Maeve Brennan
Working in a documentary style, Brennan has mainly focused on the Middle Eastern history due to her connections and interest in investigating different cultures. I connect with this too as I have focused some of my practise on cultures like Japanese art and have used history like the world wars as subject matters for pieces. Brennan uses interviews as her style of videography and collects information over long periods of time, mainly working on one piece a year. Gaining a special bond with people and their homes.The main piece she explained was titled "Jerusalem Pink", which was inspired by the Great Grandfather's journals as he was an architect there. He worked on project that used Jerusalem's stone as a facade to give off the historical look of the rest of the city which was built fully out of their stone. Brennan was interested in how this effected the history politically and she wanted to understand his journals and life more. Heading over there to create a piece which involved four interviews from a geologist, carver and architects resembling her Grandfather's role. Using his journal shows all the thought and process gone into just one scene and relates to my own work as I like to use history, facts or deeper meanings to create a connection to my work rather than going with the flow and diving into it.
"The dome of the rock is alive, just like the man is alive", quoted from his journal, him referring to how it was fixed, Brennan saw this as a metaphor for a body being repaired and went to visit the dome of the mosque he was talking about. I believe it is important to visit these places that we make work about to understand it from another perspective, she also got to hear it's story from the locals and how much importance it has to them, taking hours, days and years to restore it to it's natural beauty. An art form of it's own. getting information off of these professionals she accessed data that she wouldn't of been able to find online. we also took this method when on a site visit at st George's where we asked some of the guides if they had any interesting facts and they had plenty that we hadn't found online. It's always best to find out from people with connections to the places.
In both her films she encountered incidental scenes that in the end gave it personality and a difference from just factual information. For example, in Jerusalem Pink the meeting of the geologists meant they could show off their collections to one another and share knowledge of their profession form two different lives. Random moments like when a temple guard's nephew went up to the camera to show a piece from the ruins, with a language barrier, he just smiled at it. these moments can relate to when I have accidents in my work or when somethings go wrong, but end up developing the piece.
Her work was interesting as I love documentaries, plus the topics she was exploring were new to me. However, I don't think her practise would work well with my own except for the research elements as mine is more physical rather than visual.
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