If Figureground was a structure, what would it look like?

 jack

 jack

Jo

katy

One of the projects from the weekend was for each individual member of Figureground to draw the structure that represented what Figureground meant to each of us. The following two are from Katy and Jack, with more to come from out other members.

Fermynwoods

 two shelters taken from the third shelter around a fire pit

 scenes from around the cottage

 one of the views from the cottage

 one of the shelters around the fire pit

 jo demonstrates the size of the shelter

the road into Fermywood towards the cottages

Hannah Hull

Hannah Hull collaborated with some of the men who worked on the ship instead of working with other artists to create some beautiful knotwork. She writes of her experience on LV21.

"I was most struck by how people continue to interact with a ship that is severed from its original primary function; the decommissioned ship as a ghost, a palimpsest. This sense is accentuated by how the ship was literally dehumanised when the ship became unmanned, with hand bells, etc, becoming obsolete and thus removed. 

Yet it continues to operate as a platform for activity - and even exact work - associated with its original function. This was evident in the the artists' responses to some extent, but most obvious in the interactions of Colin the Morse code expert, the former marine and Bob the ex-mariner. They are using the boat as a platform for enacting secondary activities associated with the ships now-redundant primary function: maintenance, time passing activities, communication and so on. 

I became particularly aware of this when Bob was working on some 'functional' rope work for the ship which he intimated would have had an extra turn in it had the ship not have been permanently moored. Effectively those working knots had become purely decorative - no different from the framed 'fancy rope work' he produces, which also would not exist without his knowledge of working knots.

In a sense, the re-enactment of the working knowledge of those ex-sea men conceptualises it with or without our presence, and could be positioned as now purely within the creative or imaginative realm."