Second Conversation Planning Landscape Exhibition with Aaron Yeandle

Another conversation about our forthcoming exhibition. Here, we are finalising a grant application for the exhibition installation and trying to narrow the reach of the exhibition in terms of the subject matter.

FR I thought it might be useful to set some parameters or restrictions on what we include in the exhibition, if you agree. This would be really helpful for me because I always find it quite hard to narrow down what to cover in an exhibition, if I have some control over the subject matter. I mean, I don't want to limit you, but I just thought it'd be quite useful to discuss.

So I thought, looking at your work and what you've done already, it's got to cover World War II architecture, the German architecture and bunkers, etc.

Megalithic sites, do you think?

Megalithic Burial Tomb, from the series Occultations, Aaron Yeandle

AY Yeah, yeah.

FR And I was thinking, I’ve been making work for a while that is to do with edgeland or hinterland …for instance, the abandoned greenhouse and horticultural sites, so that would be important to include. I don't know if you've got any of those?

Fiona Richmond, from a body of work on the Salt Pans

AY Yes. Yes, yeah, I do, yeah.

FR You've got rock faces, cliffs and caves. Well, you haven't got caves, but you may want to have caves. You've got individual trees and bushes.

AY Yes. Yes. Yeah, so that can be included, and all that type of stuff.

FR Yeah, and then, I mean, I quite like the idea of flower paintings, as carriers of memory or memorial. I might put in some little canvases of tiny wildflowers or that kind of thing. And I know you've got some, but you weren't sure whether to include those or not. And that's obviously up to you…

Aaron Yeandle, series on Guernsey’s indigenous plants

AY Yeah. Yes.

FR But I guess it kind of fits within this framework, doesn't it?

AY Yeah.

FR And I thought even I might do the odd one where I've got an outline of an animal or animal bones, feathers, animal hair, that kind of thing.

And I thought my ruling out criterion for this would probably be no humans except traces of human through the land or through buildings and ruins.

AY Yes. I see.

FR You know, how the land's been shaped by humans and obviously the...

AY Yeah. That covers all the architecture, that covers all the flora and fauna, all the weird little bits of land that we find interesting that we capture.

FR Yeah, but no actual visible humans, as in no depictions of humans, if that makes sense. But I don't think you've got any anyhow, have you in your photos linked to this project?

And I mean, I just thought if I've got those parameters to start with, once I've done a bit of work and you've obviously got loads of work already, but what we can bring it together and discuss in a few weeks to see what direction it's going in. Because we've got the three rooms, it could be split into three areas.

AY Yes.

FR areas of work, but you know, I'm fairly open as to how we do it or how we display it.

AY Yeah. Suppose I think it all depends then on the edit, you know, once you're finally happy with what you've been doing over the next few months and then I suppose like say, when is it, January, February, March. So let's say then, come February-ish, we could sit down and do an edit maybe.

FR Yeah. Yeah.

Well, maybe late January, do you think? We can get together, look at where we are and, you know, I can just take photos of where I'm at, bring those along to you and we can sit down with the imagery together.

AY Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, obviously, you know, by then I'm going to have a shitload of stuff. But of course, I'm only going to be showing a small amount of that.

FR Well, this is it. I mean, I think you, I mean, your work you can always use in other exhibitions, can't you? So...

AY Yes. So as long as it's like an equal equilibrium of our work together, I think that's really important.

FR Yeah, yeah. Oh, definitely. It doesn't even have to refer directly to certain places, but I suppose, you know, as we do when we curate, you look at colour, you look at...the commonalities, you look at the differences, and that will really come together through the curation, won't it, I think.

AY Yeah, definitely. I mean, already there's a few that I think, well, okay, those are like winners already. But you know, I've still got like the whole November and December and then January, got three more months of shooting.

FR Yeah. Yeah, well, you, you're on fire at the moment; you seem to be out doing stuff every night.

AY Well, I knew the rain was coming, so, in that sense, I thought I made the effort, although I was a bit slack last week, but I still went out, and, but of course, I will be gone for almost two weeks now, so...

FR Okay, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So you're making the most of it before you went.

AY Yeah, yeah. It kind of gives me the chance to have a look at it. So I popped it on my website now, all the stuff away from the Skype stuff, all in one folder thing called ‘Occultation’. Yeah.

