I was invited to work with Cotham school where a project had been devised to create a portrait of the school and its activities through photography and poetry. English students worked with visiting writer Fiona Hamilton to create poems and I worked with photography students to Continue reading
Author Archives: Liz Milner
Cotham School, part 2 – residency
As part of my time at Cotham School I also generated my own response to this singular 1930s building with its distinctive features such as ‘blind’ windows, frosted glass, contrasting colour themes – strong hues along with bland creams and greens – and Continue reading
4. Dislocating The Woods
Out of the Wired Woods research project with HP Labs came a further expansion of The Woods project when a few of the images, at reduced scale and in rollable format were taken to a wearable computing conference in Seattle in 2003. Here the relatively new wireless technology developed during the Wired Woods project was demonstrated to useful effect; I didn’t see the installation in Seattle but above is the model I made to show how the layout could be and below is a photo I was sent of what it actually looked like in situ… Continue reading
‘Bridge’
“LAND2 is a national network of artist / lecturers and research students with an interest in landscape / place-oriented art practice”. In 2003 I was a visiting lecturer in photography at the University of the West of England and was invited to become a member of LAND2, which was based at UWE. I took part in the Bridges postcard project in 2003 and produced this montage image of a landmark bridge in my home territory – the Avonmouth Bridge that carries the M5 across the Avon.
The project (see description from LAND2 website below) involved two people producing a pair of postcards on the theme of the word bridge. Continue reading
‘Water on the doorstep’
In May 2003 North Somerset held its first Arts trail, organised by volunteers and enthusiastically supported by both contributing artists and visitors. Continue reading
3. The Woods – transformations
One of the trees I photographed the most often in these woods, its curved trunk leaning gently above the path had such grace; I loved this path and the tree, but it was felled in 2002, just after my year-long project. The story follows.
The ‘ghost’ of my favourite beech tree, after felling.
This is a sequel to the first post about the The Woods project – ‘The Woods – a Year and a Day‘. It’s a sad story but with a richly rewarding outcome. It’s told here through the pages of a photo book that hasn’t yet got as far as a finished, physical object…(update – it does now exist as a small pamphlet)
Continue reading
2. The Wired Woods – an adventure in interactivity
In 2002 the Woods project began one of several stages of evolution when part of the original exhibition provided the basis for a collaborative research project with HP Labs in Bristol. This was to explore how computer technologies could be applied to deliver different, and augmented forms of experience for users that could be applied within, for example, museum settings.
I was invited to work with the team at HP labs along with musician Armin Elsaesser to Continue reading
1. ‘The Woods – a Year and a Day’
This is the largest project I’ve ever done and one that still has a life. There’ll be further posts on other aspects of this project and on recent developments, but this is a record of the process that began with a commitment, to myself, to photograph a particular woodland that hugs the banks of 2 streams near my home, over the course of a year, from 1st January 1999, but eventually included 1st January 2000, hence the title.
The exhibition of The Woods – a Year and a Day, at Ashton Court Visitor Centre, Bristol 2001
‘Dreamhouses’
Dreamhouses was a project and exhibition with Ship of Fools – an artists’ group I belonged to during the mid 1990s which played an important part in developing my ideas and creative confidence. This show was a digital exploration of some ancient themes and stories with a contemporary interpretation, on the way to becoming a game, which was never quite completed – vast amounts of content developed for it may still lurking in the bottom of our old hard drives!
The work was exhibited at the f-stop media station in Bath in 1998.
I created an installation for the show called Eurydice & Orpheus using printed and projected still images, video, a surveillance camera, a periscope, mirrors and a laser serpent.
Women’s Photography Group projects
Falling bodies poster for buses in Bristol 1994
For several years in the early 1990s I was a member of the Bristol Women’s photography group which developed out of a course run at Watershed in 1987 called Women’s Exhibition Photography run by Nancy Honey.
This course gave me the opportunity to explore a completely new direction in what I was doing with photography and resulted in a group exhibition with the other participants at Continue reading
Liz Milner 