Chasing Shadows
A collaboration between artist/photographer Nicholas Godsell and artist/filmmaker Al Reffell
Nicholas:
Beneath the cold blanket of autumnal night,
Stuffed thick with intention and unknowing,
The engagement begins;
A dialogue between light and dark,
An empty hut filled with nothing but brilliance,
Which bursts through the seams,
Dances around the landscape,
And sprints to the sea before disseminating across the surface of the water,
Like a night swimmer.
Shadows and lights play and bicker,
And flicker,
Chasing each other around like small children;
Like a puppy chasing but never quite catching its tail,
We play,Lighting spaces;
Candles, strobing, flickering, shining,
Burning ghosts into our eyes,
Curbing our night vision,
Until the blindness discloses a revelation;
The ghosts, the peripheral vignettes themselves,
Etched onto the inside of our eyelids and retinal cones…
Al:
Welcomed on our first evening by a luminous full moon this residency was formed and informed by darkness by light by playing in the dark in all senses as we experimented…
With lights, LEDs, torches, tealights, teacups, candles, batteries, more batteries, lights on sticks, sticks and twigs, lights on hoops, in tubes, up sleeves, rotating motors, pins, tacks, tape, hooks, screws, hanging sheets suspended paper cut-outs, spinning fire, blowing ink and water, sparklers, (smoke!) and mirrors…
With movement, stillness, objects, attachment, non-attachment! (literally as well as metaphysically, as things fell down, off, apart..) we ran, spun, connected, disconnected, pressed the shutter, pressed record, sometimes blindly, sometimes with precision and huddled round the screen expectantly for playback – sometimes with delight and surprise as something magic occurred..
“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.” – Emily Bronte
This poem kept circling my mind during the editing process as an increasingly dreamlike sequence of vignettes drifted, circled and unfolded across the timeline, suspended moments, taking on a strange tale of their own…
‘LED’ on a journey through lightplay through darkplay on a November beach in a remembered beachhut – a perfect journey into midwinter – thank you again Hut 136 and People United 🙂
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