How Far Is The Horizon, I – VI, 2020

Giclee prints on Hahnemuhle paper

How Far Is The Horizon, I – VI, 2020

Posted in on February 5th, 2021

 

How Far Is The Horizon, I-VI
Kathleen Herbert, 2020
Giclee prints on Hahnemuhle paper, Size 47 x 57 cm, Ed 5 + 1

How Far Is The Horizon,  are a series of details from photographic images looking through the Fresnel lenses of a lighthouse. The systems of lenses and light serve as maritime navigational and communication aids, marking dangerous coastlines. Providing short focal lengths they collect light that would otherwise escape to the sky or sea; concentrating it into a narrow horizontal pencil beam.

Standing where the lamp was situated Kathleen looks outwards through these engineered lenses through the details of light being reflected and refracted to offer a small glimpse of the world beyond that of the interior. Revisiting these images during lockdown whilst confined to her house Kathleen explores an abstract ethereal painterly quality to these structures offering open-ended possibilities.

Exhibitions

  • 25yrs, Danielle Arnaud London (online exhibition) 2020 Info  

 

 

Blueprint For A Caesium 137 Landscape, 2019

Posted in on February 28th, 2020

Blueprints For A Caesium 137 Landscape
Kathleen Herbert, 2019                                                                      Giclee print on Bamboo Hahnemuhle paper, pins and undeveloped  cyanotype on watercolour paper.

Blueprints for A Caesium 137 Landscape are a series of works consisting of a collage of archive images from the Chernobyl disaster and the UK uplands, pinned onto undeveloped cyanotypes on watercolour paper. The colour of the cyanotype, Prussian Blue is created when UV light reacts with the cyanotype sensitiser. By not fixing the colour in water Kathleen has left tithe sensitiser to continue to react with the UV light and so the cyanotype is continuing to develop in real time.

Prussian Blue has a unique chemical structure that enables it to be used as an antidote to radiation poisoning. After Chernobyl the UK government had to find a discreet and effective way of preventing Caesium 137 entering the food chain. If the antidote chemical had been sprayed onto the landscape it would react with UV light and turn the landscape blue. Instead, Prussian Blue was fed to livestock feeding on the UK uplands. The unique structure of the colour meant that heavy metals were trapped inside its chemical lattice and its insolubility meant that they were excreted out of the animals and hence prevented­­ heavy metals entering the food chain.

Exhibitions

  • A Study Of Shadows, Danielle Arnaud, London, 2020

A Study Of Shadows, Series, I-VI, 2019

Posted in on November 18th, 2019

 

A Study Of Shadows, 
Kathleen Herbert, 2019
Cyantoype Photograms on Watercolour paper

Using the early photographic process of cyanotype, Herbert’s A Study of Shadows series is a continuation of her interest in visibility and light through the colour Prussian Blue and the relationship between science and colour theory. In Goethe’s Theory of Colours he describes blue as ‘darkness made visible.’ Prussian Blue has a unique chemical structure and was originally created through the cyanotype process. It was the colour used to measure the blueness of the sky and was also used in the UK during the Chernobyl disaster as an antidote to radiation poisoning, preventing Caesium 137 from entering the food chain. Prussian Blue also has the ability to heal itself; if the intensity of its colour is lost through light-induced fading, it can be recovered by being placed in the dark.

Newton first discovered the colour spectrum by placing a prism in a beam of light. The white light hit the prism and split into multiple colours. He then discovered that placing a prism upside down in front of the first beam condensed the colours into a white light. For A Study of Shadows, Herbert coats watercolour paper in a light-sensitive solution. She then places prisms in varying compositions onto the paper before exposing it to UV light. The image is then fixed by placing the paper in water. The process is invisible and somewhat beyond control; Herbert works without ever quite knowing how the image will emerge. The resulting images appear to float to the surface from the depths of the colour, revealing the areas where the light has been impeded by the prisms; the shadows.

 

Exhibitions

  • A Study Of Shadows, Danielle Arnaud London (solo exhibition) January 18th – 15th February, 2020 Info

 

 

 

Everything Is Fleeing To Its Presence, 2019

Posted in on June 5th, 2018

Everything Is Fleeing To Its Presence
Kathleen Herbert, 2019
Binaural Sound and Video installation, Duration 15 mins

Everything is Fleeing to its Presence is a binaural sound and video installation exploring visibility through the socio-political narratives of the colour Prussian Blue. The piece has developed from a residency Herbert conducted at The Beaney House Of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury in 2017 and was exhibited at the New York Public Library as part of Anna Atkins Refracted: Contemporary Works.

Part poem, part documentary, part autobiography, the narration of Everything Fleeing to its Presence, developed through Herbert’s research, explores the biological and cultural histories of this pigment through metaphors of visibility and light. In this narrative, Herbert recognises private colour perception as well as more public scientific observations of Prussian Blue and its properties. Intertwined with interviews with a chemist and the artist’s response to handling what is now regarded as the first photographic book, Cyanotype Impressions (1843), is a more personal narrative of loss. The visuals of the film are a set of photograms on slides. Using the cyanotype process and exposing the paper for varying durations, the photograms are a series of empty tonal voids of Prussian Blue which appear and disappear whilst the narration unfolds.

