Merry Christmas from unravel

See you in the new year!

R.I.P. Brian Stewart, Director of Falmouth Art Gallery

Incredibly sad to hear the shocking news that the wonderful Brian Stewart of Falmouth Art Gallery has passed away. Brian was incredibly generous to us at our date with the Cornwall Film Festival at the Falmouth Art Gallery in November and it is with great sadness today that we heard of his untimely death.

We only met him that one day but genuinely feel a sense of loss, something that must only be felt tenfold throughout Falmouth, Cornwall and the UK's artistic community.

We were so impressed by the gallery and Brian's curatorial attitude towards keeping it as accessible and open to all without reducing the integrity or quality of the artworks - and felt the genuine pride he had for the gallery and its award winning status. Did I mention he even surprised us by making multiple packets of popcorn for everyone at the screening! 

The UK has lost a wonderful and inspiring man who we were lucky enough to engage with and be energised by his enthusiasm for our project.

Our thoughts go out to Brian's friends and family and wish them all the best possible christmas and new year.
Brian's obituary in the Guardian newspaper is here.

Wednesday 15th December at the University of Huddersfield

This was a great day to end our 2010 schedule with. Rob Lycett, senior tutor in the Digital Media Design  had already attended a few of our workshops asked us to come in and work with students as well as meet a few people during their open day.

The workshop was run by Chris and Jo and we had some very dedicated  participants who made nearly over 600 feets worth of film during the day. After forgetting one of our spilt reels to spool the film on to Jo made one out of cardboard! Total D.I.Y skills!

 It was a pleasure to meet staff and students from a wide spectrum of disciplines across the school of art. architecture and design and we hope to be able to return in the Spring term.

As well as meeting some old friends who came to visit we made some great new ones and are thrilled to have this mini-documentary of the day made by current second year student James Dyer.
James - it was pleasure to meet you and many thanks for this!


Unravel Film from James Dyer on Vimeo.

Monday 6th of December at Camberwell College of Arts

We were asked to come and work with MA students at Camberwell College of Arts as part of a series of talks organised by our friend Joana Monteiro.

We were excited to work with the students especially as an occupation of the lecture theatre occurred as a protest against the rise in tutiton fees proposed by the coalition government took place.

The results were suitably studious and we very much enjoyed our day, discussing the project and the logistical planning involved, as well as why we think it is a relevant tool to communicating and integrating with communities across Britain. Thanks Camberwell!

Saturday 4th of December at CINE CITY Brighton Film Festival

We ran a workshop at the Brighton and Hove Museum for CINE CITY, Brighton Film Festival.

This was the first weekend of the heavy snow in the UK and getting the train to Brighton from London was long and busy but was definitely worth it.

We were met with a steady flow of people throughout the day despite the weather, including a very dedicated attendee, Margaret Sharrow who had driven over from Aberystwyth especially! Margaret's blog of her day can be found here with a video of the end results too. 

It was great to be in the heart of Brighton for the day - just opposite the magnificent Royal Pavilion and we later got to check out the Duke of York Cinema - a fantastic old Picturehouse in the city centre.

We were especially pleased to be in the museum just as an exhibition dedicated to the exploration of colour in film opened, with Len Lye's  A Colour Box on display with a great description by the Daily Herald as pictured above. 

It was great to be back in Brighton after filming there in the summer and it was a pleasure to meet so many great people.

Friday 3rd December at Deutsche Bank Head Quarters

This was a great one for us - the Deutsche Bank Head Quarters in the City of London! The Deutsche Bank obviously have been a huge support since our prize-giving for the award from them at the Saatchi Gallery back in June. It was a total pleasure to do a workshop in their head quarters which was organised by Alex Crouch and our mentor Nicholas Muir and despite the snow holding many people back it was a pleasure to meet everyone who came and took part.

We were amazed to be holding the workshop in a huge room filled with original works by Patrick Caulfield. The Deutsche Bank hold one of the biggest private collections of original art and we spotted works by Hockney, Kapoor, Rego, Polke, Hirst and so many more just in the few rooms we went in to. It was great to hold a workshop within a workplace and the workshop was well advertised so people from all sorts of departments from investment bankers to IT workers and PAs came to lend their hand to the giant doodle we are so privileged to be creating. Thanks DBHQ!

Thursday 2nd of December at no.w.here

Our day with no.w.here was one we looked forward to for a while. We'd long known of no.w.here who are a collective that includes the artists Karen Mirza and Brad Butler and who run a ceasless series of workshops, guest lecture series and artists' film events from their base in Bethnal Green, London. It was an honour and privelige for us to be bringing Unravel to the lab and, despite serious weather conditions with heavy snow keeping a lot of people away we met a steady flow of participants, many of whom had developed their own sophisticated techniques in dealing with the materiality of film ,and who donated some of their own work to the project. We were hosted by no.w.here's James Holcombe who was a total pleasure to be in the company of for several hours and we probably learnt more that day than anyone else! 

In a very direct way Unravel has been influenced by the activities of no.w.here through the participation of them running a introductory course to super-8 at Leeds Evolution festival in early 2006 which was responsible for the formation of EXP24, the Leeds based film collective that included Mark, Jo and Chris. Thanks so much to everyone who made it down, braved the cold, and added to our project. A very special day for us! 

UPDATE - Just read a really interesting write up of the project on http://thinkingpractices.wordpress.com/ and the day by Alexa from the thinking practices research group at Westminster University. Alexa is pictured in the centre of the photgraph above and actually introduced us to her technique of using marbling inks which created the beautiful results on the picture above. Many thanks Alexa, hope to see you soon! 

Royal College of Art on Wednesday 1st December

It was a pleasure to be asked to hold a workshop at Royal College of Art during the Communication Art and Design Work in Progress Exhibition. Taking a slot in one of Department 21's interdisciplinary sessions we were joined by staff and students from across the college to create a very quick film followed by a discussion about the project so far. It was great to go back to where this all started and see old friends and was a reminder as to just how far we have travelled since the project started.