AirBridge - Picture
Projected Flash Animation

John Brown

Project Management

Since moving to Harlech, North Wales in 1990 to set up a studio, my interests in how art can function beyond the gallery, and how it can contribute to a regions' culture and its economy has been a primary concern. Founding Gwyl Gelf Harlech Art Biennale with colleagues in 1994 is a prime facia example of an outcome taken from written theoretical texts on the subject. In 2005 the project has now established itself as a European venture connecting with artists and arts organisations in Poland, Galicia, The Netherlands, Bulgaria and Macedonia.

Working currently with colleagues Andrew Smith and Neil Powell further developments are being made with links to artists of international status from Wales and further afield. What this means is that the project now has an interest in promoting a scholarly informed approached to producing, curating and showing contemporary art, in order to maintain a quality of experience that we wish to promote.

In 1999 my interest in enfranchising our remote geographical location through visual art exhibitions developed further with a written application to the WDA for developing IT workshops in the community. Setting up Corlan Creadigol Harlech with colleague Berwyn Evans developed further the principle of creativity as an essential ingredient in cultural activity. We received funding from WDA and further developed a Millennium Project for the region as an extra-curricula creative activity for young people in schools.

My own visual art practice relies on a particular interest in producing work emanating from a process which might be seen as the continued development of a ‘visual art vocabulary' through practice familiarity. The notion of metaphysics as the basis of our idea of reality creates an interest in the idea of the mind being able to switch and bridge connections between what is seen and what is understood by being seen. All of my project development practice mentioned above emanates from this source, which favours an idea of dysfunctionality to accomplish stated aims through an integrity of purpose.

The sculpture that I make arises out of a mixture of objectivity, irrationality and subjectivity. Over the years, I have engaged in inventing a visual vocabulary in a bid to construct works that feed the senses of a place. The paradox being that I seek to produce a minimal statement that aims to be not an answer to questions of experience, but as a catalyst for thought gained from the experience of looking at the work. I want the work to raise questions rather than to answer them. The more minimal a work is the greater difficulty there is for seeking a literal interpretation of what it means, and yet it offers up more possibilities for a more truthful statement. Consider, ‘precise ambiguity'. It is a state that I wish the completed work to attain. Yet it could be considered a ludicrous statement. I seek it as a function to switch between the different metaphysical* states of reality that we experience.

*A Dictionary of Philosophy – p 230 “From Kant onwards many philosophers have held that the proper outlet of the metaphysical impulse lies in th systematic study, not of reality but of the fundamental structure of our thought about reality.”

My starting points of most concern are:

1. PICTURE - the image to encapsulate a dynamic.
2. STATE - the concept and paradoxes of experiencing, 'here' and knowing about 'there'.
3. PLACE (Dimension) - the viewing point and the seen view

The notion of ‘switch' and ‘bridge' dealing with connection between here and there.

The way our mental constructs can jump between metaphysical states of reality.
The ambiguity of the construction, activated by ‘the seen' creates a synergy between elements of the triad."