Artist Residency at Caravansari in Istanbul, 18 March to 31 May 2013

Arrived Monday mid-afternoon, with little experience of famed Istanbuli traffic. Julie, one of the organizers of Caravansari, met me where the taxi driver dropped me on the street corner closest to the residency building, since the street is so narrow and full of delivery and transit vans supplying the wholesale sellers of goods the taxi could not navigate to the door. This area, Perşembe Pazarı, is known for plumbing, electrical, surface finish materials, and hardware and is a bricoleur's paradise.

Looking down the street, down the hill towards the Golden Horn:

and looking up the hill towards Bankalar Caddesi, where the Ottoman bank is (not visible in the image).

The bank building has been split laterally, and the eastern half is now occupied by SALT Galata, an art space: http://saltonline.org/en/anasayfa

My first night I met the other two artists in resident, Laleh Torabi from Berlin and Ughetta Dallimonti, also from London. Ughetta is just here for a month and Laleh and I will be here for the same amount of time. The four of us ate dinner at a restaurant specializing in a regional Antakya (ancient Antioch) cooking - mezes and a very interesting meat dish.

Since the best way to get to know a new place is through food, my initial forays into vegetables included aubergine, onions, tomatoes and courgettes, the light green skinned variety - a kg of each cost around 3TL, or a little over a quid each. Package goods are much more expensive. Lunch on Tuesday therefore was a version of ratatouille with lentils:

Sat outside in the bright sunshine on the roof terrace here, from which Ayasofya/Hagia Sofya and the minarets of the Blue Mosque are visible.

I had also previously discovered a yoghurt drink called ayran, and the low-fat yoghurt here is delicious! (pink means low-fat here):

Yesterday Julie walked me around the 'up the hill' area, and today we walked around the 'down the hill' area, including the fish market, a 8 min walk:

These three fish were 10TL, about £3.6, and the seller gutted and chopped off their heads (didn't want them smelling up the rubbish). They are marinating in ayran, with chopped fresh dill and some type of fresh spring garlic. I may roll them in a little maize meal and then sautee in butter/oil tonight for dinner after we go to a PV in a new gallery space at a local department store.

The azan, or call to prayer, is broadcast several times a day - a few hours before dawn (noticed it this morning but promptly went back to sleep), midday, in the afternoon , and then again at dusk. The early morning call seems to come from a single source, but the other iterations seem to come from two different mosques, as there is a distinct delay, a muddling of the sounds and the times, a blurring of the tones. My second sonic event here, the first being the sound of running water under the sewer grills in the streets.

The Greyline Project: the line of twilight

'German Romanticism: a heightened sensitivity to the natural world...a passion for the indeterminate, the obscure, the faraway; a desire that the self be lost in nature's various infinities.'

                                                           Joseph Leo Koerner, Casper David Friedrich

Joan Edlis explores the gravitational relationship between the sun and the earth with a series of drawings, diagrams, objects and sound installations. In her new show, The Line Of Twilight, the works exude a delicate peacefulness.

Edlis is preoccupied with the fundamentals of the universe: the way the earth turns within the energy outpourings of the sun and its resulting effect on the planet; waveforms in every conceivable realization, either directly as natural phenomena or indirectly as diagrammatic interpretations of those waveforms.

The word ‘Grey Line’ is a ham radio term for a characteristic of the earth’s atmosphere combined with the planet’s tilt relative to the sun. For Britain, during just a few weeks in January, radio operators here can communicate with those in New Zealand, almost 19,000 km away. The line of twilight encircling the globe propagates radio wave differently from the rest of the atmosphere. Radio operators exploit this phenomenon, their signals travel along this line, reaching to far distances. These are all aspects that Joan investigates in this show.

Edlis explores ordinary commonplace events to do with astronomy, ham radios, solar observations, then documents her investigations and discoveries, questioning why are the summer days are so long? Why is the longest day of the year not when the sun rises earliest and sets latest? What is a neap tide, an ebb tide, a spring tide?

Simon Wilson, writing about one of her works:

‘Grey Line Half-Sphere' 2012, is made from pulped egg cartons, cotton wool, the watercolours Payne’s Gray and Cobalt Blue Hue, found scrap roofing lead, and string from a postal supplies store in Vienna. This list highlights Joan Edlis’s extraordinarily sensitive and inventive approach to materials, which places her in that materials-led tradition of three-dimensional practice which has been central to modernism since Picasso’s Cubist constructions and Brancusi’s doctrine of ‘truth to materials’. She also possesses a powerful sense of the relations of elements in space. The result here is a compelling  harmony of simple form, colour, texture and space that gives immediate satisfaction. 

But on further reflection one wonders why that tilt of the hemisphere, and then realises that the coil of lead is there to create it. And the hemisphere is just that – half the Earth - and the angle of tilt is that of the Earth in relation to the sun. Grey Line Half-Sphere thus takes its place in the series of meditations on that most fundamental fact of human existence, our relationship to the sun, that makes up this exhibition.’

 Exhibited works

Cur nà dtonn

Gaelic for ‘seafoam’ where small bits of detritus float on the sea‘s surface, sometimes trapping bubbles, and bob up and down in one place, riding the waves.

 

Daylength 51˚N 0.5˚W (London) - Solstice/Equinox/Solstice (gas jars)

Three different liquids – transparent, dusky and opaque – proportioned according to day length in London for different seasons.  The dusky layer slowly sinks into the layer of darkness over a period of days.

