Martha installed at Spectral Paradigms at All Saints Church Tooting London in 2017 part of Wandsworth Arts Festival
The act of seeing is no small thing. To see something is to be possessed by it. Sometimes it carries off a part of you, sometimes it’s your whole soul.
Landscapes of the Heart, Motojiro Kajii
Artist Statement
Rescuing a lost moment or object and reanimating is a form of bringing it alive - a kind of memento vivere.
I attempt to dig into the recent past and dissect the detritus of what we leave behind. Like a magpie I glean neglected bric a brac and recycle it as source material. For example, a single celluloid frame that did not make the final cut of the Stargate sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: a space odyssey is reanimated into a slow moving anthropomorphic landscape in A Space Odyssey Omit.
I often use conversation and collaboration as part of my creative methodology. Small Wonders combines the voice of a retired microbiologist’s anecdotal reports of experiments and discoveries - part of his life that he thought was over - combined with hypnotic Bolex footage of one of his early experiments with found footage of people acting in amoebae like ways - a baby crawling and a man rock climbing.
These lost objects are not always tangible. They are sometimes specific experiences or places lost or on the precipice of existence often due to the human effect on the environment and our increasing distance from nature. In Lightness my first self-shot 16mm film, I seek out a dark place in Britain to see the Milky Way but when I get there it’s too cloudy. There is often an absurdity and embracing of things not going to plan and a tongue in cheek humour.
The Morrow is set in East Riding of Yorkshire, the fastest eroding coastline in Europe, where roads are literally falling into the sea like a scene from an apocalyptic movie. A wartime pillbox part buried on the beach is intercut with underwater footage and the names of settlements lost to the sea. “Nothing is as secure as we like to think it is.” says the Yorkshire lilted voiceover.
My most recent work, the Scuzzy Landscapes paintings series, always devoid of the human figure but feature discarded manmade objects left behind in the landscape. For example, the footprint of a decommissioned power station on a beach or neon pipes in the grass at a park or 3 fridges and a bin bag flytipped under a tree. Their what3words title refers to the exact location where the viewer is standing. Not your usual picture holiday postcard view but beguiling I hope nonetheless.
All content © Katie Goodwin MMXXIV