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Archive
A woman’s skeleton lies at the bottom of a deep ocean. There she waits for the time when she will be hooked and pulled to the surface, regain flesh and be brought back to life… A haunting piece that combines Birch’s choreography with O’Shea’s visual imagery and a commissioned score by composer Malcolm Walmsley.
Inscape was created for the theatre and was performed at the Riley Theatre,
Leeds; The Place, London; Yorkshire Dance, Leeds; Ralph Thorsby Community Theatre,
Leeds; Newcastle College Concert Hall, Newcastle upon Tyne; Bodmin Community
College. The performers involved in this project were Gill Lavelle, Debbi Purtill,
Lee Powell and Helen Thomas.
Territory 1 (1999)
Birch & O’Shea collaborated with filmmaker Sue Cooper, writer Andy Weaver and dancer Andy Turner. Territory 1 brought together visual art exhibits and film that created an installation to challenge convention by ‘repackaging’ the human body. Territory 1 portrayed the body contained and restricted. Large printed images depicted the body fragmented, manipulated and held. Set in Perspex and placed on a light-box, close-up images of the body were layered with written words, revealing the often hidden territory of flesh and emotion. Wall-mounted mirror-backed boxes contained subtly coloured transparencies depicting suspended sections of body. The film within the installation explored the internal struggle, the desire to escape oneself in order to avoid emotional and physical pain. The film showed the human yearning for transcendence, the longing to escape earthly constraints. The film showed the vulnerable, stripped body in degraded environments and against hard, cold surfaces. Heard periodically as part of the exhibition Andy Weaver’s poem The Fourth Horseman took an apocalyptic look at humanity. His clever juxtaposing of person, place and event, and his playful use of language invited one to examine the human condition. The poet in this instance was the observer and the messenger, the figure of courage that both informed and challenged the listener with his observations of the world. This work was exhibited at Falmouth College of Art (Cornwall), Indian King Arts Centre (Cornwall), The Newlyn Art Gallery (Cornwall) and The Workstation (Sheffield).
The Interior (2002) The creative process required us to assess our past work, make sense of the time of separation we had endured and start to establish how we were going to move on creatively, in essence examining time – past, present and future. The films are therefore symbolic of a rite of passage. We investigated the idea of internal space, the rooms we escape to within
our imagination, the rooms within us that we keep locked to contain memories
or emotion. The first film looks to our past and draws upon footage from Territory
2. The second film depicts us separately visiting a room and scrawling messages
on the walls that are left for each other. The third film is symbolic of a
journey, an optimistic statement of moving on - blue sky and clouds, trees
and reflected buildings stream past.
Commissions The Bude Light Project 2000 The Bude Light is a public sculpture designed by Carole Vincent and Anthony
Fanshawe. This large-scale sculpture was the first to use coloured concrete
and fibre optic lighting and was created to mark the millennium in Bude and
celebrate the inventions of Sir Goldsworthy Gurney. Parterre (1999)
Human Rites was commissioned by The Northern School of Contemporary dance
and was a response to the ideas within Territory 1. We started with a structured
lighting design to create squares of light that mirrored the way visual images
were presented in Territory 1. The piece reflected the nature of Territory
1, ideas of restraint, of being boxed, of being contained and from this, and
the viewing of Territory 1 exhibits, the dancers responded and created movement. This is the Interior (2002)
We look for and to the past and through our search the past seeks us… Territory 2 combines film, movement and art exhibits. It grew out of our research into aspects of our personal ancestry. We visited the places once occupied by our ancestors and employed the resonance of artefact, keepsake and place to make a connection with our pasts. Territory 2 weaves together our responses to our personal ancestry, forming
a powerfully autobiographical work. We discovered that ritual and ceremony are
not only used to celebrate, reassure and bind family but also can be used as
a means of veiling and appeasing. Universal themes of loss, bereavement, heritage
and mystery resonate throughout this deep and multi-layered installation. Throughout
the creative process we drew upon our skills and experience within Territory 2 comprises 4 floor sculptures, 2 films (for either monitor or projection) and 6 framed wall pieces. Territory 2 has previously been exhibited at the Newlyn Gallery and at the Workstation in Sheffield. If you are interested in booking Territory 2 you will find our contact details by clicking Contact Us.
Birch & O’Shea filmed the movement artists as they explored and responded to the confines of the room. Dialogue and observation was integral to the creation of the piece as Birch & O’Shea ‘collected’ sound and movement. Birch & O’Shea edited the footage in response to the ideas that had been explored and developed whilst in the room. The resulting two films appear on a split screen to form a ‘duet’. DVD duration 11mins 42 secs. Can be projected or shown on a monitor. Residue is currently available for inclusion in exhibitions and art/dance/film festivals. If you are interested in showing Residue you will find our contact details by clicking Contact Us. |
Inscape (1998)
The dancers
move through and become part of huge projected images and with ghostly fluidity
boundaries between the visual art and the movement are blurred. INSCAPE subtly
alters the performance space by the careful interaction of movement, sound,
visual imagery and shifting light.
The exploration of the body as terrain- both physical and emotional territory.
The body as vessel, as carrier.
The
interior is a trilogy of short films that portray past, present and future and
is symbolic of a rite of passage.
Parterre was commissioned by The Northern School of Contemporary Dance.
We observed and were intrigued by how people interacted in parks. This work
explored
the paradox of the public space as a place to be intimate, to be private, to
love, talk, dream, walk, sit and grieve. It incorporated projected images developed
from visual pieces generated by the dancers themselves. The images created
the environment in which the action took place. 
Human
Rites (2000)
Commissioned
by the Northern school of Contemporary Dance. This piece was a response to Territory
2 with the film Interior as an element. The dancers were asked to recall memories
and as a result created visual and
written responses that were then used as a resource for generating movement.
The students were asked to investigate the idea of internal space (that of
memory, emotion and imagination).
Territory 2
visual art
and choreography and therefore this work symbolises the conjunction of two creative
minds.