Image Credit: Andy Cluer 2017
Between March and June of this year, two PAC Home members were selected to be artists in residence at our Batter Street studios after an open call for applications. Andy Cluer (Plymouth) and Rachael Allain (Totnes) worked alongside one another for three months to explore their independent artistic practices, which culminated in an Open Studio event on 10 June. Here, they share their experiences of completing the residency.
The PAC Home Batter Street residency offered me the opportunity to undertake an unrealised project that I had been interested in developing previously to this residency, that interacted with the physical space and future developments of the cities architecture. Thus allowing my practice to take a more real and organic progress within the specific area of my research. Living in east Devon, the residency space gave me a base point in the city where I could reside whilst researching, experimenting and building ideas towards developing works, overcoming an obstacle that previously had an impact on my practice.
Sharing the residency space with Rachael Allain was an interesting concept and one that I specifically reflected on while applying for this opportunity, as for the previous year my practice has been mainly happened in spaces where I worked alone and I felt that this was the right time to work critically alongside another artist. Although during this residency our paths only crossed in the studio a handful amount of times due to our working schedule, the conversations and the visual development gave a fresh atmosphere to my workings allowing myself to take breaths and reflect on my practice more so then when working alone. The two critiques with Ben and Lucy, the PAC Home public critique and the open studio event acted as key points during this time of development as they allowed important inputs from curators and other artists to express personal opinions and thoughts into my practice that in ways kept me thinking at important times of the residency.
Image Credit: Andy Cluer 2017
Image credit: Rachael Allain 2017
Batter Street studio has be an invaluable testing space to develop my artistic practice with a range of new work created. The studio space has acted as a testing ground for me to gather, assimilate and gradually edit the data and materials collected. I have enjoyed witnessing the passage of time from the studio window, facing east, from March until June, watching the seasons gradually changing, experiencing the daylight hours extending and being in such close proximity to the Barbican and the sea.
The focus of my residency was to create a site responsive body of work on the Barbican/waterfront of Plymouth. I have achieved my aims and have generated a series of experimental, process led, still and moving images, sound recordings and meteorological data revealing both the seen and the unseen aspects of above and below the physical and metaphorical horizon of Britain’s Ocean City. I have also incorporated a combination of scientific imaging data collecting mechanisms, including infrared and underwater cameras in addition to low-tech analogue equipment. Focusing on the liminal spaces between the visible and invisible horizon, the sky and the sea, I have created a body of seascapes/landscapes using the vast and intimate aspects of the space.
The Open Studio event on June 10th provided a useful opportunity to display and prepare a selection of the work that I created during the 3 months residency, in an informal and relaxed way. I produced some finished pinhole photographic prints on metal and a series of films using a mixture of analogue and digital technologies, plus some homemade slides that I projected. I enjoyed doing the Instagram takeovers for PAC Home as it allowed me to connect to a wider network and again provided a useful outlet for my visual enquiry of the site. On reflection, this residency opportunity has been an extremely positive and useful experience. I plan to do another residency in the near future.
Image credit: Rachael Allain 2017
