Digital animation
4 minutes 30 seconds, looped projection
I spent December 2017 at Arteles Creative Centre in rural Finland. In this deep winter, the muted sun appeared low on the horizon for only a few hours each day. Dawn and dusk were long, drawn-out, unassuming affairs.
In the early months of pregnancy, I felt unwell for much of the residency. I found myself sitting for long, dark hours, drawing. Slow, soft strokes appeared on the page. Strange forms emerged, imagined spaces that unfurled in front of me – a small body of work that marked the time and the darkness, that drew out unexpected, inaccessible, previously unseen spaces. As they emerged I envisaged that they would, eventually, metamorphose into something other. Perhaps they would become animations: quiet, softly moving pieces. Perhaps they would become sculptural works, developing like many of my other works to become immersive, moving, experiential installations. Or perhaps they would re-emerge as wall-sized drawings standing larger than the viewer, bringing these imagined spaces into the bodily realm.
Alongside its sister work, THE TOWER (VIGIL), NEST (THE HORIZON) emerged from these initial drawings. Eighteen months after being in Finland, and now with a small baby, I revisited the drawings. In doing so, I sought to capture their uncertainty and the ‘unfixedness’ of the imagined spaces within them, taking a gentle approach so that they could develop softly into the next stages of their coming-into-being. In doing so, each of the works touches upon qualities of early parenthood; of holding, of standing vigil, of repetition, and of constant change.