ON SCAPES
PHOTOGRAPHY & WORDS
– Amanda Shadforth
It was once noted by a wise man that, 'Just like the moon we go through phases’. Phases that attribute to growth, movement, the unknown, the far horizons.
Change is essentially everlasting, and without wavering we’re able to shift if we wish, to evolve and become a different version of what we thought we were, to something that we never thought we could be.
As things move and shift around us and we become pliable to adapting to change, we begin to notice the little things, the smaller things we took for granted. Breakfast at your favourite patisserie, a Sunday stroll through the art gallery, or a warm hug from a friend, all details that right now seem so far beyond our reach for the foreseeable future.
Change is essentially everlasting, and without wavering we’re able to shift if we wish, to evolve and become a different version of what we thought we were, to something that we never thought we could be. As things move and shift around us and we become pliable to adapting to change,
we begin to notice the little things, the smaller things we took for granted. Breakfast at your favourite patisserie, a Sunday stroll through the art gallery, or a warm hug from a friend, all details that right now seem so far beyond our reach for the foreseeable future.
Throughout all of this unexpected distance there comes a small amount of clarity that will grow as we overcome our obstacles. And sometimes adapting is an essential part of growth, as we discover parts of our creatively that would otherwise be left dormant in the scuffle of everyday normality.
I once had an art teacher that insisted I partake in an ambitious read titled ‘The Shock Of The New’. A hundred year history of modern art from cubism to the Avant-garde written by the formidable art historian Robert Hughes. I must admit it took me almost two months of concentrated reading to get through it, but one thing that I most notably learnt was that during times of trial and tribulation we see our most iconic periods of artistic evolution.
Last week was the final gap in freedom for me to visit an exhibition at the GOMA Museum, that I’d long wished to see, with the installation Riverbed by Olafur Eliasson being at the top of my list. An entire room laid before me filled with Icelandic volcanic rock with running water meandering through the centre of this incredible spectacle. Eliasson’s challenge and comment towards the process of inhibiting space, so fitting for the current mindset that we’re experiencing.
I once had an art teacher that insisted I partake in an ambitious read titled ‘The Shock Of The New’. A hundred year history of modern art from cubism to the Avant-garde written by the formidable art historian Robert Hughes. I must admit it took me almost two months of concentrated reading to get through it, but one thing that I most notably learnt was that during times of trial and tribulation we see our most iconic periods of artistic evolution.
Last week was the final gap in freedom for me to visit an exhibition at the GOMA Museum, that I’d long wished to see, with the installation Riverbed by Olafur Eliasson being at the top of my list. An entire room laid before me filled with Icelandic volcanic rock with running water meandering through the centre of this incredible spectacle. Eliasson’s challenge and comment towards the process of inhibiting space, so fitting for the current mindset that we’re experiencing.
I’d heard that although it’s summer here that the room can feel cold, and considering my mood, which balanced somewhere between a need for solace and console, I donned an oversized trench and trudged up the great pebbly hill into the void.
A silhouette coated in black (vegan friendly) leather armour, in not so hiking-worthy heels, taking on a moonscape to find optimism amongst uncertainty. And once I’d reached the top of the installation that’s just what I’d found, optimism in the challenge of making my way to the top, optimism in the form of a fab MATCHESFASHION Stella McCartney coat, and optimism in the future and knowing that change will lead to an unravelling flow of creativity. With positivity and solidarity we will evolve together.
