From Lucie Winterson: afterthoughts...

I came to Madre de Dios on 9 December 2015 and stayed till 8 January 2016   I arrived with the intention of experiencing a new nature.  Nature has always been at the core of my practice and I have many years of familiarity with certain British landscapes: north west Scotland, Devon, and east anglia.   I was, however, thrilled with the idea of turning this over and going to the other side of the globe and to a different terrain — the tropical rainforest, the greatest biodiversity of all.   The most pressing need I had was simply to be in the rainforest.  I wanted to feel it, get to know it, to have time for it to be imprinted on my psyche - and to allow that hoped-for engagement to generate thought and artistic practice.

I didn’t want to predict what I would do but laid out some plans and ideas just in case.   I knew I’d make cyanotypes of plants from the forest.  I’d envisioned this from home with anticipation.  I knew I would take photographs and with any luck work with local earth — and the rest, I would see.    

I had brought prepared cyanotype paper carefully sealed in light fast bags, I’d packed gum arabic to mix with earth so it would adhere to paper, I brought lots of drawing equipment, watercolours and  a good camera.   Along came, also, the good old laptop so as well as writing I could reel through the hundreds of photographs I knew I would take.  Actually it was in the thousands.

I couldn’t help taking photographs whenever I was astonished or amazed by something — which was very often indeed and this constitutes the main body of the work I did there — but I watched out for the point when taking photographs gets in the way of experience, when it becomes acquisitive rather than responsive.   Towards the end I walked in the forest with no camera, note book, or prop of any kind.

Most of my photographs are of looking into the forest at eye level, focusing into the distance to find the sense of the complexity and myriad variety of shape and form, light and shade.   It is different, obviously, from any forest I’ve seen because as well the general vertical tendancy of trees, branches, bromeliads and vines spread horizontally, crisscrossing diagonally and looping in curves.  




 With that and the extraordinary scale and radical shape variation of leaves there is a sense of sculpted space that I found endlessly fascinating and compelling.   Colour wise it is more uniform, the variations in tone coming from the changing light.  Sometimes when the sun is in a particular place and there is a gap in the canopy, light will come beaming down, lighting up just one small area or plant in a sudden incandescence.   And if the changing light wasn’t enough there is also the sudden rains, and the forest is lit up again, differently — leaves glistening and luminous, contrasting with the darkness of the sodden earth and bark.  






I also loved working with cyanotypes of plants from the rainforest, with a sense of experimentation and discovery, my paper running out too quickly.    There is such fine detail obtainable with cyanotypes, even tiny filigree root hairs becoming apparent.   They can also be strongly poetically charged.  The ones I was most pleased with were those where the plant or plants become quite abstract and morphed into a different kind of beings.   When there are two or more plants, it can suggest a dialogue between them but I also enjoyed the bold poetry of a single plant.    Also significant is the way in which the living plant is so directly registered.  It has touched the paper, lain on it, left a resonance, more than a trace.   It was a wonderful way to feel attuned to the forest and is a way of working I will be taking forward in other ways to other places.


 


I wanted to work with the rain — and this proved quite difficult.  Partly because due to El NiƱo it didn’t rain as much as usual, and because timing was complex - I wanted to do cyanotypes with rain, but managed only one that I kept.  I needed more paper, more time, more rain!   More satisfactory was mud coated onto paper, and then left in the rain, to register the marks of the rainfall.   However even this was limited.    It would pour, I would prepare the mud on paper which needed to be at a particular point of dampness before exposing it to the rain.  Then I would go out, and of course the rain would have stopped. This happened unaccountably and infuriatingly often.

I also gathered mud to experiment with.  I made small studies of oval shaped mud puddles — reminiscent of eggs or stones.  These dried over a period of several days on the floor of my room and insects crept and hopped out of the mud and over the paper leaving light traces and marks, or in some instances nibbling at the mud and making patterns that way.  I took this all as part of the rhythm and life of the finished sketch.    




On a few occasions I took puddles of paint or mud and left them out over night in the forest, hoping for some action, of insects or rain.   Only one was moderately successful.   The procedure itself was too frustrating in the given working circumstances — and on the whole they were either rained out or they dried too fast for anything to happen.





Later I began to have a lot of satisfaction with drawings of plants made with a pipette using earth from the forest mixed with gum arabic as a binder.    I drew plants I collected from the forest, engaging with them very directly — sometimes only looking at the plant and not even at the paper at all as I followed the form, tracing my seeing.   This helped make as direct connection as I could with the nature of the forest through the process of looking, feeling, drawing.





There was poetry too.  Early on when I’d lost my bearings and was somewhat lonely, my phone threw at me some John Clare poetry.    Phones do this sometimes — when you sit on them or they do ‘bag calls’.  It never feels quite random.   Out of nowhere my phone had got itself into the Kindle app and produced a poem!  It was a minor wonder as the deep communication the poem provided was just what I needed.   I decided I wanted to read John Clare to the rainforest. This early 19th century english poet of nature had suffered chronically due to the loss of the nature he knew, through the enclosures, landowners blocking off access to fields, woods and meadows.  I thought I’d take him through space and time to a different hemisphere via his poetry to an encounter with a tropical nature of now.  I found a way to do this and film it, in a watery area of forest.

