Trelissick

Emma Febrve-Richards

‘Trelissick’ is a timebased work within the series ‘Patterned Ground’ that highlights the collaborative research of artist Emma Febvre-Richards and neuroscientist Nicola Starkey. Engaging with 21st Century technologies of printmaking, to make explicit the common cognitive and visual processes that connect humans to their environment.

By exploring her personal attachment to the New Zealand bush, Febvre-Richards began using the technologies of colour recording, watercolour photography, digital printing and laser to create the first stage of ‘Trelissick’. Isolating the foliage qualities of texture, colour, light filtration, patterning and visual layering in software programmes such as Photoshop® and Illustrator® to create a two layered, laser etched archival pigment ink jet print.

The ‘hard-copy’ creating the foundation of ‘Trelissick’, as it was by holding two layers at varying distances apart and rotating them under contrasting lighting conditions, that Febvre-Richards was able to observe the pulsing ever changing nature of visual fields produced. Connecting to neuroscientist Nicola Starkey research on how physicality combines with complex emotional stories to re-construct unique realities and experiences of place. Transferring the art works into After Effects® to create a visual exploration of how editing, filtering and layering images, mimic memory storage and recall in the brain. The multi-faceted and constantly changing nature of the artworks reflecting how information and experience link to unconscious cultural knowledge and emotional stories, directing the way we interact with and perceive the world.

The strength of this research and technology collaboration is that it allows both the analysis of the diverse complexities of emotional attachment to place while still retaining the natural holistic experience of the original inspiration, the journeying through the New Zealand bush. Providing the opportunity for reflection, and interpretation according to the dominant cerebral characteristics of the spectators themselves. Digital and multi-media platforms of print making acting as a catalyst to expose unconsciousness networks of creation and interactions with the world. 

Full length video 13.00 minutes (sample 06:10 - 07:10)

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