Maureen Kendal
MAUREEN KENDAL
My Artist's Space:
Concept: Cyclical journey that explores Trauma, Migration, Integration, Joy.
For the first stage of this project, I am working with the developer to project charcoal 'cave' drawings on the cliffs, introduce different habitats along the shoreline and cliffs, imprinting textures, exploring combinations of tangible mark making with 3D object creation; creating pathways through the environment that actively encourage exploration.
As the user enters the space and choses their pathway across the landscape, there are four levels of Narrative:
There is a sense of curiosity we have when discovering rock pools along the shoreline of our islands.
There can be a sense of memories, subliminal, maybe epi-genetic, prehistoric, ancient, historical and futuristic, when we explore the ‘wild’, or least cultivated beaches. A sense that we could be anywhere and anytime. From childhood, my fantasy life built up layers of imaginings from Shakespeare’s Prospero’s desert island in the Tempest , or Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Jospeh Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Derek Walcott's Omeros, A.B. Yehoshua’s A Journey to the End of the Millennium, and stories of merchants or explorers from other lands, Celts, Romans, Picts, or indigenous people living off the land, or people migrating from trauma - arriving on a deserted beach and having to survive in unfamiliar territory.
From my childhood, we played on a specific Dorset beach, layering this experience with rich fantasies and imaginings. When I visit this beach, these imagined worlds come to life. Layered images, sounds open up deep wells of forgotten repressed emotion. Longing for adventure and exploration, yet the sense of danger, fear, loss and displacement. The longing for family, roots and community. There is an urge to name and understand but the feelings are nameless, so mutable, changing, framed only for a fleeting moment. There is an urge for a language. This language sounds like a myriad of winds that sing high above the deep rhythm of mercurial waves; its meaning always getting lost in translation, its recollection is not intelligible. I crave this sound, the feeling of sand, cave, rocks, layers of clay and sediment, seaweed stink, ozone in my lungs, the sea-tides pulling in and out of the harbour, the elegance of boats with wind in their sails and the light of expansive skies.
Within this space, there are characters within 'cave' charcoal drawings, audio, 3D animated animals, song-lyrics.
There are mini-environments: be they: rock formations and pools, harbours, river-lets, freshwater lagoons, cliffs, dunes, sea grass, sand ridges created by the outgoing tide, decaying jellyfish and flies. There are collectables - seaweed, shells, sand snails, extracts from charcoal drawings.
The drawings tell this cyclical story of Trauma, Migration, Integration, Joy
“The Sword of Destruction” - Flight, Fight, Massacre, Women and children as vulnerable victims, Women pleading for mercy, Women protecting their young
"Fascists at the Door"/ "Barbarians at the Gate" - The fascists arriving (on the top and left of the frame ) with uniform hats. At the right and bottom of the frame - Victims hear them approach as they sit and lie in their homes, helpless, with nowhere to hide and no means of escape. The frame combines two different locations - Outside the Door and Inside the Interior. There are traces of partial feet referring to the historical images of shoes piled high in the Nazi concentration camps and the survivors - us with our bare footprints on the beach.
"Figures running on the spot" - Three figures in motion, in flight, caught in a trap, running, but caught on one spot
"Angel of Life and Death" - The angel who passing over, can protect and can annihilate.
"Minotaur" - imprisoned in the Labyrinth, enslaved in arched caverns made by man.
"The man in a flash" - Maybe hunting
"Crouching women" - Harvesting, cleaning, tending, cooking, washing
"Mother and babies" - Baby moving around the mother. Creating and nurturing life. Regeneration of family and culture.
"Three Fates" - in constant flux, mutable, oscillation of order and chaos
This series of Drawings were created in response to Glen Sujo’s workshops on the Animated Figure, where he orchestrated and created a narrative for the models. His artistic practice and as an Art researcher - is informed by Holocaust experience and the aesthetic traditions of the Animated Figure and gesture. I participated in his Drawing workshops for Animators, Artists and Art Practitioners at the Princes Drawing School, Royal Drawing School and his Drawing workshops at Cambridge University, 'Kettles Yard' Art Gallery, Geffrye Museum and Guildford University weekend workshops about 2008 - 2015. Subsequently I continued to develop this work.
