Echoes in Electro Studios

The PhotoHastings Festival is definitely underway with more exhibitions scheduled at Electro Studios and Hastings Arts Forum as well as another few weeks of Photology at The Pig. Lauris Morgan-Griffiths went to see the latest Electro show Echoes:visualising thoughts and puzzling material (which can amount to the same thing) by Tracy Jones and Lucinda Wells.

Tracy Jones and Lucinda Wells started talking about having an exhibition together at the end of last year. Jones explains, “It came about from a shared need to be making, thinking and talking about art again with others, as well as between ourselves.”

Originally it was going to be exploring technology together and gradually it developed into showing their individual obsessive explorations. It is an unconventional,  interesting show and I would suggest you go to see it with an open mind.

The work they present here is a collection of inquiries. Although working separately and differently there is a joint sensibility, Jones and Wells obsessively interrogate their subject matter, both attempting to capture the scene, to provide evidence, to prove it was experienced, as though urgently pointing at what it is they were witnessing before it disappeared.

They both really look and examine what is happening in their worlds. People don’t truly observe, just as people don’t really listen. If you walk down a road with someone and compare notes afterwards you will both have noticed different things but they are really examining what is going on. But once you see something, you cannot unsee it.

Jones’ practice is constantly moving – she enjoys a multi-disciplined approach, although she tends to gravitate towards photography, drawing and moving image. This project follows on from a recent residency at Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne, where she revived an earlier scheme pursuing the experience of looking from the window of a train during a regular short journey.

Using a low-fi mobile phone she began by drawing the landscape, followed by making a video of the journey on the same ancient phone. Working within a three-minute limitation between two tunnels, she is exploring the movement between spaces, experiencing the effects of rhythm and repetition on the patterns that movement makes in the landscape.

“The character of the landscape is experienced in the blink of an eye, I can only ever draw the memory of it, even my digital captures are blurred by movement, the now is a constant transition and not as expected a still moment.”

The now is something that chimes with Wells’ interests. “As someone who began practising meditation 35 years ago, I am aware of the extraordinary that inhabits the apparently ordinary. Of course, everything is extraordinary when one thinks about the organisation of molecules, matter, the visible and the invisible, the world around us, and us. Meditation and allied practices have opened doorways into unusual experiences of awareness and these have poured into my daily life.”

I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical.
Trent Parke.

Wells says, “I evidently can’t speak for Australian photographer Trent Parke but the light I see(k) is no ordinary light either.”

Some of her images are extraordinary accidents and mysterious like a message that arrives unbidden on Wells’ phone: changed patterns of the sea or shapes of balcony ironwork; auras around a person; shafts of light that appear to descend on portraits. None of which were present or apparent when viewed through the phone camera screen.

“Sometimes I think it’s about noticing.  I notice what happens and don’t write it off as a mistake or try to rationalise it and therefore the channel remains open to allow more mystery and magic to flow in.  All work of mine of this nature resides under the overarching title: In Search of The Real. Diane Arbus said, “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” In my search for The Real I have found that as one secret is revealed it is rapidly followed by another: often a deeper, even more mysterious, one.

“One thing I would like this exhibition to achieve is to introduce people to mystery. The exhibition might be challenging to access but then mystery is hard to access.”

An accomplished photographer, Wells takes photographs all the time but has not exhibited for a while due to pursuing her interest in learning and teaching shamanism. They both feel they have benefited from their collaboration. Wells tells me, “The great thing about working with Tracy towards this exhibition is it has helped me to have a rethink.” Jones says, “Working with Lucinda and the whole process has made me feel awake, without knowing that I had been asleep.”

As I said at the beginning go with an open mind and you might be surprised about what you see and discover.

Echoes is at Electro Studios, 5 Seaside Road, St Leonards-on-Sea TN38 0AL Open 11am-5pm, from Thursday 20-Sunday 23 October.

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