this beautiful art by tripping up or something.


Remarkably, according the the program the entire installation folds up into just two suitcases (which is pretty neat) too.

Rachel Whiteread

Untitled (Stairs) - Rachel Whiteread, 2001

Whilst researching further into Suh's works, I came across an English sculptor, draughtsman and printmaker named Rachel Whiteread. She typically employs traditional casting methods and uses materials commonly used in the preparation of sculptures rather than the finished object such as resin, plaster or rubber. Using these materials, she makes sculptures of the spaces in, under and on every day objects.

 Over the 4 days over the August bank holiday, I usually end up going to a massive christian festival called Soul Survivor attended by around 25,000 people over the course of 2,5 weeks. I have been attending this event for the last five or so years, and every year, as I have gotten more and more into film and creative media production, have noticed how good the media coverage is. There are always camera operators floating around taking b-roll footage, or crews going round shooting interviews or taking photos of people for their brochures and websites.


Fast forward to early July.

A message was posted up on the festivals Facebook page, outlining some opportunities that had become available to be part of the media team, working in crews to film around site and generally help out. Naturally, I emailed them as soon as I can, linking them my blog, some of my work and my CV. I got no reply for quite a while until I got an email on the day of the event. At first I was a bit frustrated, but after organising a lift up and all my camping gear I headed up in the morning for a day of production work. I got on site and met up with the production team and was shown around the production office. I was immediately blown away by the efficiency of the team, as well as the amount of kit at their disposal. The thing that caught my eye first was the DJI Ronin, a motorised gimbal stabilizer used in many feature films worth about 4500 pounds. Unfortunately you had to have special training on it, but the owner of it kindly showed me its workings. The owner of the gimbal was also the proud owner of a DJI Phantom 3, a motorised drone you can  attach one of the many GoPros they had to get stunning arial shots. Once again, I wasn't able to use it but it was very interesting learning its benefits and drawbacks and actually seeing the results of the footage it takes. Amongst this there was also a plethora of 5DMk3's with a whole assortment of different lenses, different mono pods, tripods, sound gear and microphones. I even had a chance to do sound for the first ever multi-channel, multi-camera shoot using three Canon 5DMk3 and a lapel mic wired up or connected to a H6 Zoom recorder, which allowed multi channel recording via xlr cables. This was high intensity and put alot of pressure on me because I was finally able to test my skills out that  I have learnt at university. It was also an incredibly rewarding and it helped me learn a lot more about how efficient a crew can and should do to operate effectively as a unit.

During the same day we also  filmed a foam party. My role in this was basically to around in a crowd of about 1000 people in an enormous cowshed with a go pro and trying my best to get good shots. I was part of a crew of around 8 people, all of which had 1 or more go pros attached to them in some way or another. One guy managed to attach two either side of an enormous Rode boom pole, which meant aerial shots were absolutely no problem.


Unfortunately, due to a recurring back injury, I had to leave that same evening, but the people from the media team were very understanding and were very keen for me to come back for the next festival beginning only two days later.

Fast forward those 2 days.

Just before I arrived at the site  I received an email from the head of the media team with an urgent request asking if I could basicallyedit all of the seminars that have been recorded at the festival over the course of the three days and place them on a USB drive to sell to the festival goers for about 30 pounds each. Obviously, being keen to help out and get involved, I obliged, and effectively ended up editing approximately 45/65 of the seminars. I ended up starting at about eleven every day and working as late as I was allowed to (usually til about 12) simply because I had a deadline to meet.

We edited the sound using a program called GoldWave, which was tricky to learn at first but after a bit of practice it became second nature and is not that dissimilar . I now feel significantly more confident with

A while ago, upon a visit to Liverpool I visited the Tate museum and was really inspired and blown away by some of the art pieces and installations on display. Amongst works that I have become familiar with via university, I came across so many more interesting artists that I never knew existed before. Some of the thoughts they presented were wonderful, and the ways in which they presented  them were so special and unique and reminded me why I love art.

One particular piece that stood out to me was an exhibition showcasing the work of Romanian visual artist Greta Bratescu. Before I describe her art, I will describe to you what she does and who she is. She studied fine art and literature in Bucharest in the late 1940s until Communist party interventions into university administration resulted in her expulsion. Regardless, she continued to draw, documenting workers in Hungary and the USSR for the Artists' Union, doing graphic illustration and working for an animation company alongside her own artistic practice.

In 1969, Bratescu returned to university to complete her degree and since then, her work has encompassed drawing sewing print-making, film and installations. In many of these works, such as her 1977 film Hands (Les Mains)  the use of the line - on paper, in thread, or performed in space is used as a defining tool, describing individual people and unique things, perhaps a response to the uniformity and collectivity of communism.



This use of line is evident in her most recent work Game of Form (shown at the Liverpool Tate)  an ongoing series of paper collages. She describes them as such: 'These drawings, which are sometimes made eyes closed, are the trace left behind the frolic of my hands; sometimes they represent the trace of the cursive paths which the paper imposes and at the same time they require each other."  




Below is an attempt of free drawing using lines as separation tools. I would like to take this to a further level and actually cut out physical lines out of paper and experiment with drawing different shapes that express the relationship between hand, pen and paper.

Jonny has been on holiday, doing cool stuff such as hanging with mates and going on a week long trip to Ireland which was creatively refreshing and gave me a new perspective on creative thinking and executing ideas,

I've recently discovered pixel sorting, and Asendorf's java script that scrambles the data of the photo you run through it. You can also modify the values, changing the amount of pixels sorted and the amount of distortion. Here are some examples of my experiments