Trust This Journey, oil on canvas, 120 x 110cm, 2015-16

I paint with intent, with a working theme in mind that expands and evolves as the work continues.  When mark-making I use memory and feeling merged and fused with conscious forms.  I usually work on a few pieces at any one time in a variety of scale, oscillating between canvas on the wall or easel, pieces on the floor and sketchbooks on the table.  I like the physicality of painting, of mark-making.  I enjoy the dialogue between pieces when placed next to each other by accident or intentionally and the thoughts and ideas that protrude from this.

This Island This Edge, ink & gouache on paper, 74 x 57cm, 2015

My recent work focuses on death, loss and transition.  I have been exploring this by creating something that I destroy to then create something new.  This could be a painting that I cut up to use the pieces as stencils on another painting, creating sections within it that are ‘missing’ but are making up a whole.  I am exhibiting a piece from this body of work at the international festival of contemporary art, Cupar Arts Festival, as an invited artist for the LIMINAL group exhibition from 18th – 25th June.

Missing 2, ink on canvas, 120 x 100cm, 2016

In my solo exhibition “Interconnections” at the Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries in 2015 I was exploring human relationship to nature through childhood memory, our desire to reconnect coupled with our distance from it.  For the exhibition I undertook a residency on the Isle of Eigg with The Bothy Project for which I am doing a talk at The Stove, the artist-led organisation and multi-purpose arts venue, in Dumfries on 23rd June.

Installation views of “Interconnections” 2015

Other exhibitions include “Inscapes”, a solo exhibition at &Collective Gallery in Bridge of Allen earlier this year,  “Detritus & Other Stories” solo exhibition at Iota Gallery in Glasgow in 2014, D&G Out group exhibition at James Harvey Gallery in London 2014, Visual Arts Award Restrospective Exhibition at the John Gray Centre in Haddington 2013.   I am also currently Chair of Upland, a new and ambitious visual art and craft development organisation in Dumfries & Galloway.

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As an MSc Design & Digital Media student you pick up a lot of new skills over the course of an academic year, particularly in the fields of design and web development. The Digital Media Studio Project is an opportunity to combine skills with fellow masters students in other courses for a semester long art project. In my experience, a group of six came together to create DarkSound, a project that was pitched to us by sound artist Zoe Irvine.

The DarkSound brief was a broad, creative exploration of darkness and night time: to represent elements of these themes in some way using sight and sound, with the specific criteria of only being accessible during the night. With three from my course (myself, Isaac Hinman and Zuo Mingni), a digital research student (Shang Qian) and individuals in the field of sound design (Robert Ewing) and composition (Thomas Hansen), we were broadly set for focusing our tasks among sonic and visual aspects.

We decided that by creating a piece of net-art we could approach the criteria of night only access and hone our sonic and visual skills through a new framework for presenting art, within the HTML5 canvas. As developed artworks in the canvas are still rare, there is scope for experimentation and future development. Isaac built the site, mainly in Adobe Flash CC (the only piece of existing software that can create and assemble canvas applications in an in-depth way that there is also documentation for), ironically spending quite a bit of time undoing some of what the software had compiled or trying to find workarounds to its scope issues.

As this medium could be home to audio and visuals, we thought it fitting to literally create a home that users could explore, to represent the subject. My part in this process was to photograph a building’s exterior and several interiors of people’s flats that would create an intimate environment, especially when set at night. As a new photographer, among other challenging experiences, I had numerous occasions of introducing myself to people right before taking pictures of their entire home and trying not to knock over the tripod more than once in the darkness around their life-long possessions. A lot of experimentation took place in these situations with different levels of darkness and external light from windows at night, and people were welcoming enough to let me into their homes until I’d tried almost every level of lighting in every room, opening and closing various doors in between as additional controls.

From earlier research I took during this project into themes of sleeplessness and creativity, I had interviewed someone to discuss their personal experiences of insomnia. This inspired further discussions with individuals on varied topics of lifestyles at night and a closer look at what affects routine (or lack thereof) at night: night shifts, newborns and social life to name a few. The discussions were recorded over Skype, giving similar tone to a phone call (especially after my part was edited out, creating the sensation for users of overhearing one end of a conversation). Zoe and I compared notes on what we found were salient elements to be edited into sound bites, as due to server size there were only so many clips we could include, that Robert neatly dissected – deciding where gaps in speech, breaths and other audible natural sounds should remain in place.

Isaac chose photographs to build from, that Zuo edited to enhance their stylistic consistency. I listened closely to the clips many times over while exploring the newly built DarkSound building to decide where each clip should be placed and ensure the final selections reflected the overall tone of conversation with each individual: where they could be factual and often amused by recalling or explaining something. I wanted to avoid portraying the conversations as overly dark and let the darkness of the topic speak for itself, even amongst the occasional giggle (which in particular can add impact from the juxtaposition of being overlaid on atmospheric sounds and images).

