An interaction with dreaming landscapes

Amy aged 3

The way in which Catherine Yass explores the metaphorical and physical qualities of space inspired my interest in offering a way in which a space can become a personal choreography of specific elements. Bringing these varying elements together can allow us to draw out underlying thoughts and emotions from the more commonplace aspects of our individual lives.

This was the aim of the afternoon's activity, to create personal "dreamscapes" by selecting existing images on transparencies to then customise, which could be fixed to the window to use natural light and become simple light-boxes.

Unknown Cities by Phil

The afternoon began slowly due to competition from Bexhill Carnival taking place, and it was also a perfect day to enjoy the pleasure of being outside in the Summer sun. Nonetheless, the sight of colourful images attached on the window underneath the stairs, attracted interest and the resulting conversations and artwork. The first participants were Lyndsey, Phil and their french visitor Eustache. We talked about our continuing fascination with the excitement of visiting cities whilst no longer needing to live in these fast moving places. Consequently Phil's image was inspired by the theme of a poem by T S Elliot on the subject of cities and how the anonymity of the cities of the world, gave the impression that they can appear to collapse together and become one.

Eustache used the distortion of different perspectives of sea scenes to evoke the abnormality and disorientating effect of the dream state.

Whilst Lyndsey integrated together two opposing things that she loves, the urban life and trees.

These were wonderful examples of how the activity could stimulate a personal and poetic journey, as echoes from the exhibition. Throughout the afternoon, all who had seen the exhibition were very struck by the way in which their perception became heightened by the elongating sense of time. As such the smallest details become more noticeable, taking on a more extraordinary quality through following the gaze of Catherine Yass and the curious nature of her viewing points.

Art by Daniel and Sarah

A family of three young people accompanied by their mother, worked industriously to intensify and alter the existing images they chose, and positioned on the window, their art then took on the layer of existing scenery outside. Louise aged 13, who is also a keen musician, created an intricate dreamscape which incorporated lots of fragments such as her personal likes, with shadows and a sense of a story about to unfold.

Art by Louise

Wendy and lively daughter Amy, were inspired to each create work which portrayed a love of nature. Wendy's work expresses her frustration at not being able to move to live in Bexhill echoed the sense of a struggle between feeling trapped into an urban life whilst wanting to be closer to the countryside.

Finally, a family visiting from Berlin, Martin, Antonia and Nastassia, created the last surreal scenes of walking through the woods and taking steps to a house with a huge flower, and the beach in Bexhill. Martin decided that his work needed a second attempt, to be completed in his own time.

Art by Antonia and Nastassia

I much appreciated looking at all the thoughtful artwork subsequently displayed underneath the stairway like tendrils of creativity growing outwards from the core exhibition. I rather liked the fact that there was a further unintended backdrop of the details of machinery and the sky as a patchwork of nature and the manmade which infiltrated the created images. Finally I would like to say a huge thank you to volunteer Jess who was a great support throughout the afternoon.

Lighthouse Stories 1.

LIGHTHOUSE STORIES

What images or words are in your head after watching the film Lighthouse? Do you have any lighthouse stories? What do lighthouses mean to you?

Make a drawing or collage, write a poem, illustrate a word or be in a short video for the Pavilion's Thinking Aloud exhibition blog.

That was the proposition for a gallery interaction on an unseasonal Saturday afternoon, the Pavilion a refuge from rain & wind. The Sovereign Lighthouse was invisible until it suddenly brightened up around 4pm. We had two big tables outside the 1st floor gallery where Lighthouse by Catherine Yass is showing, by the cafe.

Lots of talented people stopped by to sit down and make something. Ana wanted to talk to camera. Too noisy to do it indoors due to a wedding reception upstairs, kept from this summer's rooftop beach by the horrible weather, so we had to contend with the roar of the sea on the balcony. Penny remembered her wedding reception here in 1968. Sophie & Rolf, on a 4 day trip from Brussels in their beautiful car to attend an Austin A35 rally in Liphook, had found the De La Warr Pavilion on the internet and took the time to make an ingenious model lighthouse.

Some of what we tacked to the wall or photographed before it was taken home is below. Thanks to wonderful volunteers Penny & Jess.

Gallery Interaction with Sheridan Quigley: Colouring the light

Catherine Yass' images, still and moving, were eliciting very enthusiastic responses from gallery visitors on Saturday afternoon. Watching people viewing the work, there was a sense that they were both enthralled and unnerved.
One of Yass' tradmarks is the intense colour that radiates from her lightboxes, either as negative light that glows, such as the "Decommissioned" series, or the surreal solidity of the atmosphere in the "Sleep" series, which looks as if you could prod it.

The idea behind the gallery interaction was to give visitors an opportunity to make their own images from layers of translucent colour, which we then hung in the stairwell to collect the light from the seafront.

There was a wide array of responses, from young and old, some taking inspiration from their own dream landscapes, others responding to the sea views and the underwater qualities of the materials.



Yass' films in particular caught the imagination of the people I spoke to, with the sensation they evoke of floating or falling through spaces where up and down are not fixed. A particular favourite seems to be the "Lock", on the Three Gorges Dam of Yangtze River: quite a number of visitors commented on the menacing sense of environmental damage it expresses. The Sovereign Lighthouse film, while inducing a surprising amount of seasickness, is a fabulous sense-surround of this extraordinary local landmark.

Lift the Lid: Dream Windows

For this month's Lift the Lid we took our inspiration from the new exhibition of lightbox photos and films of Catherine Yass. The artist creates quite dreamy (perhaps even slightly nightmarish) experiences for the viewer. We echoed this work by creating " dream windows", imagining we were fast asleep, going to the bedroom window and recording the dreaming landscape we could see through it.

The first task was to draw the vision with oil pastels on deep blue paper. Then we folded and cut shapes out of white paper, cutting the resulting lattice into two window frames and sticking them to the edge of blue paper. When the windows were shut, you could see glimpses of the dream land through the cut-outs. When the windows were opened, the full view was revealed.


My team (Jess, Ben and Nick) and I had a busy afternoon with many family visitors producing beautiful artwork. We hope you enjoy the results. Unfortunately, we just don't have the space to include them all.

Catherine Yass - colouring space

A lovely breezy summery seaside day and lots of families in for a play on DUNE and plenty in to see Copacabana - so a really mixed crowd. It was great to be able to link all the spaces - so that people who had been on the roof might have espied Sovereign Lighthouse and we'd talk about that, and it proved a great way to point them towards Catherine Yass's photos of it - and then if people had wandered in from the film in the gallery 2 could then be directed to telescope on roof and to her photos of in gallery 1.

Had some interesting conversations with pupils from Bexhill High School about re-painting the DLWP in their preferred colours - one suggestion was to cover it in graffiti and paint the inside pink and purple. Another suggestion was the addition of a sensory room with dolphins, furry animals and music plus an array of trampolines.
Inspired by Yass's use of positive and negative photography to create an atmospherically charged atmosphere we talked about how different colours influenced how we might in different coloured spaces. There was a collection of pictures of the DLWP to work with and the aim was to colour particular spaces in the building using colours that represented indivdual's response to the selected space.

Pre-school aged participants particulalry enjoyed cutting up coloured paper and inventing their own spaces whilst older ones used the coloured crayons in fits and starts whilst disucssing a vast range of topics. The most noticable thing was the degree to which people just sat themselves down and coloured furiously - enjoying the rich and varied colours available.