occupied space
OCCUPIED SPACE
OCCUPIED SPACE lin co
ow br
n
ro ze
in po
ss re tp
This project was produced for the annual Solo Photo Book Month (www.sofobomo.com), which gives photographers around the world the opportunity to produce a PDF book of at least 35 photographs in a period of 31 days.
occupied space Back in June of this year my wife and i
finally got to visit the Yorkshire sculpture park, a place we
had talked about visiting many times over the years but
never quite made it. This year we decided to make the
effort, and i’m so glad we did. it is a remarkable place, its
undulating terrain inhabited by both sculptures and sheep. We saw the work of Henry Moore, andy Goldsworthy,
anthony Gormley, cornelia parker, James Turrell, anthony caro, donald Judd, Tony cragg, david Nash, Lyn chadwick
and Barbara Hepworth amongst others.
We also visited the Hepworth Gallery (voted the uK’s
Museum of the Year 2017), where in addition to the
outstanding work of Barbara Hepworth herself, we were
treated to works by constantin Brancusi, Jean arp, Louise Bourgeois, alberto Giacometti, sarah Lucas and dorothea
Tanning amongst others.
The only fly in the ointment turned out to be the fact that
we had chosen to visit these places in June. soFoBoMo did not start until July! all those photographs i’d taken of
fantastic sculptural works were of no use to me!
so i had the idea to make some sculptures of my own. i
couldn’t (and anyway, didn’t have the time to) recreate the
wonders we had witnessed in Yorkshire, but i could be
inspired by them. My starting point was a stone that i
collected some twenty years ago from the beach at Blue
anchor Bay in somerset. You can hold it in one hand, but
it’s better with two and its smooth misshapen oval is
dissected by a single line of quartz around its
circumference. initially, my idea was to place the stone in
various locations, presenting it as a sculptural element. i
also had some other, smaller, stones that i collected from
somerset and elsewhere with which i planned to augment
the larger stone. However, in practice it didn’t really work
out. The weight of the stone didn’t easily lend itself to being transported any sort of distance. so eventually i
decided to work with my original idea closer to home – in
fact, both inside my home and in the front and back garden.
Realising that this would be restrictive and potentially
repetitive, i also decided to look further afield for anything
that could be adapted into some sort of sculptural form.
i had a lot of fun with this project and really enjoyed
constructing physical objects that occupied a physical
space, something that rarely happens in my otherwise
almost entirely digital workflow.
i hope you enjoy these sculptures, which are arranged
here in the order in which they were created. colin Brown august 2017
Line The rock from Blue Anchor Bay photographed on my kitchen floor. I like the way the line continues and connects the curved with the flat.
line ii A section of my less than perfect patio where the quartz line of the stone contrasts with the dark crack of the paving slab.
line iii (terminus) Everything comes to an end. Lines are no different.
wedge
line iV (continuum)
kneeling figure An old tree stump in the back garden and three stones balanced with a lot of luck.
Botticelli’s muse The same tree stump, but three different stones. It just reminded me of a lady with a larger figure, famously painted by the Renaissance artist. Hence the title.
Modigliani, sleeping
wedge ii A trio of stones pushed into a gap between fence panels, partly held in place by the branches of my Russian Vine hedge, which has since been cut down.
totem Sometimes a balance can be achieved and photographed before it all comes tumbling down. This is one such lucky occurrence.
moon on the hill
layered
(the bullfighter’s) trophy I live not too far from Swinley Forest, which contains within it an area known as Caesar’s Camp where this photograph was taken. I was lucky enough to find a piece of battered metal tubing, an even more battered cooking pan and a length of thick rope. I further discovered a metal frame that someone had leant sticks against in order to make some sort of shelter. I hung the pipe on the rope and balanced the pan in the bend. When I looked at it, it reminded me of a bull’s head, complete with (different-sized) horns.
blank marker
lizard king
equivalent Sometimes when I’m out walking I find some odd things. Like this odd sock. I felt compelled to make up the pair by using pieces of charred wood arranged in a similar shape.
a temporary immortality In the interior of Caesar’s Camp is a group of tree trunks lying on the ground. They have been there a very long time, and visitors have felt the need to be creative with them, mostly in a way that is not destructive or banal. I noticed this new inscription on my latest visit to the trunks. Its simplicity appealed to me, and it seemed to be, above
all, a work of love. I would like to be remembered in this way, carved into nature, shared with the environment and with all those who stand before it. I added some small stones and pieces of wood along the top, inspired by a similar arrangement of stones I had observed on Man Ray’s gravestone on a visit to Paris in 1994.