Sound Design: Mike Winship

Exhibitions

  • A Study Of Shadows, Danielle Arnaud London (solo exhibition) January 18th – 15th February, 2020 Info
  • Anna Atkins Refracted, The new York Public Library, 2019 Info

Press

  • Zack Hatfield, Anna Anna Atkins Refracted: Contemporary Works, ArtForum, February 2019, p.177-178 PDF
Extract from Everything Is Fleeing To Its Presence, 2019 (to get  the full binaural sound quality please listen through headphones)

Stable, 2007

Posted in on January 20th, 2017

Stable 2007, film still
Stable, 2007, installation view The West Slype, Gloucester Cathedral
Stable, 2007, film still

Stable
Kathleen Herbert, 2007
Super 16mm film transfered to DVD, Projection, Duration 8 mins

Stable is film documenting a performance instigated by Kathleen, where for one night she bought horses into Gloucester Cathedral to walk freely through and explore the architecture of the space.

During the English Civil War, Puritan troops, in an act of political bravado, used the Cathedral to stable horses.

Through use of the uncanny, the film blurs boundaries between fact and fiction, myth and reality, investigating ideas around superstition, rituals and histories. Hebert draws out the apparent uninteresting or unspoken, redefining social, political, historic spatial narratives.

Stable was funded by Arts Council England and Gloucestershire County Council, supported by Gloucester Cathedral, Gloucester City Council.

Exhibitions

  • Power, Fotografiska, Stockholm, 2017 Info
  • A Light Shines In The Darkness, Film and Video Umbrella Tour, various locations across the UK, 2014-15 Info,
  • Stable, MOBIA, New York, USA
, 2014, Solo exhibition
  • House of Beasts, Attingham Hall, Shropshire, UK, 2011-12 Info
  • Fantastic, Touring exhibition across North Dekota with North Dekota Museum of Art, USA, 2011
  • Vita, Kuben, Solo Exhibition, Umea, Sweden, 2009
  • Hå gamle prestegard, Solo Exhibition, Norway, 2009
  • Danielle Arnaud, Solo exhibition, London, UK, 2008
  • Digitale Poezie, Sint Lukas Gallery, Brussels, Belgium, 2008

Press

  • Ossian Ward, Fresh set of eyes – 40 Great Young Artists, Time Out, October 2008, p20
  • Richard Cork, Encountering Stable, Stable, 2007 (also includes interview with Ele Carpenter)
  • David Trigg, Exhibition Review of Stable, AN Magazine, July 2007, p.7  Read

Extracts from Stable

Artist in Residence
Beaney House of Art & Knowledge
Jan–April 2017

Posted in on December 18th, 2016

I will be using The Armchair Residency at The Beaney to explore its collections and gain a deeper understanding of the myriad of histories and narratives, which intersect, reflect and oppose each other. I have particular interest in collections around the natural world. These reflect on the current concerns in my practice that include time, landscape and ideas of geological time and the new man made geological epoch we are now in, called the Anthropocene.

I see this residency as an opportunity to research and experiment further with the idea of film and sound as collage; dissecting scales, narratives and contexts. I wish to make an experimental short film that explores the crossover of film and printmaking through layering of sounds, textures, light, imagery and surface.

The blog I am writing during my residency can be seen here.

On Sunday 9th April, 2017 between 11am – 1.30pm I will be in The Learning Lab at The Beaney House Of Art and Knowledge, Canterbury,
screening a recent work A History Of The Receding Horizon and talking about the research during my residency at The Beaney, all are welcome

 

A History Of The Receding Horizon, 2015

Posted in on December 18th, 2016

A History Of The Receding Horizon, 2015, film still
A History Of The Receding Horizon, 2015, film still
A History Of The Receding Horizon, 2015, film still
A History Of The Receding Horizon, 2015, film still
A History Of The Receding Horizon, 2015, film still
Installation View from Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite, Danielle Arnaud, 2016 Photograph by Oskar Proctor, courtesy of the artist and Danielle Arnaud, London.

A History Of The Receding Horizon
Kathleen Herbert, 2015
HD Video projection, Duration 28 mins

A History Of The Receding Horizon is a digital film installation, exploring different concepts of time within the landscape. Although based upon an actual site and the artists research into the site, this is a fictional film that weaves past, present and future time and histories, within spaces above and below the water level.