Colours of Dusk

Household liquids sealed with wax in all the shades of dusk.

Vermilion Tone Time

Watch crystals containing Vermilion tone gouache, positioned on a diagram of the sun’s ecliptic arc, the path the sun takes throughout the day relative to the celestial sphere. In summer the arc is very high, sweeping across the breadth of the sky, and in winter it is much shallower, appearing to rise and set across a much narrower arc.

Twilight 50˚08' 30' N 29 May 2012 (Cambridgeshire)

Twilight, measured from 20.48 to 22.20 in lux (luminosity) then plotted as a graph, defines the state of darkness over 21 aquatints, also measured in lux. Light level readings were recorded at a site in Cambridgeshire having minimal night time light pollution, as seen in the three images of the night sky with moon.

Genuine Vermilion Disc

The dry pigment Vermilion derives from sulphur and mercury (mercuric sulphide). Toxic and prone to turning black in sunlight this colour is also known as Cinnabar Vermilion, Scarlet Vermilion and Chinese Vermilion.

The Grey Line (sphere)

The equator is not simply a cultural construct but the fastest moving point on the surface of the earth. Geo-centrically the equator and the poles travel elliptically within the celestial plane; helio-centrically the poles are tilted at an angle of 23.4˚ to the ecliptic plane. Positioned to receive morning sun, the lens will focus sunlight onto the red disc throughout the duration of the exhibition, resulting in a dark record of light.

The Grey Line (half-sphere)

The earth turns within the outpourings of the sun’s radiant energy. The tangent point of the globe where sunlight just skims the surface of the earth is the band of twilight, also know as the Sunset Terminator.

Curve of Darkness 51˚N 0.5˚W (London) 19 June 2012

The Grey Line appears as an asymmetric curve on this Winkel Triple map projection, devised to reduce the distortion of landmasses towards the Polar Regions. Certain ham radio frequencies reflecting within this line of continually diminishing solar energy, using it like a path to reach distant parts of the globe. The shape of the curve constantly alters according to season.

Earth Sound Receiver

Lightning strikes generate Extra Low Frequency (ELF) sub-radio signals, which bounce within and travel along the Grey Line’s path.  A horn amplifies these frequencies into audible sound from lightning as distant as 1000 km.

Shade and Shadow (slideshow)

Shade is the result of the lack of direct light falling on a surface; shadow is the result of something blocking direct light, or interposing between a light source and a surface.

Shade assists the eye/brain to recognize and define three dimensional shape and form; shadows can do the opposite by obscuring and blurring the definition of what we perceive. Conversely, the  absence/diminution of light often helps the eye to see more clearly, stimulating only rods, which outnumber cones by 20 times (still from slide show).

Circling tide (wave) (video/four speakers)

Gravitational attraction between the Earth and Lunar masses generates the ocean or planetary bulge which drives the tides. The shingle on this particular stretch of Irish coast is oddly angled to the direction of the tide - thus the crash of waves pans dramatically.

C4RD AlterWalden at Shankill International Arts Festival, Kilkenny 2010

Started with a June walk in the woods, an ancient woodland in East Anglia and ended in a sensitively converted stone barn in a Kilkenny August. 

In between, it was laughter, camping, giggles, barking foxes, smoky fires, and the unutterable silence and beauty of deep woodlands.

 Andrew and Alex shouldering on...

We all settled amongst Daphne's shaded shadowy coppiced trees, tripping over medieval ridge and furrows, spilling tea and pee behind the tents, making drawings, videos, painting, casting clay, chopping tree trunks, recording conversations.

 Tent? what do you mean, tent?

Sarah sitting by the campfire, waiting for tea...

And to work!- riffing off each other, drawing shades and shadows, 

getting up front and personal with earth, trees, branches, trunks, logs...

 hmm, just what exactly are these curious bumps?

 fire never burned hot enough to do anything but dry the clay, but try we did, Andrew.

Then when the heavens finally broke, we packed the tents and scurried back to review what we had done:

 Casper David Friedrich mountain by Andrew

Afterwards, Daph and I went about locally asking people what they thought about trees. 

Finally we were off to Ireland. Alex drove accompanied by Sarah and me.  Our journey from Richmond took us to a port in Wales for the 4 hour ferry trip.

Then more driving through very beautiful Irish countryside on very bad road (no, Alex, your axle is not going to break - I promise, it's a Volvo) Shankill was an incredible experience. Elizabeth, Geoffrey, Phoebe, Reuben and were all everywhere at once cranking up the efforts and egos of so many artists. 

But the C4RD artists serenely sailed in, helping where we could as needed, secretly pleased at our stone barn 'gallery' space - exquisite and perfect.

Fabric draped over upper half of double door to keep the swallows out...

 

In this double height space the traces of hayloft joists still visible in the stone structure. Glorous light and we were so lucky with the weather...

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Alex, Andrew, Daph and Sarah's works ringing 'round the room

Daphne's beautiful diary of the days in the woodland

Small table and chair with 'Into the Woods' video embedded in The Real Counties of England

Against the back wall suspended from joists Ridge and Furrow:wave form, cast plaster in situ

Then Elizabeth arranged for us all to be interviewed; here is an excerpt.

The full video can be viewed here at Hedgehog Production. Read Phoebe's blog about Shankill Castle here: http://shankillcastle.wordpress.com