Knot Works
Artists Screening
Following the screening of works by Emily Hawes and Maud Haya-Baviera at Knot Works in May 2023, the full programme is now available stream below for a limited time only.
Full exhibition literature can be found here.
Copyright retained by each artists respectively. Full or part use of any of the work is not permitted without written consent from the artist.
Artists
Emily Hawes https://emilyhawes.com/
Maud Haya-Baviera https://maudhb.com/
Curator
Edward Liddle
Total running time
20'55"
HOLME
2022
Standard 8mm film transferred to digital with audio
6’19’’
Emily Hawes
HOLME responded to a period of research and site-specific walking around Godshill Ridge, in the north of the New Forest. Drawing upon the writing of herbalist and author Juliette de Baïracli Levy (1912-2009), who lived in Abbots Well near Frogham in the 1940s, the work considers how complex & interwoven power relations, kinships and histories are embodied within the soil and the sedges.
Shot on standard 8mm film, HOLME documents a lone figure in the forest constructing a geodesic dome, which is subsequently obscured by fern fronds. At once emerging and concealed, the structure is analogous to other domed forms that have populated the forest – ancient earthworks, charcoal piles, brick kilns, bee skeps, benders & hollow concave scars, carved into the earth, from mid-20th century military bombing across Ashley Heath.
(Supported by ‘Time, Space, Money Bursary’ from a-n (2022) & Arts University Bournemouth)
Beyond The Woods
2023
4K Video
2’42’’
Maud Haya-Baviera
Made during a Heavy Water Artist residency at G39, Wales, Beyond The Woods pits gravity against levity, through the subtle appropriation of archival images and letters written by soldiers, to explore conflicts and their long-lasting emotional impact. Drawing on letters found in the archives of the Special Collections at Cardiff University and written by returning soldiers from the First World War, Haya-Baviera has made sensitive edits to reveal the universality embedded in the writing. These edited letters, narrated by an actor transcend time and place and speak to shared experiences of historic and contemporary war. Placed in relation to postcard images also found in the collections at Cardiff University, the artist reflects on the question: ‘What would it mean to send such messages on a postcard?’.
Wish you were here
2020
4K Video
1’55’’
Maud Haya-Baviera
Comprising found images and Trip Advisor comments, Wish you were here instils a tantalising dose of escapism. An inviting voice reads messages written by travellers. Some of the messages are direct, factual, whilst others are more personal and intimate. Dazzling, colourful images appear on screen, accompanying the spoken messages. The colours of the images, edited by the artist, draw viewers’ attention to the alluring exotic and desirable holiday locations. Made at a time when holidaying and long-distance travel were compromised by the pandemic, the work exposes the conventional tourist gaze and the relationship between tourism and colonialism.
Fertile Image
2023
Standard 8mm film transferred to digital with audio
7’18’’
Emily Hawes
Fertile Image is an unfinished and ongoing series of 8mm film works. Unfolding over years (perhaps even decades), left incomplete and in a state of emergence, the project seeks to engage slowly with sacred ancient sites across the UK.
The first iteration of the film features footage shot at Chanctonbury Ring (South Downs, Sussex) and Mên-an-Tol (West Penwith, Cornwall). Both sites are known for their distinctive spherical forms – the former a prehistoric hill fort and barrow, now identifiable by a ring of beech trees thought to be planted in the mid 18th Century. The latter consists of an upright, circular granite slab, just over one-metre-high, with a circular hole 46 cm in diameter. It is flanked by an upright stone at the North East and another at the South West. The holed stone is believed to be an eroded-through solution basin from a local tor stack. Commonly known as a ‘hag-stones’, ‘witch-stones’ and less frequently, ‘adder stones’, such sites are associated with protective/ healing powers, sorcery and witchcraft, fertility rituals, occult practices and even customs such as contractual hand-shakes.
Shot on Standard black and white 8mm film and transferred to digital, the footage is split into RGB channels and superimposed to create a mirage-like image, which directly references Ithell Colquhoun’s 1942 painting Sunset Birth.
Made possible by a ‘Time, Space, Money Bursary’ from a-n (2022)