For me, the interviews are a complementary focal point to the artistry and visuals (which themselves feature no people, leaving just sonic and visual ‘evidence’ of people living) to draw a natural, inquisitive response from audience users. The voices bring attention not only to the night time scenes in the images but the subtlety of the ambient, diegetic sounds that Robert created to belong in each room. The music composed by Thomas, particularly for the building exterior – the first visual when accessing the piece – and party room, with Isaac’s structuring of the components also make DarkSound an enticing piece to explore.

Zuo and Shang worked with marketing materials created by Zuo to promote and record the reception of DarkSound since its launch on 9 April 2015, and gather feedback. As an online piece, Isaac has also been able to respond to feedback and view the DarkSound server’s status, which (as of 23 April 2015) has clocked 2,101 total page views from 745 unique users, from 58 different countries and growing.

DarkSound can be accessed after sunset at www.darksound-interactive.com. Early discussions and additional DarkSound content can be found at our blog.

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Sarah Lyth has been a part of the team at IfLooksCouldKill for more than six years. She studied visual communication at Edinburgh College of Art and her day to day work involves brand identity, print and digital design. IfLooksCouldKill’s experience in the arts and culture sectors has led her to work with clients such as Canongate Books, Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Glasgow School of Art and National Galleries of Scotland.

Sarah also dabbles in illustration for the studio’s marketing activities. This year she has illustrated 12 desktop wallpapers for each month of 2014. Here are just a few of the wallpapers. The rest you can download from the IfLooksCouldKill design journal.

December

November

July

To see more from the IfLooksCouldKill team, check out this Recommends feature here.

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Over 500 graduating artists, film makers, designers and architects will show work as part of the Edinburgh College of Art’s 2014 Degree Show which is on display until 1 June. You can peruse work online from the schools of art, design, the Reid School of Music, and the architecture and landscape schools on the degree show website. With previous graduates now BAFTA and Turner Prize winners, there’s no time like the present to scope out new talent.

Here are some highlights:

In the sculpture studio are the 16 clay busts of Lionel Ritchie, which are Dylan McCaughtry’s playful response to the music video of the singer’s hit song, Hello. To create the work, he blindfolded himself and made the busts while listening to the 1984 song on repeat.

Elsewhere, Leah Pendleton has filled a studio with multi-coloured worm-like creatures, inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Jack Wrigley has placed several life-size puppets in formal wear around ECA, gazing upon proceedings. Faith Elliott has created a beautiful, glowing miniature universe inside a dark, ramshackle shed.

Painter Sophie Hopkins has taken strips of deliberately ugly wallpaper and made beautiful objects using only its edges. Beverley Hughes has created a tactile, reptilian surface by painstakingly attaching 100,000 individual grains of rice to a canvas.

Several students have produced work that creatively addresses everyday issues. In textiles, Jenny Ellery has worked with unusual materials to produce tactile products for fidgeters. Product designer Henry Collingham has devised a way to create a refrigerator from car parts cheaply available in the developing world.

Other students have created swimming goggles for the visually impaired and bird houses from waste carpet fibre. In Architecture, students show their designs – and some remarkable models – for their plans to transform neighbourhoods in Manchester, the Venetian lagoon and Japan.

Many students have looked to their own families for inspiration. Matilda Craston has brought to life the forgotten poetry of her great-uncle, who died in 1937 aged 17, using graphic design. In Film and Television, Stuart Edwards’ documentary, A Wee Night In, is about his 95 year-old gran finding love with a 90 year-old boyfriend who comes to stay at weekends. Jewellery and Silversmithing student Hazel Thorn has experimented with base and precious metals to create objects that look fragile but are deceptively strong.

Suzanne van der Lingen’s work in the Masters of Contemporary Art section splices together footage from 1950s adventure films set in jungles – such as The African Queen – to question the depiction of women and indigenous cultures.

Last minute preparations for the ECA degree show 2013

The ECA degree show is currently on display until 1 June. For more information see the degree show website.

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For more events, see our Weekly Bulletin here.

The Scottish Documentary Institute is a documentary research centre based at the Edinburgh College of Art. Established in 20o4, the institute strives to inspire and stimulate documentary in Scotland. With a production company, a regular podcast and masterclasses, the institute is well-established with films having shown at Cannes, Sundance, Tribeca and Silverdocs. More recently however, SDI have made their masterclasses available to everyone via their website. Featuring highly respected filmmakers such as Mark Cousins, Victor Kossakovsky and Andrew Kötting, the classes offer both knowledge and inspiration.