FR Oh, okay, so I'll just look at that folder and if, I don't know if they'll need any imagery for the exhibition grant application. I might put one or two images of paintings in or something.

AY Yeah, definitely.

FR So if I pick a couple of those from yours, I mean, if there's work that you want me to put in specifically, just ping me an e-mail with them attached along with your updated CV.

AY Yes, I’ll send stuff tomorrow then and then I can go through it tomorrow evening. I've got to go and judge this photography competition in the evening. So at least I've got tomorrow afternoon to look at it.

FR And then I'll send it to you either… I've got work tomorrow evening, but probably I think I might take Wednesday off. So I'll send it to you by Wednesday lunchtime. And then you can read through. And if there's anything you want to add, change, etc.

AY Alright, perfect. So, at least that gives me Wednesday afternoon to look.

Then, by Thursday, I'll be gone.

FR Yeah, yeah, I mean, if need be, if we need to tweak it, I can always send it to you, but I guess you may not be have good Wi-Fi access where you are.

AY Yeah, the only Wi-Fi I'm gonna have is when we're in the pub, so majority of the time I'm not gonna have much much internet.

FR Yeah, you won't. Yeah. But I don't think it's going to be too onerous to get this together really.

AY I mean, ultimately, you know, we can add more to it if you think and you need to do framing and stuff. But of course, if we're going to do the workshops, we need to be paid for that too. So we need to add that on. If you wanted to, because you could do a workshop where we just go to some beautiful key places and do a sketching afternoon or something.

FR Yeah, well, you put what you normally put down for that sort of stuff in terms of costs and I'll just, I'll mirror that with what I put in because I haven't a clue about what to charge for things like that.

AY Yeah.

FR Yeah, and I'll put in about doing workshops, maybe a guided tour or some sort of talk about our work. Yeah.

AY Yeah, the main cost is printing the prints and you know I may not even mount them because that is a whole extra expense.

FR Yeah, I think it would look fine. I think it would look lovely actually, just and if you've got some large transfers too that you can, you know, stick directly to the wall.

AY So...Yes, yeah, maybe like one big one.

FR But some of them, some of them you probably want to pin so that you can have the option to sell them.

AY Yeah.

FR Or however you do it, bulldog clips or whatever.

AY Something like that. So that would keep the cost down and, you know, that's not crazy nowadays in an exhibition either, because you know, if anybody knows anything about photography, it's the cost of mounting and printing is the show, isn't it?

FR Yeah.

And I think these days, I think it's quite, it's quite acceptable, more interesting even, to show work unframed.

AY Yeah, and, you know, when I had that London show the other day, and when I went there, it was all pinned on the wall and stuff like that. So, then if you are just like sticking your canvases up, for example, without framing, then that may have a connection then.

FR Definitely, I wasn't planning framing, apart from maybe some of the small ones. I was planning on just having... unframed work, but I might also, might have a little bit of an installation because if we're doing some work around the salt pans. I've got some little pressed glass, Victorian glass salt cellars, you know, lots and lots of them. I thought if I could use one of the windows, put some glass shelving up on the windows all the way up and put them on there, you'd get all the refraction. Sort of linking in the landscape of the salt pans to the domestic...

AY Nice, yeah.

Yes. Yeah, well, that sounds lovely.

FR But again, I don't think that's going to be massively expensive. I just need to buy some reinforced glass for that.

AY No.

Yeah, well that sounds good.

FR Have you ever bought reinforced glass?

AY Well, I mean, I’ve bought Perspex a lot for... because it's cheaper.

You can buy it down to cut already, perspex.

FR You can, they'll cut it for you, will they?

Oh, that would be handy because it's not heavy, the pressed glass.

AY No, and Perspex is lighter as well, than reinforced glass - is quite expensive. We use Perspex a lot at school.

FR Yeah.

AY Yeah. Perfect. That’s exciting then.

FR Yeah, I think it's coming together. It's just more... I suppose I just needed to be a bit clear about where I was taking it at this stage.

AY Yes, and ultimately, it's about the nature, the like the weird macabre bits of nature that Guernsey is inhabited with so much. Then obviously the historical buildings, megaliths and Neolithic.

