Interview with Kathy Hinde at the CCA, Glasgow

25/11/15

Interview: Kathy Hinde

Kathy Hinde (b1975) is an audiovisual artist and composer based in Bristol. Her works bring together art, music, science and nature in an enticing, curious and educational way. Her Bird Step Sequencer video, in which the arrangement of birds sitting on a telegraph wire is used as a score for a broken piano, became a YouTube sensation, and, as an associate artist with the Glasgow-based company Cryptic, she recently had two pieces included in its biannual sonic art festival, Sonica.

Hinde spoke to Studio International at her Tipping Point installation at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow.

Read the interview here

Photo: Joe Clarke

Interview with Bill Viola at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

06/11/15

Interview: Bill Viola

Bill Viola at Yorkshire Sculpture Park 

10 October 2015 - 10 April 2016

Bill Viola: Moving Stillness (Mt Rainier), 1979

Blain|Southern 

13 October - 21 November 2015

Bill Viola (b1951) was an early pioneer in the medium of video art and his work has been shown not only in museums but also in universities and religious institutions across the globe. His universal themes of life and death speak to audiences from all walks of life and the expressions of his actors evoke powerful, empathic responses. His works take inspiration from the history of world art and religions, and Viola is well versed in Buddhism, having spent a year and a half living in Japan, studying with a Zen master. His emotionally charged, slow-motion works are inspired by traditions within Renaissance devotional painting and certainly exhibit a painterly quality, while other pieces, such as The Veiling (1995), projected through layers of translucent cloth, hung as screens across the gallery, are more sculptural in form. A current exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park brings together 10 of Viola’s works from the past two decades, including a new work, The Trial (2015). It is his most extensive show in the UK for more than a decade.

Read the interview here

Interview with Edward Burtynsky

04/09/14

Interview with Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky: Watermark

Edward Burtynsky (b.1955) is a Canadian photographer and filmmaker, known for his large-format photography of natural and industrial landscapes and the crossover points between humankind and nature. His latest project, focusing on water in all its aspects, has led to an exhibition, a book, and a feature documentary film.

Anna McNay: How was it for you, as a photographer, working in collaboration with two other people – co-director Jennifer Baichwal and producer Nicholas de Pencier – to make the film? Clearly you’re behind the still photography, but were you responsible for the moving imagery as well?

Edward Burtynsky: When I started the Water project, for the first two years, it was very much just me and one other assistant, because I was trying to block out the central ideas and figure them out visually. I worked through the stills, and once I had maybe 60-70% of the themes confirmed, with visuals to support them, we came in with the film crews and started to expand on that. I was only directly responsible for maybe 5-10 minutes of the film footage with my own camerawork. Largely, it was Nick [de Pencier], who is a cameraman as well as a producer. I would show him an image that I’d picked and ask him to work with the technologies to bring that image into film. I wasn’t behind the actual camera, but I was choosing the subject matter and the frames and then having the camera take them.

AMc: Jennifer [Baichwal] has spoken about the need to be in a place in an authentic way and to convey that authenticity. How do you go about ensuring this when you’re carrying a large amount of equipment and presumably don’t always speak the language?

EB: We ran into some real obstacles in India, trying to get some high vantage points for the Kumbh Mela festival. There were 30 million people there on one day and we wanted to really try and get that sense of what 30 million people trying to bathe in one spot looked like. We wanted to get up high but they were afraid of all our technology. We had remote helicopters and a 50 foot pole. They wouldn’t let us use the tools that we wanted or put them in the places that we wanted, so it was a real struggle. Generally, however, we tend to be there long enough so that those who we’re engaging with almost forget that we’re there. You’re just there, rolling. Eventually they forget you’re there and they say something or do something. You wouldn’t get that with traditional film. The new medium of digital video has opened up the potential to really be there with the subject until the camera disappears.

To read the rest of this interview, please go to: http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/2014/09/watermark/