Site-specific project, day 1

The brief for this module of the art foundation course is to produce a proposal for a site-specific project along the Thames, between Tate Modern and Waterloo bridge. It can be anything - financial cost, health and safety aren't issues. Perhaps that's too broad a brief? That unrealistic aspect did seem to confuse a few people.

First stop was Tate Modern, with a look at the Arte Povera exhibit, works moving between painting and sculpture, with artists considering the site of the work and removing the frame. It's a movement that cleared the way for a lot of today's conceptual work.

The exercise of comparing a sculpture by Richard Serra (Trip Hammer) with a painting by Kasimir Malevich was illuminating (see both works here), but because we were a large group and the galleries had an echoey acoustic, it was hard to hear much of the other discussions. I'm thrilled to find the exhibition (Energy and Process, level 5), room by room, online here - not all images are available however.

We were let loose to wander along the river, draw and photograph, collect information. I did some drawing of the birch trees in front of the gallery, even tried to use colour
but got a bit more excited to see the double reflections in the cafe's glass walls. Out came the camera and then it was all go -

Dozens of photos later, time to find something different. Upriver a short distance is Blackfriars Bridge, and the footpath goes into a short tunnel. There's work going on to make a train station entrance on the south side of the bridge, so the tunnel is narrower than usual -

Here's the approach from the other end - very narrow, constricted, and gloomy beyond - people squeeze past the forbidding railings and hurry through -

past this empty corner -

watched by the inevitable CCTV camera high on a wall that's part of the bridge -

So I stuck my camera through the railings and took lots of photos of the reflections, zooming in and out, letting the automatic functions deal with light levels, using what the camera provided -

Looking back into the tunnel at 2.30 -

and the same scene at 5.30, when the sun had moved round - The bridge made terrific shadows -

Meanwhile others were already making their site-specific work in situ - and after the wrap-up session several of us went along the foreshore (you can see the tide was way out) to pick up bits of pottery and glass, some of which might well be Roman. The clay pipe stems are destined to become a necklace -