Blog 2: Mobile Reflections

Studio 3, Leeds Art Gallery (Nike Savvas) & David Shearing 

This was our first session in a short series of workshops exploring colour, light and painting into space. I presented to the group some initial starting points and images from Nike Savvas’ work.  We discussed briefly ideas around movement; objects that move in the wind, spin or as the ‘viewers’ body moves through the space.

As part of the opening I showed a video by animator Esteban Diácono, set to the music of Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds. 

The video is emotionally gripping where we witness a short narrative unfold; a bird breaks free from its mobile and sweeps over the sea and through paper clouds. The group felt there was much in common with some of the animation pieces they had been working on and it helped set an imaginative tone for their own explorations. The video highlighted how simple moving objectives can create emotive stories.

We returned to Nike Savvas to get us started and begun by creating our own mobiles. Savvas often uses very simple materials, plastics, yarns, light, and Savvas has said of herself, that she can often be found rummaging through cheap pound shops for bright coloured materials!  We started simple, using cutters to create circles, stars and stripes; our aim was to see how the colours and shapes operated when we hung them up.  

Some of the group had already begun to imagine their own ideas and how this particular experiment could relate some of their practice. Karen quickly begun to explore different representations of angels and other mystical imagery – on seeing Karen’s previous work I felt the work had qualities similar to the complex lyrical illustrations by William Blake. Our task now was to consider the impact of making these ideas in three dimensions, in space.

Some of the group managed to hang a number of strings onto the frames before the end of the session to create some rather striking forms.  Philip’s colour choice was rather delicate; the green, blue and gold bounced the light around creating hazy turquois impressions as they moved.

 

Similarly, Elaine chose to keep it simple with two key colours, this time red and silver.

Inserting a smaller disc inside offered a subtle dynamic by creating a clear contrast - the silver disc seemed to take on the colours of the room.

Ian chose to explore a range of different styles and techniques in one mobile; this will provide some interesting material for when we explore the mobiles with light.

In our next session we hope to experiment with hanging these in a space and make the experience more ‘immersive’. We will also add an additional element of paper to offer us richer material for our lighting workshop in two weeks time.