Victor Kossakovsky | Masterclass | Part 1 from Scottish Documentary Institute on Vimeo.

Watch the masterclasses here.

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

Starting with a glimmer of an idea, a pile of balsa wood, mdf, scraps of fabric and turning it all into a convincing world with characters that an audience, hopefully, believe to be ‘real’ and care about feels a wee bit like magic.

Between the pile of material and a finished film is the graft.

Unlike in live action films, the editing in animation is done up front. When you produce about 4-6 seconds a day you don’t want to be animating much that you don’t want to use! In the two main narrative films that I’ve made I’ve been terrified to the point of near paralysis at this stage: What if the story’s rubbish? What if I can’t pull off that ambitious shot? What if nobody cares? I want folk to care. For me the purpose of filmmaking is to reflect society, albeit by focussing in on a wee story.

The story develops through mind mapping then a storyboard and, finally, an animatic (a storyboard which plays out as a film to get the timings nailed). When I worked with Karine Polwart on my adaptation of Anne Donovan’s story, All That Glisters , she produced a beautiful and responsive score so my animatic was very tight so she could work in parallel to my development. Because she used weird and wonderful musical instruments for particular moments I learned to be as specific as ‘The glitter will appear on frame 3762’ (although she was also very tolerant to the changes I did make along the way!).

In my time as Animator in Residence at National Mining Museum Scotland in Newtongrange (as part of Creative Scotland’s Iconic Artists Iconic Places programme), I developed the narrative by getting a feel for the collection and ultimately settling on interviewing some of the ex-miners about their experiences for inspiration, specific information and as the wonderful voices on the film.

I don’t use lip synching, preferring to use movement as the main form of communicating, so I haven’t needed to record scripted dialogue at this stage.

Making all the characters, props and sets is a labour of love to me. I keep a detailed blog of the process as I go (For All That Glisters see http://clairelamond.wordpress.com/ and for Seams and Embers see http://seamsinthedark.wordpress.com/) which is partly for my own sanity but also because I find learning and getting ideas from other people’s practice so useful myself.

Most of my costumes are made from old clothes. One of my daughters said yesterday, as I sat surrounded by material, looking for the perfect cloth for a tiny jumper, ‘It’s lucky for you, given all your making stuff, that you had children so we could grow out of all these clothes’.

Apart from measurements for making the armatures, I don’t do character designs in advance. I make their faces in a casual way and wait to see who appears.

The room sets have three or four walls which can all be removed depending on the angle of shot I want. These are mounted on a stage so that I can ‘tie’ characters down by putting bolts into their feet from below so they can walk/stand without falling over.

Lighting is really important to me so I take quite a long time with it making sure it works from all angles and getting the right colour and intensity for the time of day.

It might be easier to shoot all the shots I need from one angle then move the camera and do the same from another but I almost always shoot chronologically. I watched an interview with one of my filmmaking heroes, Ken Loach, many years ago describing his technique of doing this and what he gained by it and it stuck with me. So, although I work at about 0.02% of the speed it will be played back at, my head stays in the story while I animate.

I also tend to animate quite long (in animation terms!) movements ‘blind’. Like most stop motion animators, I use a computer programme to capture the images which allows you to play them back or compare the new shot to the last but I find I keep in the headspace and get a more emotional ‘performance’ from the puppets if I don’t keep stopping every frame to see how it looks. It’s a faster way of working and I myself don’t get beautiful smooth animation doing it this way but hopefully the emotion comes through.

I do get ridiculously involved in the emotion of the scenes – I catch myself holding a look on my face that matches what I’m trying to produce in the puppets…and I chat to them…I put it down to too long in a dark space on my own!

I emerge, a few months down the line, blinking into the light and do the foley (incidental sounds) and compositing (putting layers of visuals and effects together). I call on the expertise of Mattie Foulds to bring his magic to the sound mixing. I then put the sound and pictures together with title and credits and the film is done.

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In his work Land, Krijn de Koning makes familiar works disappear from view, or manifest in surprising ways, in a series of platforms encasing several iconic works from Edinburgh College of Art’s cast collection.

Venus de Medici, photograph by Kat Gollock

The Venus de Medici cowers in the corner. The Nike of Samothrace is buried up to her thighs, her wings at head height. Discobolus roots around underneath the raised platform’s plywood floor. The Venus de Milo and Spinario also make appearances.

Nike of Samothrace, photograph by Kat Gollock

The Sculpture Court, photograph by Kat Gollock

Krijn de Koning’s structures offer new possibilities to navigate and experience the space they inhabit. This new work has been developed for the Sculpture Court at Edinburgh College of Art, who are co-commissioning this work. Typical of his practice, Land initiates a direct dialogue with the hosting space.

