Geoff Broadwayis the second of three resident artists invited to work in Inverness for 12 weeks as part of The Other Side of Air. This new arts project challenges artists and the residents of Inverness to explore aspects of spiritual life in contemporary society through dialogue and creative means.

Each artist has chosen to engage with different groups and Geoff's new installation Small Wonder provides a unique opportunity to be still and meditative whilst the street hums with the season's frenetic Christmas prepartations only a few feet away in the wider world.

'We spend our daily lives engaging with the world through a very narrow channel - the thinking part - and this project is really about trying to encourage us to connect with ourselves in a deeper and more expressive way.'

Photographer - Fin Macrae
Alongside Small Wonder, is a series of powerful images by photographer Fin Macrae shown in tandem with artwork by inmates of Inverness Prison. These photographic portraits provide an intruiging perspective on the people connected with the project without actually revealing their identities.

Inverness Prison
Using simple methods that included paper-cutting, collage and line-drawing, Geoff invited participants to reflect upon the most important aspects of their own lives and try to express these visually.

'These diverse images developed out of an intensive period of six sessions with a group of individuals residing in Inverness Prison who were encouraged to express deeper aspects of life through more abstract forms of expression. This playful and vibrant artwork reflects their willingness and enthusiasm to engage in a clallenging and ultimately enjoyable process.'

Small Wonder
The installation Small Wonder comprises of nine resin-glass screens suspended as a grid onto which a sequence of multiple images are projected. Nine speakers with a small red light attached are suspended around the space while four larger speakers are located in each corner.

The project is based around the reflections of twelve participants who discuss the place of spirituality in their own lives. As each share their own particular truth a larger picture emerges that may resonate with our own innate need to make sense of the life we have and the universe we inhabit, and how one may live in accord with that understanding.
The perspectives of the participants who took part in the project are influenced by faiths and traditions that include Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Atheist and Bahai, but each person also brings something unique in the way they each express and share of themselves, and make sense of their lives.

The voices are at the centre of a twenty-six minute atmospheric surround-sound track that runs on a continuous loop. The visual centre of the installation is the multi-screen projections of evocative, elemental moving images of Inverness and the surrounding Highlands. The resin-glass screens are double sided, inviting the audience to move around the installation and explore it from different perspectives.

Installation Images

Video
 

A short video of Geoff's Installation with film of the work made by inmates at Porterfield Prison

File is 25Mb in size and is for download only. Right click on the image, or right click and select 'Save Target As...' or 'Save Link As ..' to download.

Alternatively, a dvd featuring Karen and the other resident artists can be obtained by contacting Susan Christie using the Contact Form

Residency Images
 

Additional Resources and Information

Geoff Broadway's Website

View PDF version of Geoff's publicity leaflet


Geoff Broadways Diary (Written half-way through his Residency)

I am now mid-way through this 12 week residency and its a good time to reflect and share a little of the journey so far.

Emergence

To be invited to work in the Highlands and respond to such an interesting and diverse part of the UK around the theme of spirituality is both a wonder and a challenge. My approach to making a new work is usually to allow a confluence of three elements to determine its nature: the place, the people and what is happening in myself. For me to arrive at a new place, develop some kind of authentic feel for it and produce a resolved piece of work in a relatively short time-scale would, I knew, require working in an accelerated manner.

Starting Points

My feeling for this project was to start to pull on one of the threads that often figures prominently in my practice - the invitation to others to participate in the work through sharing themselves through the contribution of their words. For the last few weeks I have been connecting with many different people from around Inverness and the surrounding area, asking them to speak with me around the theme of spirituality - whatever it means to them. This has been truly wonderful and I am aware of just how much this process - this sharing of oneself - is as much part of the artwork as anything that will be articulated into the final work. What never ceases to amaze me is how much people open themselves and share their own truth when they are recorded with a microphone.
Simultaneously to this process of inviting the reflections of others I have been making reflections of my own using the video camera and microphone. My time spent with these tools is my own invitation to open myself up and engage in a kind of communion. Alongside this absorbing of materials has been the concern to solve to question of the form that work will take - essentially how to create something that will hold the fragments of contributed thoughts and experiences, and the images and sounds into relationship with each other in way that works? Recently reading Joyce’s discussion of art according to Aquinas in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he emphasises that three things are need for a successful work art - Integritas (wholeness), Consonantia (harmony) and Claritas (radiance). As well as being excellent debating points for our culture about the nature and role of art, it seemed to resonate strongly with myself as to what I feel is present in art that really works for me and what I hope to allow through in my own practice.

A tapestry of light and sound. The feeling for this project is to try and bring the elements together that suggests reflection as a central element which containing this within a bounded form. For a long time I been very interested in glass and I was very keen to explore this as part of the current project. Making connection with local glassmakers a lot of ideas and thoughts have been shared. I had an emerging idea that I would create this suspended wall of nine distinct two-dimensional glass pieces that would be affected in such a way as to allow images to be projected on and but also pass through; the aim was create a layer of suspended multiple images, viewable from a front and rear. The glassmakers were absolutely on board in spirit but clear that time would be our constraining factor. We are going to try and make one of the objects as a prototype, but for this project I am forced to try other methods, either a commercial glass fabricator or with resin. Polymer Resin is a material that I have a difficult relationship with - a beautiful fluid and malleable product that has so many glass-like properties to it - but is made from the most terrible chemicals and very difficult to control. Success with this is in the balance but with such a temperamental material to work with and the constraints of time and production facilities that are not ideal, its starting to look like I may have to go down to commercial route. For the sound element I am thinking of the idea of the hoop - a large circle that rings and contains the projections. Workshops Alongside the development of the individual project has been the invitation to connect with non-denominational groups from the local communities to explore the theme of the residency in a creative way. For this dimension I am working with a group of inmates at Inverness Prison using very simple materials to slowly engage with their own ideas and perspectives. Although I am very experienced at initiating and developing workshops with all kinds of different people, connecting with and working with people to explore the theme is actually quite difficult. The word ‘spirituality’ has so many connotations that my approach is initially to take things quite softly to see what emerges. To briefly summerise - a lot of progress with some practical difficulties to date. I have a strong awareness that I there is lot of work to do in a relatively short space of time, so its going to be a very interesting few weeks ahead!