Degrees of Freedom [installation view]
Degrees of Freedom: Artists' Reflection
Degrees of Freedom evolved out of a shared interest in the visual, behavioural and psychological qualities of architecture in a broad sense, and more specifically, the reflexive relationship between the external world and our internal psychological spaces. As artists, one of us has a practice that involves painting architectural scenes using earth colours, representing the underlying unity of everything (Jill Tate) and the other’s video installation works explore memory structures (Matt Denham), while both of our practices examine our perceptions of our internal and external environments. From this shared common ground our collaborative work emerged, reconsidering what we think of as domestic, and alluding to the perceptible and imperceptible forces that shape our experience of ‘home’ at different scales: from mind, to house, to planet.
Our approach as artists, neither with previous experience of creating work in a collaborative context, was to first find a very practical meeting point between our practices that would allow us the freedom to play with some of our ideas in a tangible way. Both of us have a practice that involves creating models or sets as the basis for our work, which seemed like a natural starting point. In In Transit (2018), for example, Matt recreated a surreal interpretation of a house using scaffold, concrete slabs and debris netting, which shifted throughout a film exploring the experience of transitioning from domestic to care settings. Since 2018, Jill’s paintings, based on scale models she has constructed and photographed, reflect the so-called physical and psychological structures that permeate and surround us.
Our approach as artists, neither with previous experience of creating work in a collaborative context, was to first find a very practical meeting point between our practices that would allow us the freedom to play with some of our ideas in a tangible way. Both of us have a practice that involves creating models or sets as the basis for our work, which seemed like a natural starting point. In In Transit (2018), for example, Matt recreated a surreal interpretation of a house using scaffold, concrete slabs and debris netting, which shifted throughout a film exploring the experience of transitioning from domestic to care settings. Since 2018, Jill’s paintings, based on scale models she has constructed and photographed, reflect the so-called physical and psychological structures that permeate and surround us.
We created items of scale model domestic furniture, which were filmed and photographed to create the reference images for the works
We began by building minimal scale models of domestic furniture - simple sofas, chairs, picture frames, bookshelves and desks. Working via Zoom in separate studios during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, we spent nine months slowly creating a small world in concrete and terracotta colours. We talked while we worked - sometimes about the most recent audiobook Jill had listened to, sometimes about different furniture or architectural designs we liked, often about what we would be having for lunch. We had a set of guiding principles to lead what we were doing, but the first months gave way to making.
This slow process of producing miniatures also served to build an understanding of our respective working methods, ideas and aspirations for the project. Eventually, we were able to work in the same studio, allowing our conversations and process of making to become increasingly focused and responsive.
The blank picture frame hanging on the wall in Hardly Working mirrors the proportion of the wooden panel the work is painted on
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Important to the work from the outset was the idea of a feedback of forms - that shapes, proportions and objects would be extrapolated and repeated in different ways throughout the painting, video and installation elements, and at different scales. This began determining the design of the models over time - the coffee table became the same dimensions as the sofa cushions, and the same proportion as the picture frames and a window. In the two-screen video installation I Stop Noticing Some Limits and Start Noticing Others, the illuminated aperture in the opening shot becomes the corner of a room in the adjacent video frame. In the painting Hardly Working, the blank picture on the wall is a scaled down version of the wooden panel of the painting itself. In turn, these forms extend to the installation structure, which from an aerial view is the same shape as one of the model chairs that features in the works.
Often, the domestic objects appear in isolation or in small clusters in the different scenes across the individual works, and it is only when standing in the installation space that the echoes of structure and the feedback of forms are easily visible. Our intention was that the cumulative effect of the works would reflect the concept of the domestic at different scales. |
The five small paintings in Reframing, painted onto picture frame shaped objects, depict the same five frames in different configurations
In statistics, the term Degrees of Freedom refers to the number of independent ways a set of variables are able to change, and within the confines of our distilled domestic interiors, we reconfigured the same simple elements to explore their multiple possibilities. One particular device we used to explore this was to vary the arrangements of the same objects within some of the works. The five small paintings that form the focal point of Reframing are themselves painted onto picture frame shaped objects, depicting the same five frames in different configurations. These scenes switch between order and disorder, communal and oppositional, while in the installation, they are presented neatly in a row, in a dimly illuminated alcove. Similarly, the repositioning of the same chairs in I Stop Noticing Some Limits and Start Noticing Others generates very different feelings. At times these are seen huddled at the precipice of an illuminated patch on the ground, or scattered in different directions. The video installation Forms of Quiet addresses the multifold potential of domestic spaces through the slow dawning and resting of the day across different scenes unfolding within the same room. Through the progression of the video, the scenes fluctuate between order and disarray. The scenes were framed with no visible windows or doors to suggest how inhabitants might come and go, in order to amplify the feeling of internal space.