A site for several Parley events during the festival, de Koning’s latest work offers an active platform for framing questions, and excavating and exploring ideas.

Talk on the platform, photograph by Kat Gollock

Parley events still to come:

Krijn de Koning in conversation with Edward Hollis
Krijn de Koning will discuss his work and its implications with architect, teacher and writer Edward Hollis, author of ‘The Secret Lives of Buildings’ and ‘The Memory Palace: A Book of Lost Interiors’.
27 August, 6-7pm, free

Parley Discussion: Tae Think Again, Rethinking Identity in Contemporary Scotland (curated by Rachel Maclean)
Responding to the upcoming 2014 referendum on Scottish Independence, this symposium curated by artist Rachel Maclean intends to delve deeper than a simple yes/no debate and look at the broader social, cultural and historical background to a discussion of contemporary Scottish national identity. The event will begin with a screening of the artist’s recent work The Lion and the Unicorn.
31 August, 2-5pm, free

Talk on the platform, photograph by Kat Gollock

Read more at www.edinburghartfestival.com.

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Launched in Spring 2010 in Edinburgh, line magazine is a freely distributed, bi-annual publication and website that provides a platform for emerging artists, writers, critics and academics in the visual arts field. Each edition focuses on a theme, which is discussed throughout the publication.

The overarching aim of line is to expose and promote the work of young talent and to forge connections between the most interesting new and non-profit art spaces across the UK.

Line is produced by Thomas Carlile, Rachael Cloughton and Hannah Knights, who started the magazine three years ago whilst they were students at Edinburgh College of Art.

The next edition of the magazine ‘The Pleasure of the File’ will be out soon. This includes:

The tenth issue, The Pleasure of the File opens with an essay by Rachael Cloughton on Recent Re-navigations of the Archive. Georgina Bolton interviews artist Grace Schwindt on ‘un-doing systems’ in relation to her multi-dimensional performance and video work and Hannah Knights writes on the contemporary narrative of Anthea Hamilton and Helen Marten’s work in Image over Image. Sarah Hardie looks at Ed Atkins’s quest for the here and now in Warm, Warm, Warm Spring Mouths and  Elliott Goat studies the former mayor of Bogotá, Antana Mockus’ strategies for a democratic self-regulation. Dunya Kalantery opens the archive of the present-past in anachronistic architecture & the Janus face of progress and Joseph Constable considers the difficulties of curating Lygia Clark’s legacy. The lesser-known history of Glasgow’s cultural heritage is re-told in Neil Cooper’s essay Life in a Scotch Sitting Room – The Noise and Smoky Breath of The Third Eye Centre  and Joe Townend writes on artist Neïl Beloufa’s rhizomatic model of artistic production and ‘ethnological sci-fi documentaries’.

The issue’s visual contributions include newly commissioned work by artists Bruce Ingram, Oliver Smith and Charlotte Morgan and the designers and publishers An Endless Supply introduce their ‘Source Sans How To Work Together’ typeface in our Curator’s Page.

Featured Artists

Sophie Lee, Tom Nolan, Manuel Raeder, James Clarkson, Max Slaven, Jonathan Owen, Kai Althoff, Grace Schwindt, Oliver Laric, Artie Vierkant, Anthea Hamilton, Junko Otake, Tino Sehgal, Neïl Beloufa, Yael Bartana, Rosa Barba, Cyprien Gaillard, Nicolas Party, Amir Chasson, Nadja Frank, Saim Demircan, Jéreémie Ergy & Aurélien Arbet, Helen Marten, Florian Thalhofer, Alfredo Jaar, Susan Philipsz, Mark Leckey, Lauren Gault, Ed Atkins & many more.

Stockists

Glasgow: David Dale Gallery, Aye-Aye Books at CCA
Edinburgh: Rhubaba, Ingleby Gallery, Fruitmarket Gallery, Collective Gallery
Dundee: DCA Liverpool: Royal Standard
Sheffield: S1 Artspace Leeds: Mexico Projects
Birmingham: Eastside Projects Norwich: Outpost Gallery
London: Hannah Barry Gallery (New Bond St and Peckham), X Marks the Bökship, South London Gallery, The Woodmill
Bristol: Spike Island Southend-on-Sea: Focal Point Gallery

*each edition has a print run of 1,000 copies
**past editions of the magazine are all downloadable online at linemagazine.co.uk

- info@linemagazine.co.uk

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Find more zines we’ve featured here.

Norway Infographic by Edinburgh based Graphic Designer, Connor Campbell. The design was burned onto plywood using a laser-cutter.

More: Cargo

Pulp Fiction by Edinburgh College of Art Graduate, Andrew Mason.