Botticelli’s muse ii (the raindance) A different configuration of the same three stones used in the earlier version of this work, this time photographed on the slate in my front garden in the rain. I took the photograph from just inside my front door to avoid getting both myself and the camera wet.
emergent
at the library The familiar rock from Blue Anchor Bay stood on end in my bookcase. The books were formerly in the collection of the artist David Medalla. He also gave me the lacquered oriental panel above.
icarus, 3978 ad Another photograph from the interior of Caesar’s Camp. I found a piece of tree bark with a hole in it and a cork that someone had discarded. I made my way back to a puddle of water I’d passed earlier and managed to get the bark to stand upright. I liked its reflection descending into the puddle. I floated the cork and took the
picture. I think I got about three shots off before gravity did its thing and the bark went horizontal. But I got the shot I wanted. The title comes from the original version of the film Planet of the Apes. Icarus is the name of the spaceship in which the astronaut Taylor crash lands on Earth in the year 3978.
gargoyle One of the tree trunks in the interior of Caesar’s Camp. The contours are beautiful. At first I thought the two holes would be eyes. In fact, there’s something very ‘alien’ about the lower hole. However, after I’d placed a stone in the upper hole, the lower one started to resemble a mouth, and the more I looked at it the more it made me think of those marvellous carved figures staring down at us from church walls.
the thief’s last resting place The cross beam was separate from the vertical post, but I took it and balanced it to form a piece of classic Christian iconography.
a partial disappearance Three balanced pieces of crumbling tree trunks, camouflaged almost to the point of invisibility.
hybrid This concrete upright is practically all that remains of a wire fence within Caesar’s Camp. I found the two oddments of wood nearby and managed to attach them to the post, where I thought they took on the appearance of something from the world of cryptozoology.
line V (vertebrae)
Rubik’s cliffhanger
totem ii There is an area of woodland very close to my home where I found this gathering of branches and bark. I simply added the piece of bark on the top, balanced the section of branch on that and photographed the result.
wedge iii (osiris) By the time I’d finished putting the stones between the trees I realised there was something Egyptian about the arrangement. For me, that top stone resembled the headdress of Osiris, god of the dead.
mother & child This was a most unexpected find. I was returning from woodland near my home when I passed a small rhododendron bush. At its base was a small figure, which drew my attention. You can imagine my relief on finding it to be a doll. Or a partial doll to be precise. No arms or legs and not really dressed in anything. It seemed to be in a bag
of some sort. A very strange find indeed, and not one to be passed by without a photograph. There’s something very gothic about it. It also reminded me, firstly, of the work of photographer Joel-Peter Witkin and secondly of the dolls of Hans Bellmer (one of which I’d seen in an exhibition at the Hepworth Gallery). I decided to add the two
stones on top because I thought they perfectly complemented the head and body of the doll beneath.
occupied space This photograph was taken in the doorway of my kitchen, with the sunlight through the glass creating a parallelogram of light and a single line of light. To give the shape some sort of context I included my own feet in the picture. Whilst at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park I had experienced the beautiful Deer Shelter Sky Space, an installation by
James Turrell. Turrell uses light in his art, just as photographers use light in theirs. Light becomes almost a physical thing. Turrell’s work is fascinating. During the 1990s I was fortunate enough to see some of his work at the Hayward Gallery in London. In particular, a work called Trace Elements, a single panel of light in a
dark space, made a huge impact on me. It was an experience like no other and I felt as though I was staring into eternity.
absence visible
Ra
leaning (the ichthyosaur) Slate shards from the front garden, curved and leaning. My younger son saw this arrangement from above and told me it looked like a dinosaur in the water.
steps to nowhere This is my homage to David Nash’s Seventy One Steps, a site-specific work made from oak beams at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Jenga
These photographs did not start life as black and white images. I did basic editing in Lightroom and converted the resulting images using the superb Silver Efex Pro 2 plug-in from Nik Software. All photographs were taken between 6–16 August with a Canon EOS 700D using just the 18-55mm IS STM kit lens. And I also used either a standard or a mini tripod for most of the shots. The book was constructed in QuarkXpress 2015. Typefaces: Metrica for the cover and title page and Merriweather Serif and Sans for the text. Photographs, design and text ©2017 Colin Brown. All rights reserved. Published by zero point press.