Bio/CV
Maureen Kendal is a digital producer, writer and artist. Director of dreamstudio.io, producing virtual worlds with artists and technologists. Designer and developer of virtual and immersive communities.
2001 - 2004 ‘Revelation’ Online digital art virtual park for Lee Valley Regional Park, Arts Council funded.
2007 - 2009 DAMTAG ( Digital Arts Media Technology Action Group) conference
2008 - 2012 Virtual Avatar worlds, London Metropolitan University
2017 - 2018 PingHubVR, Artists and Galleries, TiItBrush and MasterPieceVR; Live link Penang and London.
2020 – A-Maze Artists Group - facilitated by Fion Gunn
Research Organisations and Universities 2016-2021:
Research Associate at Ravensbourne University,
Associate Lecturer at London Metropolitan University
Positions
1996 - 2016 London Metropolitan University, including Principal Lecturer. Specialist in Computer Games Modelling, Animation and Visual Effects: Language of the Moving and Visual Image; Visual Effects;
2016- 2021 Director of CyberCare Ltd, cybercare.org.uk
Services with cyber security support to individuals, families, communities and business.
2016- 2021 Director of DreamStudio, dreamstudio.io
Developing innovative visualisation projects, to include VR/MR/AR platforms, Project management for Artists.
Website: www.dreamstudio.io
My Artist's Space:
Concept: Cyclical journey that explores Trauma, Migration, Integration, Joy.
For the first stage of this project, I am working with the developer to project charcoal 'cave' drawings on the cliffs, introduce different habitats along the shoreline and cliffs, imprinting textures, exploring combinations of tangible mark making with 3D object creation; creating pathways through the environment that actively encourage exploration.
As the user enters the space and choses their pathway across the landscape, there are four levels of Narrative:
- The journey and happenings on the level of physical sensation. The awe and wonder of the natural world. Aesthetic and kinaesthetic delight and ‘jouissance’. Our five senses plus movement through time. Senses which are beyond human physical capabilities but can be accessed using electronic devices eg the view of a soaring eagle, high shrill sounds of bats, the keen ear of a dog, the GPS information that feed geo-locators on our devices.
- The journey and symbolic objects on the level of social, economic philosophical and anthropological significance. Cultural myths, legend, inheritance. Ecological knowledge.
- The associations from the external journey to the internal inner psychological or psychodynamic memories or imaginary re enactments. “I have been here before on an emotional level and I bring this to bear on my current experience. “ Knowing oneself. Remembering layers of memories. Site-specific triggers for emotional memories.
- Linking our earth-bound experience with the spiritual wider context. Expansive. Going beyond and expanding ourselves and our actions for a wider understanding and impact. Spiritual connectedness with all beings. Past Now Future interconnectedness. Reflective ‘“commentaria” that opens up possibilities for a spiritual and imaginative engagement. Feeling the world breath and turn on its axis, sensitivity to a nuanced reality, a sense of the intuitive.
There is a sense of curiosity we have when discovering rock pools along the shoreline of our islands.
There can be a sense of memories, subliminal, maybe epi-genetic, prehistoric, ancient, historical and futuristic, when we explore the ‘wild’, or least cultivated beaches. A sense that we could be anywhere and anytime. From childhood, my fantasy life built up layers of imaginings from Shakespeare’s Prospero’s desert island in the Tempest , or Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Jospeh Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Derek Walcott's Omeros, A.B. Yehoshua’s A Journey to the End of the Millennium, and stories of merchants or explorers from other lands, Celts, Romans, Picts, or indigenous people living off the land, or people migrating from trauma - arriving on a deserted beach and having to survive in unfamiliar territory.
