FORMAT International Photography festival, 2006, outline of Flying Through Amber:
Anne Marie Creamer and Andrew Grassie
"An elderly émigré (former child of the kinder-transport) longs to recall images of home. Unable to do so, he looks to his imagination - a hopeless fantasy, in pursuit of a sense of origin. Simultaneously, a woman describes seeing the beseeching ghost of an old man.
In the past the old man commissioned a painter named Andrew to make a painting, based on the memories of his parents' living room, which he had not seen since he was a very young child.
The painter is modeled on contemporary artist Andrew Grassie, who collaborated on this project and appears as a fictional character within the narrative. Grassie's painting, The Squat of Wolfe Lenkovitz, London 2004, is installed simultaneously as a 'real' and fictitious object.
Flying Through Amber subtly combines film and handdrawn images with an interwoven 'stream-ofconsciousness' narration from the old man and the observer. Creamer works to create a fluid journey through the city in order to explore the transience of memory and identity within a fragmented evocative fantasy. By transforming the original live footage through re-colouring and digitally over-painting she suggests a photographic yet painterly surface that produces images which are both familiar but strangely distant and out of reach
For Flying Through Amber Anne Marie was awarded the Evelyn Williams Drawing Fellowship at the University of the West of England in 2003-2004, and the Foundation and Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic, International-artist-in-residence award."
Flying Through Amber: the last wish of Vladimir Šlapeta
An animation, installation & a commissioned painting by Andrew Grassie
Animation: 12 minutes
2006
In 2004 an old man, Vladimir Šlapeta, wrote a letter to the painter Andrew Grassie, asking him to make a painting of a room in his childhood home. The painting Grassie then made became the basis for an animation by me. Slapeta was my own fictional construction, something of a ghost, who via his imaginary connection to this private room, hoped he could transported back ‘home’. The letter, the animation and a reproduction of Grassie’s painting (the original was said to be in the private collection of the fictional Šlapeta), became the basis for ‘Flying Through Amber: the last wish of Vladimir Šlapeta’, which linked all three objects in a three-room installation that was shown in the FORMAT festival, Derby, UK. This explored a place between fact and fiction; a search for something that exists as much in the imagination as anywhere else. In the process Grassie’s painting, like other objects in my work, was displaced into that un-graspable space that exists between perception and its conscious representation. Between the seer and the subject of the gaze there is a gap, and increasingly I am drawn to finding ways to make visible that narrow space.
PREMISE
An elderly émigré (former child of the kinder-transport) longs to recall images of home. Unable to do so, he looks to his imagination - a hopeless fantasy, in pursuit of a sense of origin. Simultaneously, a woman describes seeing the beseeching ghost of an old man. In the past the old man commissioned a painter named Andrew to make a painting, based on the memories of his parents' living room, which he had not seen since he was a very young child.
The painter is modeled on contemporary artist Andrew Grassie, who collaborated on this project and appears as a fictional character within the narrative. Grassie's painting, The Squat of Wolfe Lenkowitz, London 2004, is installed simultaneously as a 'real' and fictitious object.
Flying Through Amber subtly combines film and hand-drawn images with an interwoven 'stream-of-consciousness' narration from the old man and the observer. Creamer works to create a fluid journey through the city in order to explore the transience of memory and identity within a fragmented evocative fantasy. By transforming the original live footage through re-colouring and digitally over-painting she suggests a photographic yet painterly surface that produces images which are both familiar but strangely distant and out of reach
For Flying Through Amber Anne Marie was awarded the Evelyn Williams Drawing Fellowship in 2003-2004, and the Foundation and Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic, International-artist-in-residence award.
AMC 2006
http://archive.formatfestival.com/old/creamerGrassie.html
CREDIT LIST
Directed, written & produced - Anne-Marie Creamer. The painting, 'The Squat of Wolf Lenkowitz, London 2004' by Andrew Grassie was specially made for this film. Soundtrack - Conor Kelly. Voice-overs; Old man - Vass Anderson. Young woman - Anika Henkrichova. Camera & lights - London - James Van der Pool. Prague - Anne-Marie Creamer, with support from Jan Bartos & Dana Recmanova. London shoot; London location - ‘Elektra House”, courtesy of Elizabeth Wright & Giorgio Sadotti. Prague Shoot - with support from the Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic. Equipment - Dolly supplied by Panavision, Prague. Voice-overs recorded at - Loftus Productions, London
Funding & Support:
'Flying Through Amber: The Last Wish of Vladimir Šlapeta’ has received support from;
Arts Council of England
Arts & Humanities Research Council
Center for Contemporary Art, Prague (FCCA)
The Evelyn Williams Trust
FORMAT Photography Festival, UK
University of the West of England
Format International Photography festival, UK
The painting Andrew Grassie made for the project, commissioned by the fictitious character Vladimir Slapeta. Grassie collaborated on this project and appears as a fictional character within the narrative
The painting was commissioned by Creamer for the project and has a dual life; as well as being in the collection of the fictional Velimir Slapeta it is also known as the The Squat of Wolfe Lenkowitz, London 2004 and currently is in a private collection in New York.
This letter was sent in the post to Andrew Grassie.