The Imagining of Things

The Imagining of Things was a solo exhibition. It was selected to represent Huddersfield Art Gallery for ‘Art in Yorkshire Goes Contemporary’. It also formed part of Rotor (Transdisciplinary Dialogues) and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. The exhibition was featured on BBC Radio 3 Hear and Now.

Brass Art merge an interest in nineteenth century optical devices with early twenty-first century body-scanning technologies to produce a series of photographs and a new video installation using Microsoft´s Kinect, a motion sensor often used in 3D gaming. This rich and haunting body of photographic and video work was produced during nocturnal visits to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth between 2011-12. The Imagining of Things, includes a sound commission produced in collaboration with contemporary electro acoustic composer, Alistair MacDonald, of the Royal Conservatoire, Scotland.

The work explores the magical slippages between time and space, captured during the nocturnal visits in which the artists perform a series of spectral alter-egos; pixelated, ethereal beings that make brief cameos before dissolving back into the shadows from whence they came.

‘The Imagining of Things’ develops their preoccupation with shadow play, mirroring and doubles and is presented as the first ‘chapter’ of Shadow Worlds | Writers’ Rooms.

“Echoing the projected shadow plays, sounds move around the gallery; voices collide and intersect, move out of reach, re-appear and disappear. Alistair MacDonald has created a soundscape that mirrors the digital texture of the Kinect videos yet suggests real landscapes and shifting weather conditions. The voices of the three artists whisper a secret, hidden narrative - fragmented and looping like their visual counterparts.”

The exhibition also features a gallery containing 6 unframed Photographic Inkjet Photorag Prints (dimensions, 1m approx) from the Writers’ Rooms [Bronte Parsonge] series. In the making of these photographic prints, Brass Art collaborated with photographer Simon Pantling and during nocturnal visits to the Parsonage, they sought to capture an expanded theatrical tableau – a performative shadow realm.

The Brontë Parsonage is a place where narratives were imagined, acted-out, written and inscribed in time - a site where shadows could be ‘revealed’ and re-written. The photographs do not attempt to re-tell the story of the Bronte’s or their writing, but mirror their playful approach to imaginary realms and characters.