Site Map

Beacon 2009

October 2009

How Artists Work
Artist, Film and Participation

Thursday 29 October 2009
The Hub, Sleaford, lincolnshire NG34 7TW

Lyndall Phelps speaking about The Pigeon Archive

Beacon was delighted to be invited to take part in The Learning Revolution Festival, a celebration of informal learning and the pleasure and benefit it can bring to us all. The festival took place throughout England during October 2009.

On Thursday 29 October Beacon presented an evening event at the hub, Sleaford,

How Artists Work
Artist, Film and Participation

The scratch and sniff film HINTERLAND, by artist Melissa Bliss was re-screened. This was commissioned by Beacon as part of the As part of The Intercult North SEAS Festival

The artist Lyndall Phelps was also welcomed to speak about the inspriation behind and the making of her film for THE PIGEON ARCHIVES A question and answer session with the audience Lydnall Phelps and John Plowman followed

The q+a session with the audience

In line with one of Beacon's aims of 'taking the audience to the art' a free return coach was provided to offer transport to residents in the area.

This event was made possible with the support of the partner below

September 2009

A New Scratch and Sniff Film Commission

As part of The Intercult North SEAS Festival
Sunday 20 September 2009

Beacon Art Project in partnership with East Lindsey District Council commissioned artist Melissa Bliss to respond to her residency in Mablethorpe. She created a film made with four residents of Mablethorpe which was screened hourly at Leicester Children's Holiday Centre in Mablethorpe.

Read the review ...

Melissa Bliss causes a stink with Beacon Art Project film of Lincolnshire coast

By Culture24 Staff | 16 September 2009
http://www.culture24.org.uk

(Above) The characters and aromas of Lincolnshire star in Melissa Bliss's Hinterland. © The Artist

According to Melissa Bliss's Twitter page, her biggest concern about sending her film to local licensing authorities in Lincolnshire ahead of this premiere in Mablethorpe was the risk of them finding it "offensive or depraved".

Apparently it features a man who rescues injured and orphaned seals, a woman who devotes her life to children who have never glimpsed the sea, an amateur radio buff who overcame the isolation of the area to broadcast his own show and a chap who's built an art gallery on stilts in a garden.

Royal Mail managed to lose the film en route to the local licensing officer. © The Artist

But there is a catch. As they watch, audience members are invited to release a smell associated with the scenes, accompanying footage of seal pups with the whiff of wet fish, among other ploys.

"The effect is overwhelming," suggests Bliss. "It's as if you are there with them, not just watching."

Bliss aims to scratch beneath the surface of the stereotypical seaside resort. © The Artist

Commissioned by local visual art group the Beacon Art Project, the film uses individual memories associated with smells to mirror the lonely beaches and marshes of the nearby landscape.

In the event, Royal Mail lost the film on the way to the local film licensing officers, leaving them unimpressed before they'd even set eyes on the piece.

A carer for injured and orphaned seals features in the film. © The Artist

"It's powerful stuff," says Beacon Art Project Director Nicola Streeten, speaking both literally and hyperbolically. "The film has definitely been affected by the people. It couldn't have been made anywhere else."

Bliss's strength lies in scratching beneath the surface, portraying the characters as both outsiders and unlikely heroes inspired to follow their passions within a bleak terrain.

Commissioners at the Beacon Art Project believe the work "couldn't have been made anywhere else." © The Artist

"Not everybody will have the same reaction to a particular aroma," she adds. "I want to intensify the viewer's involvement in the film by bringing another sense into play."

This project has been made possible with the support of the
partners below

June 2009

KELLY LARGE

Our Name is Legion
a new film commission

Photo: John Plowman

Our Name is Legion

In November 2008, Beacon Art Project commissioned artist Kelly Large to take up residence at Kesteven & Sleaford High School and produce an art work in response to this educational context located within a historic, rural town.   

She observed the school day, where roughly between the hours of 8.30 am - 3.30 pm, the pupils' movements and behaviours were precisely managed and contained within the school's boundaries.   Wandering around town between these times there was little evidence that Sleaford contained three secondary schools in spitting distance of the town centre.   As a consequence of the lack of presence the students had on the town during school time, the after school routine, when approximately 2500 young people, from nearby secondary schools, exit the school grounds and spill into the town centre, took on an extraordinary quality.   The artist was preoccupied by the sheer volume of students who amassed and dispersed and the affect this had on the town.   The atmospheric changes, increased noise levels, sudden traffic jams all indicated a momentary shift in status quo, where one demographic group outnumbered all others.  

The production of Our Name is Legion took place on Thursday 30 th April.   At the end of the school day Large invited all secondary and sixth-form students from Sleaford schools to don a florescent yellow high-visibility vest from the moment they left school to the moment they arrived home.   Thus transforming the pupils into a mass of singular colour as they followed their usual routes, flowing along the main thoroughfares, congregating in habitual locations such as the central Market Place and bus stops and then over a period of one hour, gradually disbanded. The mass spectacle was filmed from high buildings in the town.  

In the direct context of Sleaford Our Name is Legion signals the complex relationship the students have with the town. The appropriation of this routine, daily fluctuation as art work seeks to make vivid a daily occurrence in order to explore resident's awareness of their town's social structure; each student is local, an inhabitant of Sleaford or the surrounding area, yet the mass assembly differentiates between town and school populations, temporarily defining the youth as an anonymous, culturally defined group, that are simultaneously 'inside' the community and separate from it.   This interplay between mass and individual, lack of or excess public prominence, in a specific geographical and cultural environment, reflects to some extent the status of young people within wider society, as they start to forge an identity for themselves that is both individual and conforms to societal expectations.

However, this is not an art work about the representation of young people.   Those who were excluded from or chose not to take part, such as the town's people, the artist, the commissioner and the student dissenters were not absent from the moment.   Their lack of engagement is writ large on the art work - signalled through the dilute effect their clothing has on the spectacle, and as such they remain visible participants.   The title of the art work, Our Name is Legion has military connotations and is taken from a biblical parable in which Jesus meets a man possessed by many demons, and when asked their name, they respond: 'Our name is legion, for we are many'.   It has been referenced in political and pop culture contexts, used to suggest the destabilising power of the assembling mass and the ambiguous power-play between multitude and individual.   Used here, it points towards the art work offering possibilities for acting collectively or alone and the agency these positions afford in different social arenas; it also acknowledges society's uneasy and agoraphobic relationship to the colonisation of public space by groups of people.

Our Name is Legion was made possible with the support of the partners below.