OCCUPIED SPACE lin co
ow br
n
ro ze
in po
ss re tp
This project was produced for the annual Solo Photo Book Month (www.sofobomo.com), which gives photographers around the world the opportunity to produce a PDF book of at least 35 photographs in a period of 31 days.
occupied space Back in June of this year my wife and i
finally got to visit the Yorkshire sculpture park, a place we
had talked about visiting many times over the years but
never quite made it. This year we decided to make the
effort, and i’m so glad we did. it is a remarkable place, its
undulating terrain inhabited by both sculptures and sheep. We saw the work of Henry Moore, andy Goldsworthy,
anthony Gormley, cornelia parker, James Turrell, anthony caro, donald Judd, Tony cragg, david Nash, Lyn chadwick
and Barbara Hepworth amongst others.
We also visited the Hepworth Gallery (voted the uK’s
Museum of the Year 2017), where in addition to the
outstanding work of Barbara Hepworth herself, we were
treated to works by constantin Brancusi, Jean arp, Louise Bourgeois, alberto Giacometti, sarah Lucas and dorothea
Tanning amongst others.
The only fly in the ointment turned out to be the fact that
we had chosen to visit these places in June. soFoBoMo did not start until July! all those photographs i’d taken of
fantastic sculptural works were of no use to me!
so i had the idea to make some sculptures of my own. i
couldn’t (and anyway, didn’t have the time to) recreate the
wonders we had witnessed in Yorkshire, but i could be
inspired by them. My starting point was a stone that i
collected some twenty years ago from the beach at Blue
anchor Bay in somerset. You can hold it in one hand, but
it’s better with two and its smooth misshapen oval is
dissected by a single line of quartz around its
circumference. initially, my idea was to place the stone in
various locations, presenting it as a sculptural element. i
also had some other, smaller, stones that i collected from
somerset and elsewhere with which i planned to augment
the larger stone. However, in practice it didn’t really work
out. The weight of the stone didn’t easily lend itself to being transported any sort of distance. so eventually i
decided to work with my original idea closer to home – in
fact, both inside my home and in the front and back garden.
Realising that this would be restrictive and potentially
repetitive, i also decided to look further afield for anything
that could be adapted into some sort of sculptural form.
i had a lot of fun with this project and really enjoyed
constructing physical objects that occupied a physical
space, something that rarely happens in my otherwise
almost entirely digital workflow.
i hope you enjoy these sculptures, which are arranged
here in the order in which they were created. colin Brown august 2017
Line The rock from Blue Anchor Bay photographed on my kitchen floor. I like the way the line continues and connects the curved with the flat.
line ii A section of my less than perfect patio where the quartz line of the stone contrasts with the dark crack of the paving slab.
line iii (terminus) Everything comes to an end. Lines are no different.
wedge
line iV (continuum)
kneeling figure An old tree stump in the back garden and three stones balanced with a lot of luck.
Botticelli’s muse The same tree stump, but three different stones. It just reminded me of a lady with a larger figure, famously painted by the Renaissance artist. Hence the title.
Modigliani, sleeping
wedge ii A trio of stones pushed into a gap between fence panels, partly held in place by the branches of my Russian Vine hedge, which has since been cut down.
totem Sometimes a balance can be achieved and photographed before it all comes tumbling down. This is one such lucky occurrence.
moon on the hill
layered
(the bullfighter’s) trophy I live not too far from Swinley Forest, which contains within it an area known as Caesar’s Camp where this photograph was taken. I was lucky enough to find a piece of battered metal tubing, an even more battered cooking pan and a length of thick rope. I further discovered a metal frame that someone had leant sticks against in order to make some sort of shelter. I hung the pipe on the rope and balanced the pan in the bend. When I looked at it, it reminded me of a bull’s head, complete with (different-sized) horns.
blank marker
lizard king
equivalent Sometimes when I’m out walking I find some odd things. Like this odd sock. I felt compelled to make up the pair by using pieces of charred wood arranged in a similar shape.
a temporary immortality In the interior of Caesar’s Camp is a group of tree trunks lying on the ground. They have been there a very long time, and visitors have felt the need to be creative with them, mostly in a way that is not destructive or banal. I noticed this new inscription on my latest visit to the trunks. Its simplicity appealed to me, and it seemed to be, above
all, a work of love. I would like to be remembered in this way, carved into nature, shared with the environment and with all those who stand before it. I added some small stones and pieces of wood along the top, inspired by a similar arrangement of stones I had observed on Man Ray’s gravestone on a visit to Paris in 1994.