And now I’m back but it still feels very recent.   Just three weeks ago I was there and it will take a while to process it all.  Having made a personal connection to this extraordinary place, I’m wondering how to apply this more widely.  I’m also thinking further of contexts including that of climate change, the impact of damage and loss.  I’m not there yet, but I’m beginning to shape the exhibition I intend to have and thinking of what else I will be doing going forward. 

My feeling is that encounters with all variety of nature in this increasingly globalised world whose biosphere is in crisis, are radical and precious and that the creative language which emerges, in whatever art form, needs to be spoken out loudly.

(written 01.02.2016)

From Lucie Winterson

09.12.2015 - 08.01.2016



Into the rainforest




The heart of darkness, the great unfurling of deep nature, the ferocious jungle, the unrepressed.    I came with these preconceptions and observed with curiosity as they fell away, waiting to find out what would replace them.  The jungle myths were easily dispelled.  The forest is far more than the site of grim battles to the death, it is not rife with danger.   Those things are a small part of what it contains but mostly the jungle is calm, with noises rising and subsiding.  

Visually it is endlessly interesting because the vegetation is so varied and the real exotic — wonder at the ‘different’ — is pleasurably here.   Trees whose roots start outside of the ground, ‘walking’ trees, trees with buttress roots.    A tree that smells strongly of garlic after the rain.    The two things that most astonished me when I first entered the jungle, were both sounds.   One a bird, the ora pendula, whose call sounds like a pebble being dropped into water with a loud ‘plop’ and the other was the howler monkeys — which don’t howl at all.  They emit a sound like a low but rising wind that spreads through the forest as if from very far away.    The most apparent thing that moves is the light and the changing weather.   Over all the forest is peaceful.




The danger myth is the hardest one to shake off.  I learned last night what to do if I encounter a jaguar.  Don’t run or you become prey.   Make bizarre and unlikely noises to frighten it off.   I was also told that unlike jaguars, pumas will stalk you.  But they are more in the higher areas and the mountains, not here.  In which case why were several of them very evident in the footage from the camera traps presented here the other night?   They are here in fact, very much so, all of them, walking the same paths as us.    But they slip away, dissolving into the jungle at the hint of a human.   As hard as I try, though, I can’t feel fully confident that I won’t get eaten by a jaguar, ocelot or puma.    To ask for a foolproof guarantee is unreasonable, I know, but I can’t help trying.  The best answer I get, really, is that it has never happened.   Well, to anyone with the remotest tendency to paranoia how does that help?  

Initially I take off into the forest and the wonder of it will sweep me up — as I walk it passes rapidly through different phases of light, of rain, of luminous density and intricate shadow.  After some walking, however, when I’m sweating and damp, tired and perhaps with minor sunstroke, my camera has steamed up and I’m a fair way from the lodge; then the jaguar thoughts will come.  The pumas of the mind will stalk me:   ‘It’s never happened…….But it could’.     The forest turns muddy and loses its gleam. I hasten back.

So far there has been only one mote of darkness.   Falling asleep one night I heard a creature I’ve never heard before or since.  A bird? A frog?  Its sound was eerie and mocking.  A malign little goblin laugh feeding into my dreams.

Madre de Dios, Peru Christmas day 2015



From Colin Miner

2 Jan - 30 Mar 2016



The man, who day after day, took pictures of shadows   

A while ago that still feels recent, I learned to walk with a cat. We followed many paths, like methodologies, which often offered long waits for things that would not appear.   

Alongside, my eyes began looking for birds, an occupation that came naturally. Colour, form, movement, and specific qualities of relations proposed comparisons to be translated through depictions in books.   

Familiar with looking for details in contrast to positions of movement, my eyes became disciplined on stillness.   


Having trained them to see birds, my eyes turned curious for cats. And so, walking with one cat lead to a lot of walking looking for cats. Previously there appeared not to be many cats and now, many many cats. 



Along with a cat (Ocelot) I had the wonderful experience of sharing space with a sloth, harpy eagle, and countless other living organisms during my residency. It was an experience that has taken a significant amount of time to process and was immensely generative in affecting my practice and offering points of departure that I am still exploring. One of the most beneficial aspects was the prolonged period of reflection and contemplation that was offered. It is rare to be offered such an open-ended opportunity in addition to support for a sustained engagement. At first overwhelmed by the heat, humidity, extreme diversity and density of the ecosystem I became able to sink into the uniqueness of a space and time of the remote amazon rainforest. The adaptation that assisted me the most was a developing of slowness – or slowing down, in which to be as present (and reflective) as possible. Experiences with cats, birds, and the complexity of that ecosystem have lead to the development of works exhibited over the last few years in numerous institutions within Canada, and a forthcoming publication with Blank Cheque Press (late 2018-early 2019).  Further research influenced by this residency is being conducted on the subject of the sloth and slowness in relation to contemporary art theory and a concept of anxiety as question without answer. 

Further information on projects and work influenced by this residency can be found at www.colinminer.com



I would like to offer my sincere appreciation for all the support I received leading up to, during, and following my residency with Trelex in the Peruvian Amazon. There were so many wonderful experiences and challenges that have affected both how I experience and understand the world in which I reside. That is a remarkable thing to be offered at any stage in life and would not be possible without the generosity of the people, place, and all the amazing inhabitants (lanes, insects and animals) of the Tambopata region. 


Link to Untitled (leaf) here