CLAUDIA DHARAMSHI – ARTIST

Claudia started rowing with the Bridport Gig Rowing Club in West Bay a year ago and it has since become the subject of her work. A fascination with the movement of the oar and the patterns it creates in the water led Claudia to explore ways to recreate this through drawing. Through trial and error she created Concept 3 rower, a playful motorised drawing machine which aims to mimic the motion of a gig boat oar. The machine has been constructed out of wood as much as possible both for the aesthetic and for the sound created. Although automated, the mechanism has a human quality to it.  The force of the machine which is powered by a car wiper blade motor suggests the physical exertion of gig rowing.

The Boat Sings is an audio piece made from interviews with members of Bridport Gig Rowing Club. Sound is central to the experience of rowing, the click clack of the oars in the wooden pins is familiar, comforting, and part of the experience. The rowers’ comments reveal that gig rowing provides a tangible connection to the landscape and to other people.  As with rowing where the experience is both individual and collective, the soundscape is a collaborative piece of work but everyone has a voice.

Foghorn Requiem (2013)
Foghorn Requiem was a performance marking the disappearance of the foghorn from the UK’s coastal landscape. Conducted from afar, a musical requiem was performed by Souter Lighthouse Foghorn, three brass bands and 60 ships on the North Sea for an audience of 8-10 000. Foghorn Requiem was an attempt to incorporate space and reverberation of the landscape directly into the musical composition: Sound-influencing factors, such as atmospheric conditions, tide, distance and the sonic impact of the landscape were calculated to position vessels off the coast and programme their horns to perform in time with conventional brass instruments and Souter Foghorn on-shore.
Commissioned as the flagship project for Festival of The North East. Created in collaboration with composer Orlando Gough and Joshua Portway. Funded by Arts Council England, Arts Council of Denmark . The National Trust and South Tyneside Council. Produced by Grit and Pearl.
www.foghornrequiem.org

Socialism, a family film

A number of spurs (including the loss of a great aunt who had fled Czechoslovakia the day before the Nazi invasion) conflated, with the realisation that there are great gaps in my knowledge of socialism. My practice is social: concerned with others, how we communicate with and care for each other. It seemed vital to set an informed foundation for my work, to further educate myself and look at how these ideologies might be discussed with younger people. I put forward a project examining socialism – its history, key figures and relevance in modern life. This was used by us to make a short film: a rare opportunity to conduct a family residency.

Beatty Hallas is an artist based in London. The film was developed whilst staying at The Mothership, Dorset.

r u r a l r e c r e a t i o n is a grassroots campaigning body set up to put forward new social visions of the rural, exploring what the rural means to people in the countryside, to people in the cities, suburbs and subrurs. We’re particularly interested in expanding the borders of accessibility, environmentalism & inclusivity and do so through action research projects, both without and with authority, community and agency.

Likeness Farm

Likeness Farm’s vision is to provide a fast, reliable and fairly traded critical feedback and testing service for emerging and established artists that enhances their career prospects, builds cultural value in the UK and makes new international connections.

Alex Murdin is an artist based in Devon.

Jo occupied the Methodist Chapel overnight for 12 hours from 8.30pm, Thursday 4th august – 8.30am Friday August 5th and produced this extraordinary drawing from her experience

“Responding to the space and the place and the night, reflecting something of the immensity of the space outside. The process of the drawing echoing the movement of the shingle on the beach, swept on and washed off over and over, every motion changing the shape of the beach.
12 hours uninterrupted time on 10 meters of paper, the length of the church. Time and space to just draw and draw and draw in contrast with the fractured busyness of day to day family life. Physically moving, drawing, seeing the changes made, a task large but defined. A drawing but not a drawing of anything – just of itself.”

The drawing will be exhibited at The Chapel from day 5th August – Sunday 7th August.

Based in east London (nr. London Fields, Hackney), artists Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson formed London Fieldworks (LFW) in 2000 to promote their interdisciplinary and collaborative arts practice that works across social engagement, installation, and moving image to situate works both in the gallery and in the landscape.

www.londonfieldworks.com

London Fieldworks will screen their short film “End of The Road”. A moving, emotive film about the production of caravans and a dystopian warning about the consequences of our contemporary consumer lifestyle.

All images by London Fieldworks 2012.

Film-maker, writer and lecturer Mark Aitkin presents his moving documentary DEAD WHEN I GOT HERE, followed by a talk about his unique film-making process.

Compassion and redemption are discovered by a man as he manages a mental asylum run by its own patients in Juárez, Mexico. The seeds of hope profoundly brought to life by his daughter in L.A who thought him dead.

“A masterpiece, epic and intimate. The faces in this film are like a thousand Caravaggios – they are us and we are them.”
Ed Vulliamy, THE OBSERVER

“…as beautiful as anything you will find in Bresson or Tarkovsky,
it is one of the finest examples of documentary filmmaking I’ve
ever seen.”
Scott Graham, SCOTTISH MENTAL HEALTH FILM FESTIVAL

“Gripping and tender.”
THE LANCET

“The film takes people to a place they did not know and did not
expect to visit, the humanity of the insane.”
Charles Bowden, WRITER

www.deadwhenigothere.org

We are inviting residents and visitors to West Bay to loan us objects for a public exhibition at the Methodist Chapel over the summer holidays.

Loan us  an object that means something to you and could inspire others;

It could be a family heirloom,  have historical significance, have it’s own story or trigger a memory. Or it could be an  object no longer used, an object that has been abandoned or simply like.

Surprise us!