text by Mia Wen-Hsuan Liu
Please Blow Me Away to a Deserted Sky is a work I created with a deserted fan in the village gallery, five 1 minute video of Dufftown . The works was structured by projected images on the customized blade on the fan, creating reflected light similar to rainbow light, and shadows of the fan moving. It inspired me to create my next work, that is They Are Among Us, using an old slide projector, 30 slides of Dufftown, a mirror, various objects on the working table and shadows created by the reflections of shadow when the slide projector shed light on the objects. The two works create a microscopic overlapping scene of sleepwalker, through the use of sceneries, photography, mirror image, cutout drawings, installation, light and shadow, the artist residency experience come thru and back in memories and illusions.
When I first arrived at Dufftown, I scrubbed my eyes for a few times. I thought there were filters secretly added to my eyes. The color makes people calm. I didn’t yell crazily at the cows as I imagined, but in the contrary, I became calm and quiet. What I didn’t realize is, the excitement of being in a place in such high latitude and with 21 hours of daytime was followed by a series of pain and insomnia. Every midnight, the changing from day to night looked like aurora. That is the most interesting and enjoyable moments when I was artist in residence. Light then became the elements that I am most interested in when I was in Dufftown.
Here in Dufftown, 7 pm is the time when the sun reach the brightest moment. I always take the opportunity to have a walk and experience the feeling of sunlight shown directly onto my skin. I will bring various small black cutouts of little men that I made and my camera, following the path where the locals jog, walking aimlessly. Every time when I walk in the forest, what I enjoyed most is when I found some strange flowers and grass. I will then put the cutouts in various sizes onto the grass or flowers, as if they are bees or bugs, visiting the flowing grass with the help of breeze. Although the mechanical sound of the camera will interrupt the earth most of the time, like I am a shameless intruder. But I still truly hope to document the traces I left in Dufftown.
When I went to the naturally lit gallery space to prepare for my exhibition in September, what attracted me the most is the small storeroom behind. The dark space is a total and interesting contrast with the long daytime outside. I then decided to make a work in the closed space. When I started cleaning up the space, I came across a fan and became fascinated to it, fascinated to a fan existing in a place where the average temperature in summer is only 15 degree Celsius. I have always been interested to repetitively circulating round objects. Hence I started to modify the fan blade and experiment with reflecting man-made light with studio lighting.
Eventually, I decided to combine my documentation on Dufftown and the man-made reflected light I created with the fan in the storeroom. These are two very different elements, one proposing the beauty of man-made, the other proposing the beauty of nature, but separating them couldn’t fully express what I felt here. However, combining the shadow created from moving fan and reflected rainbow light from the modified blade, together with natural landscape of Dufftown, strangely reveal the outer and my inner self. I wish local visitors will feel what I, as a foreign artist, would like to convey through my work, a conflicting experience between the natural landscape when I was living in Dufftown and me as a foreigner.
Before I came to be the artist in residence, the world of whisky is very far away from me. For me it is a kind of alcohol that only professional wine buff can get contact with. As I can get easily drunk with only half glass of beer, it is hard to imagine that I will spend 3 months in the home of whisky, Dufftown. Eventually, with lacking of confidence and without any knowledge on whisky, I started my journey as an artist in resident in Dufftown.
The first time I started to know about whisky is when the curator Mr. Andy Fairgrieve gave me a handful of dried barley. He then boldly put the dried barley into his mouth and chewed, while explaining the process of making whisky with his strong Scottish accent. He explained to me the complex process, from pounding, fermenting to distilling. I am confused but was fascinated by the machineries that look like artwork. Those machineries were dancing and circulating like ballet dancers, beautiful and no mistakes are allowed. And then, in the dark wine cellar, the oak tubs with inscribed production years looked as if they are the mothers who were protecting their “golden children”. The longer they were together, they will become more and more dependant on each other, waiting for the perfect moment.
I looked up at the dim light shed through the crack of the ceiling in the wine cellar and think, if barley is an artwork gifted to human being from God, then whisky made from barley is a more perfect artwork. For most people, whisky is an art. And after I came to Glenfiddich and witness how the William Grants and Sons insist on turning the tools of making art into an artwork, only then I realized the true meaning of “The Spirit if a Pioneer”.
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