The work is inspired by Kielder in Northumberland, UK. Kielder has the clearest skies in the UK and houses the Kielder Observatory. It also is home to the largest manmade lake in the UK, which is surrounded by Europe’s largest manmade woodland. The film follows astronomers in their hill top observatory, as they look upwards-measuring light in the vast expanses of space. Further down the hillside below the observatory is Kielder Water a flooded valley a manmade reservoir and an environmental historian looking into the water, searching for the areas drowned past. The film has an ambiguity to it where the viewer is left without explanation. The ambiguity serves as a way of searching for the truth, testing the truth, in the way that the astronomers and the historian are searching for a truth. An anonymous narrator whose script has been developed from research interviews with environmental historians, astronomers at Kielder Observatory and local people from the Kielder area, leads the viewer through the film weaving together past, present and future timelines.

Funded by Arts Council England and crowd funding through Ideastap, supported by Kielder Obersvatory, Kielder Water and Forest Park, Northumbrian Water and The Forestry Commission.

Exhibitions

  • Fact or Fiction, Berwick Film and Media Festival,
    Berwick on Tweed, UK, 2015. Catalogue Info
  • A History Of The Receding Horizon, Hardwick Gallery, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK, 2015
  • Artisterium, Tbilisi, Georgia, 2015. Catalogue Info
  • Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite, Danielle Arnaud, London, 2016 Catalogue Info

Press

  • AN Magazine, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival: awkward, engaging and on the edge. Read
  • Wall Street International, Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite. Read
  • Festivalists, Time|Space|Structure|Process. Read
Extracts from A History Of The Receding Horizon

I May Be A Wage Slave On Monday But I Am A Free Man On Sunday, 2011

Posted in on December 18th, 2016

I Maybe A Wage Slave On Monday But I Am A Free Man On Sunday, 2011 Installation View at Southbank Centre, London

 

I Maybe A Wage Slave On Monday But I Am A Free Man On Sunday, 2011 Film Still I Maybe A Wage Slave On Monday But I Am A Free Man On Sunday, 2011 Film Still I Maybe A Wage Slave On Monday But I Am A Free Man On Sunday, 2011 Film Still

I May Be A Wage Slave On Monday But I Am A Free Man On Sunday
Kathleen Herbert, 2011
HD Video projection, Duration 7 mins

I may be a wage slave on Monday but I am a free man on Sunday is a lyric from a Ewan MacColl folk song, Manchester Rambler, in which he describes the mass trespass on the then private land of Kinder Scout in 1931.

Inspired by this mass trespass¹ in the Peak District, which led to the opening up of the countryside & the creation of National Parks, Kathleen Herbert¹s film explores the idea of contemporary landscape as a politicised space in which it is treated as an object rather than a resource.
The viewer is taken on a journey through different visions of the land, from the urban spaces used to contrive a form of natural landscape to the rural. The raw contrasting soundtrack embellishes the imagery of the land as a lost ancient antiquity.

Co-commissioned by the National Trust and Southbank Centre, London. Curated by Clare Cumberlidge & Co and supported by Museums Sheffield.

 Exhibitions

  • Force Of Nature; Picturing Ruskins Landscape, 2011, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, UK  Info
  • Land, 60th Anniversary Of The Festival Of Britain, 2011, Southbank Centre, London, UK Info

Extracts from I May Be A Wage Slave On Monday But I Am A Free Man Come Sunday

Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite, I-XI, 2015

Posted in on December 14th, 2016

Installation View from Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite, Danielle Arnaud, 2016 Photograph by Oskar Proctor, courtesy of the artist and Danielle Arnaud, London.
Installation View from Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite, Danielle Arnaud, 2016 Photograph by Oskar Proctor, courtesy of the artist and Danielle Arnaud, London.
Installation View from Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite, Danielle Arnaud, 2016 Photograph by Oskar Proctor, courtesy of the artist and Danielle Arnaud, London.
Installation View from Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite, Danielle Arnaud, 2016 Photograph by Oskar Proctor, courtesy of the artist and Danielle Arnaud, London.
Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite I, 2015
Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite II, 2015

Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite
Kathleen Herbert, 2015
Series of 11 Giclee prints on Hahnemuhle German Etch pape,  Edition of 5

Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite are a series of collages created from;  archive slides of the buildings now under Kielder water, digital stills of the area as it is now, postcards of the area and scans of the stumps of felled trees from the forest. Taking the physicality of film as a starting point, the images take on a the form of film frames and form of timelines. Gradually the strict confines of the one image and frame become blurred as another image another timeline encroaches on what is already visible. As the works progress so parts of the images are removed or obscured just as the areas history and buildings have been.

Exhibitions

  • Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite, Danielle Arnaud, London, 2016 Catalogue Info

 

Press

  • Wall Street International, Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite. Read

Time Creates Great Distances In Life, I-III, 2015

Posted in on October 19th, 2016

Installation View from Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite, Danielle Arnaud, 2016 Photograph by Oskar Proctor, courtesy of the artist and Danielle Arnaud, London.
Installation View from Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite, Danielle Arnaud, 2016 Photograph by Oskar Proctor, courtesy of the artist and Danielle Arnaud, London.
Installation View from Past Time Is Finite, Future Time Is Infinite, Danielle Arnaud, 2016 Photograph by Oskar Proctor, courtesy of the artist and Danielle Arnaud, London.