Through the Imagined Landscapes exhibition we sought to create opportunities for audiences to engage with artworks in many different ways, through multiple senses.
Leaving Traces | Expressions Art Collective
Moving Image Installation
With this installation we invited audiences to participate in the artwork, to understand that their experience was part of the conversation. This artwork asked audiences to become aware of their own thoughts and feelings, in the presence of the artwork, not to look for meaning without oneself but to search for meaning within . Each person’s presence made the artwork what it was. Without each person that wondered through, the artwork would have been different.
Leaving Traces asked those who entered to be part of the artwork, to bring what their own perceptions and leave small impressions of themselves behind.
The Expressions Art Collective worked with moving image artist Emma Grant to create this piece over a series of workshops.
The piece explored how we all bring our own understanding to the things we see. Our world is experienced through our own dialogue between our personal condition and the outer world. Our present is filled with echoes of our past, it’s impossible not to leave traces. Within our own lives and the lives of others.
We each have our own unique connection to the land, the spaces and places we inhabit. We each feel our own way, informed through our own associations, perceptions and experiences.
"A multi-sensory delight. Art like I've never seen before."
My Yellow Bird | Giles Webberley
Digital Installation
15000 pixels that make up a digital image of a handpainted yellow bird are given life. These pixels are created to perform for the limited world which they see. Given energy through your movements they are each influenced to express themselves individually, to become a beautiful display when playing their part in the collective.
Behaving like a swarm represented by coloured droplets, these pixels produce a constantly unique performance in response to you, within the screen in which they exist.
Born with only a memory of where they belong, each pixel when at rest has a desire to return to its place in the bigger picture, that of our yellow bird flying free. Distracted by their surroundings, and given the challenges and doubts within their chaotic personalities, this collective idyll is, though extraordinary, unlikely.
The yellow bird can be thought of as a symbol of the peace and humility that is within an individual when given a break from torment and self doubts. For many of us it is caged with fear by having a “black dog” as a constant companion, only escaping occasionally when we are able to reflect on and embrace our weaknesses. Similar to the pixels; we are distracted from our own wellness by the need to perform in response to the limited world which we are predisposed to see. Our striving toward the individualistic sense of self constantly obscuring the benefits that are available through an empathy for the “other”.
As above, so below | James Quinton-Denley
Sculpture, mixed media
James Quinton-Denley is an artist maker based in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. A carpenter by trade, during lock down he conceived the idea of making geodesic structures as places of reflection and contemplation.
Balancing the simple geometry of timber with the tenacious and vibrancy of epoxy resin pours. This structure is to remember and honour those who lost their lives to Covid.
James worked with people supported by Milestones Trust to create the beautiful panels. The dome is now being toured around the gardens of Milestones Trust’s residential homes
As above, so below
The finite symmetry of our existence
Fills us with colour
Allows us To love, to feel, to express
Realise that our experience
Will not be wasted
Every action influences everything
Know the connection
Between all things
Be at peace
Channel the feeling from divine
And project
As above, so below.
Unknown | Remy Small
Mixed media installation
