Over August, I was unexpectedly away from the river due to work commitments and supporting family. However, the time has not been wasted, and I now have new energy for the project.

I have spent the last three weeks researching into more related practitioners to find a thread for my project.

From previous modules, I revisited the works of Nadav Kander, whos work – Dark Line – The Thames Estuary, further inspired my thinking around water images.

Kander’s focus is on views around the Thames Estuary that play on the mystical, producing scenes that would not be recognisable to local communities.

Figure 1

Kander describes the emotive feeling of his work as:

When alone, there is nowhere I’d rather be than beside large bodies of slow moving water. I feel myself, quiet and alive as emotions come and go. Travelling to the estuary in the dark, often alone, and returning home at nightfall has affected how I see this place – not as a geographical landscape, but as a mystical space, somehow otherworldly and full on intrigue.

(Kander, Nadav. 2017)

This resonates very much with my practice. Seeing the River Otter as a metaphoric space for people to enjoy, relax, recover or enter into an otherworldly space. These for me are the stories I want to record. In doing so, my FMP could produce work that reflects such emotive connections.

I looked further into Kander’s work and considered his exhibition methods. Here his work is presented to an audience as broad, often tryptic images that produce a single scene. The eye often tricked into seeing one single image, made up of three individual gazes.

Figure 2

Kander describes the exhibition as:

Hanging vertically and low to the ground, these framed prints mirror bodily proportions. Composed at varying heights, the horizon line offers a subjective or symbolic point of contact between two expanses; you look up and see the heavens and down you see the earth. I invite the viewer to physically approach each work as a place in which to feel.

(Kander, Nadav. 2017)

This invitation to the observer to enter a space within which to ‘feel’ takes the form of the Signified. Thus removes the observer from the exhibition and places them within a metaphorical Thames Estuary – the physical nature of the works providing the Signifier.

This, for me, is an excellent example of where I would like to see my practice move to after my MA is completed. I feel that being in a position to create such work, and host exhibitions where the observer is removed from reality and into a world that I can create – allowing the observer to travel through and experience – is now very much a personal goal.

For my FMP, such exhibitions can be replicated in part using video. I see video as a way to move this concept forward, as with moving images, an observer can get a different gaze that leads to a similar metaphoric experience.

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References

• Nadav Kander. (2017). Dark Line – The Thames Estuary – Nadav Kander. [online] Available at: https://www.nadavkander.com/works-in-series/dark-line-the-thames-estuary/single [Accessed 23 Aug. 2019].

Figures

• Figure 1: Kander, Nadav. 2015. Water parts 1,2 and 3 (Shoeburyness towards The Isle of Grain) England. [Photograph] (source media)  
• Figure 2: Kander, Nadav. 2017. Dark Line – The Thames Estuary, Exhibition. [Photograph] (source media)