Art Works in
Martin Newth
Solar Cinema
A project in Cannizaro Park > November 2006 to
November 2007
I
n the autumn Martin Newth’s year-long commission transferred to the town centre. Cannizaro Park Wimbledon ’s essential condition since the arrival of the railway midway through the nineteenth century.
Installing in New Wimbledon Theatre parkland images derived from the screen of the camera obscura provided a theatrical setting for a dimension implicit in Solar Cinema. To view images in the park, visitors entered a dark interior and saw an illuminated screen bearing a version of reality. The theatrical experience was, of course, the forerunner of cinema both in defining the conditions in which the spectacle was presented but also in its suspension of authenticity for invented and mediated narratives. More significantly, positioning large, A0-sized prints on the staircase from stalls to circle reinforced the element of surprise that accompanied their original exposure. Just as park visitors were stopped in their tracks by the appearance of the image-making device in their path through Cannizaro Park
How images are presented contributes to their popular reception; placed beyond their conventional habitats (in galleries, auditoria, books or albums) creates a new level of enquiry. Drawn into the image in this way affects its consumption by the viewer, setting it apart from habitual and learned reactions. The viewer actually looks, and sets in train mental ‘slowing down’ and ‘taking in’. The image then stands a chance of being itself, an optical and intellectual conundrum, a sequence of scientific, perceptive, philosophical and aesthetic propositions.
A step further was taken by projecting from 241 The Broadway Martin’s film of park visitors’ reactions to the camera obscura images. Viewed from the street outside like a piece of cinema, the film silently constructed its own narrative of encounters, speculations, engagements and dismissals.
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> Solar Cinema calendar
> About Solar Cinema
> About Martin Newth
> How to view Solar Cinema
Free Solar Cinema weekends
The camera obscura will be in the park on these dates only:
25 & 26 November
17 & 18 February
7 & 8 April
28 May (Bank Holiday Monday)
28 & 29 July*
* Dates to be confirmed
Other Solar Cinema programmes*
November to March: Collaboration with A level art students at Wimbledon College
Early March: Seminar
February & April: artist’s talks
July: Exhibition
* Dates to be confirmed
Free Solar Cinema weekends
The camera obscura will be in the park on these dates only:
25 & 26 November
17 & 18 February
7 & 8 April
28 May (Bank Holiday Monday)
28 & 29 July*
* Dates to be confirmed
Why does this picture look like this? Because that is how the eye makes pictures And that is how visitors will see Cannizaro Park through the eye of Solar Cinema. Using a dark room and a lens, images will be projected with natural light on to a screen, inverted by the science of the lens. Instead of familiar paths, plants and features, we will see shape, colour and arrangement. And brighter colours. Rather than looking at what we expect to see, we can see the familiar anew
About Solar Cinema
Solar Cinema is the fourth in an innovative series of temporary commissions by artists, called Art in the Park. Previous projects were by Floor Kent (2000), Keith Wilson (2003), Jon Griffiths (2004).
Solar Cinema is at once a project about
The paraphernalia of leisure now popularly include photography, the snap-shot, the recorded memory; science is based upon examination, on looking
for what is not at first seen and, having seen it, seeing more fully from that moment. The lens is also an instrument of science - it allows us to see more critically, to investigate and to discover. This project will turn the lens on each of the four seasons.
Photography, hailed on its invention as a science that rendered painting dead as a tool for recording reality, is the essential accompaniment to investigation. But does the form still have relevance? Has its ubiquity and popularity rendered it pointless? And does photography suppress our critical awareness? Solar Cinema will look at these propositions.
This project will go about the task of looking at how we see in a way that underlines the park’s twin functions. It will use a tent-like “camera obscura” as the basis for its investigation, creating views of the park as the park is not often viewed. These structures were once a common sight at pleasure places before the era of cinema, and a source of popular entertainment.
Solar Cinema looks at the process of photography rather than its paper-supported product. Images will be made and will form a small exhibition, but they will not be conventional views. For each season the camera obscura will be open to the public, including two bank holidays. Flowing from the display will be opportunities to look, talk, discuss and debate issues, to take photography back to its “pinhole” origins, and to raise interesting questions about things we take for granted. A seminar will tackle the philosophical aspect of the project.
The centrepiece of Solar Cinema will be a camera obscura - Latin for 'dark room'. It will take the form of a marquee-style tent, measuring 9m x 3m (footprint) x 2m (height). The tent will be installed at weekends only, and being portable, it can be moved to different locations during the duration of the project.
And being a camera, as we understand the phrase nowadays, it will project a live action, moving projection on to the screen, viewed either from behind or in front. Instead of ‘freezing’ the image within the tent, like a conventional camera does to take photographs or a sequence of stills, the projection ‘frames’ that part of the park with the screen. The different type of looking that it facilitates can be both an experience of the moment and an experience captured.
Famously used by painters such as Vermeer and Canaletto to depict the world with a reality previously not seen, the camera obscura demonstrates how a camera works – light passing through a lens on to a sensitive surface. It also illustrates the way the eye sees – projecting light particles through the pupil on to the retina. Artists used the device to draw views (mostly of towns) with greater realism than art has so far achieved - that is, to deepen the illusion. That's ironic, because the camera later became the instrument to supplant illusion and capture the material reality of what the eye saw.
What people saw in the camera obscura often surprised them. Light clarified structures they have known for years, and colours somehow became deeper and sharper. Many viewers literally saw their homes in a completely new light. And Solar Cinema will offer the same surprise to Cannizaro Park visitors.
Taking place between November and June, Solar Cinema will offer new views of the park through its natural cycle from autumn to summer, through periods of growth and stunning colours.
An Art Works in Wimbledon commission supported by Arts Council
Traders Antiques
Marcus Beale Architects Ltd
Elliott Wood Partnership
New Wimbledon Theatre
and other special donations
About Martin Newth
Martin Newth (b.
Martin’s recent projects have included a series of photographs of London Underground escalators at rush hour. The hour-long exposure during a tube station’s busiest period had the effect of reducing the movement of thousands of passengers into a feint blur while registering the static architecture with solid permanence. As a result, the congested concourse appeared empty, the inversion of reality and of our expectations.
Martin’s approach is informed by a concern for the process of photography as well as its product. His projects have begun to take the form of installations in public locations that show how photography works. By harking back to early photographic techniques and the era of its discovery he raises questions about the aesthetics of the medium in the new century.
Martin received his
Martin lives and works in west
Supplied by Solar Cinema
9 free display days, November 2006 to July 2007
9-month documentary exhibition in the park
1 Free Artist’s talk
1 Free public seminar
5 A-level workshops
Schools visit to artists’ studios, Camberwell College of Arts and South London Gallery
1 Exhibition at New Wimbledon Theatre
1 Street film screening
1 Book launch
1 All colour 36-page book
5 Lensrecap project newsletters
Collaborations with Merton Council, University of the Arts,
Support for new visual art in Merton from the National Lottery through Arts Council England
Above all, a commission to a practising artist to create a new work
For more information about Cannizaro Park, visit the Friends of Cannizaro Park at www.cannizaropark.org.uk