FR Yeah.

And with nature, I suppose it's about the history of the sites and the change of use by humanity and then almost about nature claiming that back in some way.

AY I made some legends to support the work.

And kind of the ghostly remnants of that being left behind for.

FR Of, of, yeah, in terms of the occupation stuff.

AY Yeah, it seems quite macabre the work we do, to a certain extent, and it's not the first thing when people go out and do a landscape, is paint or do what we do. And that's the thing, it’s about looking at our everyday environment with a different view of a landscape and what actually that landscape means to us personally.

FR Yeah, because neither of us are interested in pretty chocolate-box landscapes, are we?

AY Exactly. And even though yours is colour, mine is still colour. There's hints of greens and in there, so I so I think that will work. It will lend itself really well.

FR Of course, it's colour, yeah.

And I...I'm going to do some big...black and white charcoal stuff and also I'm trying to do some more work that is much more using a very limited palette. So although there will be... patches of brightness, a lot of it might be quite low key.

AY And I think that both the low key and the brightness route will really bounce off the night time stuff, I really believe so.

FR Yeah, because yours has got, it's got this sort of luminosity where you've got the, like the trees or architecture coming out of the darkness, hasn't it?

AY Yeah, so that will really lend itself to your colour palette that you use.

FR Yeah. Oh, I think it's coming together quite well, don't you?

AY Definitely, I mean, I'm not worried about it at all. I think the key thing now is just to make the work, keep coming back together every few weeks. And once I'm back, maybe if you wanted to come to, see this really interesting rock formation, is just on L'Ancresse. If you go past Pembroke as far as you can go and you go around a sharp corner and it's not that little bay, but there's parking just around there. There's some really interesting rocks we could go in the evening.

FR L’Ancresse, yeah. Yeah, I probably need to go in the day as well to capture them in the day, but I guess if I come with you at night, I'll know where they are then.

AY Yes.

Oh yeah, or even early evening before it gets dark and stuff.

FR Yeah, it's getting dark pretty early now, isn't it? I think the clock's going back next weekend.

AY Oh yeah, so you'll be dark.

FR Yeah, but I mean, I can go at the weekends anyhow, you know.

AY Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. So it was really interesting rock formation around there. Quite unique to the other interesting rocks.

FR Yeah? Cool, because I haven't done any rocks for ages and I'm a bit nervous about doing rocks, but I need to get back into them…

AY And these are like monsters and things, so it's really interesting.

FR Yeah, I love your blood monster tree as well. Where was that?

Aaron Yeandle, from the Occultations series

AY Oh yeah, dude. Well, I have to give you that print. It's around the corner. I just noticed it when I was coming up the lane. I thought, I'm going to have to find out where that is.

FR Ohh, I know, can you drop me can you drop me a pin with that and I might go and do a painting of it?

AY Well, it's kind of on the edge of a farmer's field, so it's totally fine for you to go in there. But I went in to see, I went to the farmer's field and found it, and it's in part somebody's house. So I went to the wrong house, and this old child came out. So I told him, he said, oh, it belongs to them, they won't mind. So then I went over and spoke to them.

FR Ohh. Yeah.

AY But fingers crossed with all the wind and stuff, it should still be there because it is actually some type of vine over the main tree. Yeah.

FR Oh, okay. Wow, sounds brilliant.

AY But you go down the road, like a couple of minutes down the road from where I am now.

FR Yeah, I don't know whether I'll find it without you, but...

AY Oh no, I would have to show you for sure.

FR Yeah, yeah. Right, well I don't think there's anything else. Can you think of anything that we've forgotten...

AY Well, I know, send me the application, then I can have a good look on Wednesday.

Um, and then I think, and then I'll probably be like out of... contact for like a week and.

FR Yeah, yeah, well I hope you have a lovely trip and it'd be nice for you to catch up with your Map mates.

AY Alright, fantastic. And any questions or anything, you know, I'm always happy to hook up and have a chat and stuff.

FR Yeah, lovely. Okay, well, enjoy the rest of your week and I'll catch up with you. Well, I'll ping you the e-mail, you know, all this stuff, and then I'll speak to you when you're back, I guess.

AY Yes. Alright then. Okay, you take care. Bye.

FR Take care. Bye.