Artist in Residence Week 10 - Dafna Talmor

This week The Old Lookout became home, quite literally, to Dafna Talmor, with her exhibition See View. With the help of 2 lovely assistants Mick and Joe, for the first 5 days of the residency Dafna turned the space into a darkroom and camera obscura, designed to create an environment in which to both make new work, and demonstrate the camera obscura to visitors. This involved blacking the entire gallery out, making sure there were no light leaks at all, which by the sounds of it was not an easy task. After exposing on both positive and negative photographic paper, a series of work was made detailing different parts of the landscape viewed outside the window of The Old Lookout. These images were then presented in an exhibition format on the Wednesday, with a closing party that evening. I have to say that for me, this was one of the most unique exhibitions of the season, not least because of the several different uses of space: a studio, darkroom, camera obscura, exhibition space and, on a few occasions, a place to sleep.

The Camera Obscura and Darkroom

The Exhibition

During the time I spent down at the gallery, what really struck me was how, once people engaged withe ideas behind the camera obscura and the exhibition and spent time with the images, they really seemed to be interested and enthralled by them. I felt that this show in particular did need explaining to people when they came in, but once it was understood how the images were created the work did spark off conversation. Dafna and the team were all really good at getting across the exhibition's concept, which did help to get visitors more involved with the work. I also noted that if people were willing to spend 10 or 15 minutes getting their eyes used to the camera obscura, it was easy for the artists to get talking to them, making the whole exhibition more interactive and personal. This was particularly true for those who already understood the concept of pinhole photography. Dafna told me that she really enjoyed the process of interacting with members of the public and engaging in conversation about the work. I think this was evident in people's reactions to the camera obscura and images produced, along with the really good team dynamic between the 3 people working on the exhibition.
Dafna did mention to me some feedback that had been passed on to her by visitors to the gallery. Firstly, that for the most part, many people who are local to Thanet don't know that The Old Lookout is here. For visitors, the gallery is something that is easily stumbled upon, but it is many of the people who live in Broadstairs all year round that don't necessarily have us on their radar. This suggests that we might need to do some more marketing throughout the year to increase people's awareness of this artistic outlet in the town. Dafna had also been told that the poster and events list weren't particularly effective and could do with updating. She mentioned that it could just be that the design of the graphics doesn't reflect the nature of the gallery itself, so the two things don't quite match up. In terms of the space, I appreciate that for the team this wasn't the easiest space to work in, but I also think that the work that came out of the exhibition was all the stronger and more genuinely interesting for this fact.
Other than this feedback, Dafna noted that she was really happy with how the week had gone. She said that she relished the limitations of the small space and the challenges of making enough new work under time pressure. Her projects normally take years to come to a close, so creating a whole new project in under a week was something completely different. She suggested that not being too precious about the process of making work, and also the possibility of failure was interesting, and allowed a new and unusual approach to be brought to the work. In terms of The Old Lookout, the fact that we allow the artists to use the space in whatever way they would like really gave the team creative freedom to give the gallery so many different uses. I think this is definitely something that should be encouraging for artists, and should remain a key factor in the running of the space. I feel that the rustic, informal nature of the exhibition space is unique, and allows so many different installations and exhibitions to be able to flourish. For me, this exhibition was a perfect example of how The Old Lookout can be completely changed for a week, with new, unique and interesting work being produced.