Emma Rochester: Turn To Face The Sky: A.I.R Vallauris

Emma Rochester with Hektor Kafka. Turn to Face the Sky. Video Still. 2011

Blues and greens, black outlines and figures of white and pearled grey float seamlessly merging from left to right. The Chapel of War and Peace at the Picasso museum, Vallauris, France is a two-sided diorama contrast of dark and light, heaven and hell, joy and inner turmoil. It is this chapel, The Chapel of War and Peace that I chose to map during my Residency at A.I.R Vallauris, France.

Taking soft steps within Picasso’s sanctuary I mapped pathways towards key images of Peace: A winged horse, a boy plowing the sea, a child holding an owl on a stick. Walking towards each image within the motif I took note of my body’s movements, the ideas, memories and sensations that sprang to mind. Including the evocative cognizance of reverence.

The feelings, emotions and drawings taken from this process are then used to create a dialogue between Drawing and Video Art. Wrapping myself with drawings I video this process to express the feminine experience of this place. What does it mean to be a woman in Picasso’s chapel? What is it that I learn from being in this place?

This exchange between Video and Drawing is the in point through which I can explore aspects of the feminine interpretation of landscape and place. Through movement, stillness, and the re-creation of felt experience I create poetic and evocative homage’s to the sites I inhabit, in this case the Chapel of Peace.

Whilst in the Chapel of Peace and War the symbols of the horse and olive branch were highlighted, these images became the basis of my ceramic work for the last five work. Each day I crafted a series of olive branches and horses which were strung onto a long line of my fabric.

The Picasso museum is copyright, this means no images of The Chapel. No making associated work and no tourist shots unless the guard is sleeping. How do you make a work when the guard is sleeping? Is it ethical? How then can you transcend obstacles and make a video installation about a place that can be captured through film?

Picasso's chapel is cobalt blue. Reminiscent of the Sky and the Sea. He draws a horse ploughing a sea. Out into the depth of the water pulling one long line of ceramic horses and olive branches.

The sounds of Hektor Kafka who crafted the audio trax for this work plays in my mind. Disgruntled, soft, gentle, colliding and sifting apart, raw describe aspects of the sound within his work.

Check the blog-post on the home page to read more deets about how our practices conjoined to make sound for a video, and a video for a sound.

Re-Imagining Space: Recreating a feminine form of cartography

When one looks at a map one sees place devised and redefined into a strict grid like system with roads and landscape marked out in different coloured lines. The grid (upon which the map is constructed) with its hard lineal structure not only signifies place but is also a cultural reminder of how society contains, defines and understands place. Terrain is reduced to simple lines that were once devised and decided upon by men.

While cartography may once have been designed to demacate place, somewhere along the line mapping became mistaken and intermeshed with place. Maps became formailsed, accurate, exact, unquestionable in some cases, easier to understand than the place itself. In sum, maps replace place.

But what if place, terrain, territory and spaces could be represented in more personally fulfilling and gender inclusive ways? What if one could separate the unquestioning belief in the digital navigation system and the two dimensional fold out map, look up, look down, gaze around and see that place can be defined in a myriad of ways, and that what we now have to define place is not necessarily the best form of construct. What if place could be represented in a way that was personally meaningful and reflective of the individual experience rather than of the man who originally invented or created the map?

The Meaning of Method:

Through both performative and static works Emma Rochester inhabits the space in order to create a new dialogue of how place can be presented and invites the viewer to extend their imagination beyond the line of what is presented.

Walking through the space with pen on paper or even something as simple as drawing a line by walking. Emma Rochester creates drawings that can be seen as layered memories of place. These are often considered seismographic as they simultaneously map the movement of the artist through place.

The performative walk also becomes one of assessment. Of understanding ones location within the space dependent upon the point on which one stands on the line: Like the map which has its basis in scientific assessment and determination of place so too does the walk becomes a reflection on orientation and ones position in relation to not only the line the artist walks but also in terms of mapping as an entirety of lines that culminate in grid like structures.

WIthin the performative aspect of Emma Rochester's work the line transforms beyond its' delineation on the floor to exists between the footsteps and the movement she makes as she moves around the space.

The artist often dressed in black or in tutus -of a corresponding colour to the surroundings- no longer represents herself as an individual but becomes a generic signifier of all women as she inserts in feminine into the map making tradition

Emma Rochester

Pages

Philosophy & Biography

Turn To Face The Sky: A.I.R Vallauris

New Work Makers

Re-Imagining Space: Recreating a feminine form of cartography

The Meaning of Method:

About Me

Three is a bicycle in my studio