Constrating scenes of order and disarray unfold within the same room in Forms of Quiet
Devoid of identity, scale or detail that might locate them in a particular time or space, these pared back interiors have a universal quality that draws focus away from any context, towards a more symbolic quality and psychological suggestiveness. Jill talked about these uninhabited spaces as sites of potential, while Matt’s response to these spaces was more a feeling of absence.
During one of our first conversations following the installation of the exhibition, we reflected on our conscious decision to present inanimate objects throughout the works, which at the same time have a lived-in quality: a mug resting on a desk, a chair pulled out from a table. We talked about how these might either be interpreted on a surface level as objects acted upon by humans, or symbolic of human behaviours and psychological states.
In the painting Hand me Down, a chair sits on top of what appears to be a table, and almost seems to be staring at a similarly shaped chair through an open doorway. From Jill’s perspective, the solid chair in the foreground could be looking back to an echo of itself: peering through the aperture to another time, where it sees recognisable features of itself but it is not the same. In one frame in I Stop Noticing Some Limits and Start Noticing Others, a series of picture frames rest against a concrete sofa. For Matt, the sense that this scene has been acted on by humans, as with many of the scenes unfolding in the video, brings to mind moments of transition within domestic spaces and the feelings these moments can evoke. For us, the uncertainty that arises from situations where there can be multiple interpretations, is at the heart of the work. Through the repeated staging of a few simple, yet familiar objects, we were able to explore their multifold potential for ambiguity.
All of the scale models were shot within a set of reconfigurable walls, which contained a series of apertures that at different times acted as windows for light, masks for the camera or thresholds between spaces. We re-purposed these separate elements to forge connections between the different scenes. In I Stop Noticing Some Limits and Start Noticing Others, the narrow hatch aperture opens up a view from a concrete room through to a warmer, more inviting space. Later, the same aperture casts a rectangular shaft of light over a sparse concrete scene, in which items of furniture begin to disappear. We recontextualised these architectural elements with different objects and lighting to produce contrasting atmospheric effects. Though unseen, the implied doorway in Hardly Working permits a soft, restful light over the book, laptop and mug resting on the desk. This sits in contrast to the re-presentation of an almost identical scene in I Stop Noticing Some Limits and Start Noticing Others, where long, looming shadows project outwards from this domestic workspace. |
The solid chair in the foreground of Hand Me Down appears to be looking back at the chair through the doorway
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Empty picture frames rest against a concrete sofa in I Stop Noticing Some Limits and Start Noticing Others
Within I Stop Noticing Some Limits and Start Noticing Others, sound became important to enhance the shifting atmospheric qualities of light within the work. Different forms of quiet are used to reflect the emotional qualities of silence in these empty rooms. A single chair bathes in the glow of morning light and a warm, gentle room tone (the white noise heard in a silent room). In a contrasting scene, light recedes from a walled-in armchair against the aggressive sound of the same room tone amplified to intense, uncomfortable levels. For Matt, the alternating use of comforting and oppressive ‘silences’ to contextualise the imagery mirrors the way our internal states of mind frame our experiences of external environments. At other moments in the video, the sounds, such as a finger tracing the edges of a door frame or brushing across a textured carpet, allude to these scenes playing out in real domestic environments.
In shaping the exhibition, Reframing became a focal point and threshold for the different elements of the installation. In designing this work, we wanted light and material to enhance the atmospheric effect of the exhibition as a whole. The alcove, warmly illuminated in a terracotta glow, sits in stark contrast to its reverse, a darker space housing the two video installation pieces, in which cool concrete extends to the threshold of the alcove window and covers the reverse of the blind. A sliver of light (and hope?) passes through the terracotta aperture and cuts across the concrete wall.
The interior of the Reframing installation
The choice of material across the installation structure as a whole reflects the bodily experience of the works: Hand Me Down and Hardly Working protrude from the terracotta surface of the wall, mirroring the soft edges of the objects depicted within the paintings, with one surface blending into the next to draw the viewer into the scenes within. In direct contrast, Two Degrees of Freedom, the two small assemblages that hover in space against an inky black wall at the entrance to the exhibition, position those watching as detached observers of the two scenes staged in terracotta and concrete.
Ultimately, though light, form, material and space are instrumentalised to direct the perception of the viewer walking through the installation, the actual experience of the work is intended to be a personal one. While the scenes unfolding across Degrees of Freedom feel narratively charged, through the specific arrangements of objects in familiar (and unfamiliar) scenarios, they float untethered in time and space, holding up a mirror to our personal experiences of the domestic, of our own minds and of the structures which surround and shape us.