Amy Pickles was one of the commissioned artists. She created a piece title "Measuring A Great". She wrote a narrative, created customes and worked with three dancers to explore the relationship between three viewpoints in Nottingham; Nottingham Castle, St Mary's Church and the Council House. Each dancer took on the role of one of these places whilst a narrator read the accompanying text for the audience.
Measuring A Great from Amy Pickles on Vimeo.
Amy Pickles kindly agreed to run a session with Illuminate to explore narratives within the paintings in the newly hung Long Gallery at Nottingham Castle and to give us a bit more of an insight into her practice.
She talked to us about the devising process for the piece "Measuring A Great", showed us the narrative and the created costumes.
For our piece of work we planned to construct a narrative and then use this to devise some movement.
We started by talked about constructed poems such as the game "Exquisite Corpse" and Amy gave us a formula to use to create a poem. Firstly we choose a painting within the Long Gallery and used it to write the first line of a poem. We thought about what was happening in the pictures, the title and feel of the piece as a starting point. Then, leaving one word visible, we folded our paper and passed it on to the next person.
For line two we choose a status update or tweet from social media, again, leaving one word showing, we folded and passed on..
For the final line Amy asked us to think of our favourite place to be and to write a line that evoked something about that place.
We unfolded our poems and read....
The Rainbow
A colourful bridge, stretching from the ground to the
Sky, taking a rocket trip to the moon
Delivering a workshop for the kids
That live there by themselves
A Still Life with Cherries
She lived a still life, mainly gazing out of the window and eating cherries
Some days I guess my impression of Bill Clinton
Is so good, that the newspaper
Imagined rummaging through boxes to find the perfect coat
Mary Queen of Scots
I’m about to loose my head, the floor will
Match my dress, large parts of
It has big strong walls that protect
Against war
The Rainbow
The rainbow shines down
Illuminating a new hidden cave under Nottingham
Containing Gold loaves of bread that smell like you’re at home
Men of Straw
Barns of brick and men of straw
Who is he? And why is he standing in front
Of that house? Felt warm and inviting,
But I worried about spilling my coffee at breakfast
A Still Life with Cherries
I was drawing a still life with cherries, but you ate
Them horrible, horrible dreams
Which makes them dance around, laugh and
Fall Over
Equestrian Portrait of John Musters with his favourite horse and hound ‘Monarch’
The regal John Musters had a favourite and noble horse and
A favourite night out guaranteed and the best
Start to read books and write note after note, surrounded
By colour, comfort and people
Our next task was to create movement for each poem. Amy suggested we use hand gestures as they are often used to evoke meaning. We talked about different gestures and then started to work on linking them to our poems. We then filmed our gestures in front of our original chosen Painting.
It took a little bit of figuring out to keep our hands in frame, but we ended up with a selection of short films and narratives
All Hands Together from Illuminate on Vimeo.
We also had a go at a couple of group pieces, combining all our poems and gestures together.
All Hands with trees from Illuminate on Vimeo.
The session gave us a really interesting approach for looking at the Museum Collection and a very different way of working for us. We enjoyed the chance to work with an artist and learn more about her practice.