From my childhood, we played on a specific Dorset beach, layering this experience with rich fantasies and imaginings. When I visit this beach, these imagined worlds come to life. Layered images, sounds open up deep wells of forgotten repressed emotion. Longing for adventure and exploration, yet the sense of danger, fear, loss and displacement. The longing for family, roots and community. There is an urge to name and understand but the feelings are nameless, so mutable, changing, framed only for a fleeting moment. There is an urge for a language. This language sounds like a myriad of winds that sing high above the deep rhythm of mercurial waves; its meaning always getting lost in translation, its recollection is not intelligible. I crave this sound, the feeling of sand, cave, rocks, layers of clay and sediment, seaweed stink, ozone in my lungs, the sea-tides pulling in and out of the harbour, the elegance of boats with wind in their sails and the light of expansive skies.
Within this space, there are characters within 'cave' charcoal drawings, audio, 3D animated animals, song-lyrics.
There are mini-environments: be they: rock formations and pools, harbours, river-lets, freshwater lagoons, cliffs, dunes, sea grass, sand ridges created by the outgoing tide, decaying jellyfish and flies. There are collectables - seaweed, shells, sand snails, extracts from charcoal drawings.
The drawings tell this cyclical story of Trauma, Migration, Integration, Joy
“The Sword of Destruction” - Flight, Fight, Massacre, Women and children as vulnerable victims, Women pleading for mercy, Women protecting their young
"Fascists at the Door"/ "Barbarians at the Gate" - The fascists arriving (on the top and left of the frame ) with uniform hats. At the right and bottom of the frame - Victims hear them approach as they sit and lie in their homes, helpless, with nowhere to hide and no means of escape. The frame combines two different locations - Outside the Door and Inside the Interior. There are traces of partial feet referring to the historical images of shoes piled high in the Nazi concentration camps and the survivors - us with our bare footprints on the beach.
"Figures running on the spot" - Three figures in motion, in flight, caught in a trap, running, but caught on one spot
"Angel of Life and Death" - The angel who passing over, can protect and can annihilate.
"Minotaur" - imprisoned in the Labyrinth, enslaved in arched caverns made by man.
"The man in a flash" - Maybe hunting
"Crouching women" - Harvesting, cleaning, tending, cooking, washing
"Mother and babies" - Baby moving around the mother. Creating and nurturing life. Regeneration of family and culture.
"Three Fates" - in constant flux, mutable, oscillation of order and chaos
This series of Drawings were created in response to Glen Sujo’s workshops on the Animated Figure, where he orchestrated and created a narrative for the models. His artistic practice and as an Art researcher - is informed by Holocaust experience and the aesthetic traditions of the Animated Figure and gesture. I participated in his Drawing workshops for Animators, Artists and Art Practitioners at the Princes Drawing School, Royal Drawing School and his Drawing workshops at Cambridge University, 'Kettles Yard' Art Gallery, Geffrye Museum and Guildford University weekend workshops about 2008 - 2015. Subsequently I continued to develop this work.
Bio/CV
Maureen Kendal is a digital producer, writer and artist. Director of dreamstudio.io, producing virtual worlds with artists and technologists. Designer and developer of virtual and immersive communities.
2001 - 2004 ‘Revelation’ Online digital art virtual park for Lee Valley Regional Park, Arts Council funded.
2007 - 2009 DAMTAG ( Digital Arts Media Technology Action Group) conference
2008 - 2012 Virtual Avatar worlds, London Metropolitan University
2017 - 2018 PingHubVR, Artists and Galleries, TiItBrush and MasterPieceVR; Live link Penang and London.
2020 – A-Maze Artists Group - facilitated by Fion Gunn
Research Organisations and Universities 2016-2021:
Research Associate at Ravensbourne University,
Associate Lecturer at London Metropolitan University
Positions
1996 - 2016 London Metropolitan University, including Principal Lecturer. Specialist in Computer Games Modelling, Animation and Visual Effects: Language of the Moving and Visual Image; Visual Effects;
2016- 2021 Director of CyberCare Ltd, cybercare.org.uk
Services with cyber security support to individuals, families, communities and business.
2016- 2021 Director of DreamStudio, dreamstudio.io
Developing innovative visualisation projects, to include VR/MR/AR platforms, Project management for Artists.
Website: www.dreamstudio.io