Solar Cinema The Seminar Wednesday 25 April 2007, 3.15-6pm     Guest speakers: Alison Green, art historian and writer Martin Newth, artist Jason Oddy, photographer and writer Paul Tebbs, writer, senior lecturer in photography Martin Holman (chair), writer, critic and director Art Works in Wimbledon     Venue: William Morris House, 267 The Broadway, Wimbledon, London SW19 1SD   Documentation of the event including précis of the presentations will appear in the autumn. For further information, please contact Art Works in Wimbledon   The seminar in Wimbledon on 25 April explored ideas behind Martin Newth’s methods as demonstrated in Solar Cinema. The project raises some philosophical and historical questions that go beyond the practice of photography today and reverberate around contemporary image making. As Paul Tebbs, writer and senior lecturer in photography at Camberwell College of Arts, pointed out, the nature of the imagery produced provides a contemporary illustration of a concept proposed by Hegel that questioned our assumption that artworks are visually continuous with the world we inhabit. Examining the relationship of viewers inside the tent with the people – especially family members – outside projected inside in real time by the lens, Paul suggested, exposed these images as indifferent to the consumer, to be looked at but not looked back by.    In some respects, Solar Cinema is an artwork closer to nature than to art, revealing slippage in expectations of time, place, colour and much else. It relies on the historical position of the camera obscura as a device that helped to redefine the relationship between the observer and the world. The writer and art historian Alison Green looked into the early implications of imagery derived from this instrument for the spectator. On the one hand there were its functions as entertainment; on the other there were its uses as a drawing tool in the drive towards greater realism. None the less, discourse from the Renaissance onwards was primarily based upon its role in science rather than aesthetics. It contributed to the primacy that visual perception attained over the other senses largely through the conversion it facilitated of a person into an observer, able to withdraw from the world and contemplate imagery.    The notion of a recorded image arresting time was considered by writer and artist Jason Oddy who related his own work in photography with Martin’s images to reveal convergences and contrasts in practice. Jason’s photographs consider perception on the edge between representation and an abstract aesthetic as an emblem of time and harmony with liminal implications. An aspect of photography that has occupied him in a recent series is the medium’s status in the human struggle with the inevitability of death and the suspension in eternity of a cherished moment. Martin Newth provided the foundation for these presentations with an overview of Solar Cinema from the technical standpoint and the perspective of visitors registered on film in the second and third weekends.    The seminar was introduced by Martin Holman who also chaired the discussion.     An Art Works in Wimbledon project in association with Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts, London
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