Opening Event at Artmazia, Massy, France

Pays de Bray panorama during a misty morning, June 2009

Just come back from a weekend jaunt to Massy in the Pays de Bray, Normandy, France to attend the opening event of the Labyrinth group exhibition where my piece Honey For The Mistress Of the Labyrinth is showing until the end of October 2009. It was a long voyage, ten hours each way and 900 miles in total but it was worth it. I've had work featured in international shows before: New York, Finland, Sweden: but I've never been able to travel to go see it. Normandy was close enough to give it a try, and happily my partner was willing to drive.

It was definitely worth it. Artmazia is situated in a beautiful part of France, and owned and run by Englishman Geoff Troll who made us both feel very welcome. Consisting of two large exhibition spaces and a four hectare plot of land, Artmazia is a sight to behold - there are sculptures of all kinds dotted around the gardens along with a maze a stone circle and a viewpoint. Some of the sculptures you have to properly hunt around for and are often situated in quite intimate spaces within the gardens.

Geoff seemed quite pleased to have some English artists present at the opening: here he is giving a short speech to welcome everyone to the vernissage (opening event) and to thank the artists for coming. He gave a special mention to my work, which he said reminded him of Aboriginal Art which was a thrill for me to hear - Geoff has a huge collection of Aboriginal Art and in a few spare moments he showed me some of the smaller pieces. Really beautiful, eye-opening stuff. As always in France, the event included a lot of food and drink, and I can definitely recommend both the local Neufchatel cheese and the Normandy cider!

Here's me grinning in front of my work. It was very fulfilling to see it, and it had been hung very well: I was a bit worried since 15 square-foot panels can't have been easy to hang, but they did a fine job.

In the morning, we went for another walk around the gardens and found the stone circle (my partner pictured). I also captured the misty Normandy morning in the panorama at the top of this post. Pictured above, too, is the cottage we stayed the night in (again on the Artmazia land) all wooden and beautifully rustic.

All in all, a fantastic trip and wish it could have been longer than a single weekend. If you're ever in Normandy or the Pays de Bray, Massy and Artmazia are definitely worth a visit and I'm hoping that either this autumn or next spring we'll be able to go back for a much longer stay...

Human Download

Human Download - A short art film
Now showing at Holy Trinity Church, Boar Lane, Leeds
as part of the ArtsMix* sponsored BORN exhibition

An approximately 8-minute film which expands upon my recent digital piece ‘And You Cannot Know Me By My Flesh Alone’ (pictured below), seeking to use a succession of rapidly changing images of drawings, photographs and excerpts from the digital piece to define and explore the totality of human experience in the shortest amount of time. Each image is suffused with red, suggestive of the colour of blood which is sometimes seen as the essence of humanity.

Over 500 images have been produced for this film as well as several animations and these proceed rapidly enough (still images change every 0.9 seconds) that the film is to a certain extent perceived more unconsciously than consciously. My first foray into short films, and an attempt to bring the genres of visionary drawing and moving image together.

Limited edition DVDs are on sale at the exhibition until June 19th, after which they will be available through my website. I will try to upload an excerpt of the film on here when I can…

Coming Up - Modern Palaeolithic

'The Mind In the Cave'
42cm x 59cm : Inks & markers on card
Modern Palaeolithic - An Exhibition by Bruce Rimell
Leeds College of Art & Design, Nov-Dec 2009

Modern Palaeolithic is an ongoing series of works which springs from a long-standing personal interest in Palaeolithic imagery and draws upon insights into the archetypal hunter-gatherer mode of life which forms the majority time-period of human evolution. This series is to be exhibited at Leeds College of Art & Design, Leeds, UK, throughout the months of November and December 2009.

Drawing from archaeological data, the findings of specialists such as Lewis-Williams and Henshilwood, and from personal visits to Palaeolithic sites such as Altamira, Ekain and Creswell Crags, this exhibition explores the experiential, mythical and cosmogonical motifs thought to have been understood by the cultures of the Upper Palaeolithic from the Atlantic coast of Western Europe to Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia. The work in this project is intended to evoke an ancient sense of the hunter gatherer in the mind of the modern viewer, seeking to resonate with an evocative remembrance through a body of work in a variety of media, aiming not so much to stimulate discussion but to bring about a quiet commemoration of what has passed and to make a connection with the earliest human expressions.