Botticelli’s muse ii (the raindance) A different configuration of the same three stones used in the earlier version of this work, this time photographed on the slate in my front garden in the rain. I took the photograph from just inside my front door to avoid getting both myself and the camera wet.
emergent
at the library The familiar rock from Blue Anchor Bay stood on end in my bookcase. The books were formerly in the collection of the artist David Medalla. He also gave me the lacquered oriental panel above.
icarus, 3978 ad Another photograph from the interior of Caesar’s Camp. I found a piece of tree bark with a hole in it and a cork that someone had discarded. I made my way back to a puddle of water I’d passed earlier and managed to get the bark to stand upright. I liked its reflection descending into the puddle. I floated the cork and took the
picture. I think I got about three shots off before gravity did its thing and the bark went horizontal. But I got the shot I wanted. The title comes from the original version of the film Planet of the Apes. Icarus is the name of the spaceship in which the astronaut Taylor crash lands on Earth in the year 3978.
gargoyle One of the tree trunks in the interior of Caesar’s Camp. The contours are beautiful. At first I thought the two holes would be eyes. In fact, there’s something very ‘alien’ about the lower hole. However, after I’d placed a stone in the upper hole, the lower one started to resemble a mouth, and the more I looked at it the more it made me think of those marvellous carved figures staring down at us from church walls.
the thief’s last resting place The cross beam was separate from the vertical post, but I took it and balanced it to form a piece of classic Christian iconography.
a partial disappearance Three balanced pieces of crumbling tree trunks, camouflaged almost to the point of invisibility.
hybrid This concrete upright is practically all that remains of a wire fence within Caesar’s Camp. I found the two oddments of wood nearby and managed to attach them to the post, where I thought they took on the appearance of something from the world of cryptozoology.
line V (vertebrae)
Rubik’s cliffhanger
totem ii There is an area of woodland very close to my home where I found this gathering of branches and bark. I simply added the piece of bark on the top, balanced the section of branch on that and photographed the result.
wedge iii (osiris) By the time I’d finished putting the stones between the trees I realised there was something Egyptian about the arrangement. For me, that top stone resembled the headdress of Osiris, god of the dead.
mother & child This was a most unexpected find. I was returning from woodland near my home when I passed a small rhododendron bush. At its base was a small figure, which drew my attention. You can imagine my relief on finding it to be a doll. Or a partial doll to be precise. No arms or legs and not really dressed in anything. It seemed to be in a bag
of some sort. A very strange find indeed, and not one to be passed by without a photograph. There’s something very gothic about it. It also reminded me, firstly, of the work of photographer Joel-Peter Witkin and secondly of the dolls of Hans Bellmer (one of which I’d seen in an exhibition at the Hepworth Gallery). I decided to add the two
stones on top because I thought they perfectly complemented the head and body of the doll beneath.
occupied space This photograph was taken in the doorway of my kitchen, with the sunlight through the glass creating a parallelogram of light and a single line of light. To give the shape some sort of context I included my own feet in the picture. Whilst at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park I had experienced the beautiful Deer Shelter Sky Space, an installation by
James Turrell. Turrell uses light in his art, just as photographers use light in theirs. Light becomes almost a physical thing. Turrell’s work is fascinating. During the 1990s I was fortunate enough to see some of his work at the Hayward Gallery in London. In particular, a work called Trace Elements, a single panel of light in a
dark space, made a huge impact on me. It was an experience like no other and I felt as though I was staring into eternity.
absence visible
Ra
leaning (the ichthyosaur) Slate shards from the front garden, curved and leaning. My younger son saw this arrangement from above and told me it looked like a dinosaur in the water.
steps to nowhere This is my homage to David Nash’s Seventy One Steps, a site-specific work made from oak beams at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Jenga
These photographs did not start life as black and white images. I did basic editing in Lightroom and converted the resulting images using the superb Silver Efex Pro 2 plug-in from Nik Software. All photographs were taken between 6–16 August with a Canon EOS 700D using just the 18-55mm IS STM kit lens. And I also used either a standard or a mini tripod for most of the shots. The book was constructed in QuarkXpress 2015. Typefaces: Metrica for the cover and title page and Merriweather Serif and Sans for the text. Photographs, design and text ©2017 Colin Brown. All rights reserved. Published by zero point press.
