Matt Simmons graduated from our course this summer at the University of Wales, Newport. He's now a member of the third resident group at Bristol Diving School. His first collaborative show at the BDS, Viva Voce, looked at the history of the site through video art and installation. These images were taken at the opening night last month.
Splashes of Azure interspersed with flashes of vermillion.
How best to explore past histories and changing personalities of a space; to experience them as one? It became clear that the only way to communicate a plethora of identities was to depict them all at once, to overwhelm in the hope of reaching clarity and understanding.
Scattered, dancing light illuminating a multitude of histories in black and white.
As Ben Highmore states in his text ‘Everyday life and cultural theory’, “In a number of ways montage is the most appropriate form of representing everyday life as the pell-mell of different worlds colliding.” (2002 p.93)
And sound; abstract echoes and reverberations tied together through the steady pulse of a Tango rhythm.
Plans and maps mark a starting point, the conception of a place or in the case of maps, its context in time. What better place to begin than at the beginning, before the existence of the subject? By starting here we are able to chart and explore the space as a whole, from before its birth up to the present day, assimilating years into a single night.
The tap of a foot, a rustling of cloth and the sound of breaking water. A dancers dress blurs with oxidised metal.
From the cold meticulous nature of the plan, to industry; oil, grease and the sound of machinery. From industry to sport, and from sport to the passion of dance, all ultimately leading up to this show, which in itself will ultimately be a memory, fragments of remembered noise and colour within a space continually transforming in time.
A forgotten scale of numbers and a 2x4 beat.
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