The Call of the Forest

Artist Julien Masson describes a residency in the New Forest, an environment that juxtaposes natural and human worlds, and his choice of a physical paint medium to represent the digital realm that often distances us from the natural.

1,630 words: estimated reading time 6.5 minutes  

I was delighted to be invited by an art agency based in Hampshire for their residency project in 2018. Every year they invite an artist and provide them with a space for two weeks and the opportunity to produce art in the beautiful surroundings of the New Forest. It was going to be a challenge to adjust to new working spaces and produce artwork in such a short time but I thought it would offer a good opportunity to explore the area and really concentrate on an art project without distractions.

Last year I worked on a project with the New Forest heritage department and produced a series of digital artworks inspired by the geology, the streams and the flora of the area to create rich multilayered images based on LIDAR captures (images used to survey the geology and analyse what lies underneath vegetation). I was able to exhibit examples of that work at the New Forest Centre in Lyndhurst, such as Shades of the Land:

For my residency this year, based in a New Forest forge, I was given free rein to work on a self-initiated project. The manager of the forge until very recently was the director of a local art gallery and so there was an interest to help support artists through this residency, but they didn’t expect us to produce work linked to their activities — although it is a fascinating space.

I was happy to rise to the challenge and try to produce a series of works during the two weeks of the residency.

Mapping new meaning

Our digital culture brings us into a sometimes uncomfortable relationship with the technology we rely on to drive it. I am interested in the ways we rely more and more on technology to record and survey our environment, and how this over-reliance is possibly misplaced. Through the numeric lens of digital devices that have a direct impact on how we perceive the world, spaces, objects and people are all analysed in the same manner — reduced to datasets that can be disassembled and reassembled at will. My works often consist of a dynamic mass of marks echoing digital networks and our complex interconnected world; they criss-cross the surface of the paintings like a giant mind map generating new meaning.

I explore the possibilities that digital tools offer us to create alternative realities and virtual simulations that ultimately allow us to further our knowledge. How does the virtual world affect our real, physical experience? What consequences will the digitalisation of our experiences bring? In these new pieces the layers of data points recreate the geological contours of the region. Each geological layer is superimposed onto another, and in the same way I superimposed strips of paint to recreate the layered stratas of the land…

One of the reasons why I have been working in a physical paint medium rather than producing purely digital artwork is that working in paint and pastels allows me that freedom and distance from my subject. By using paint I am a step removed from technology, I can have more a more critical look at it. I admire the digital virtual but also I like to imbue it with all that is chaotic and unpredictable with the physicality of painting.

A pixelised reality

My technique is unapologetically experimental. I paint, slice and collage painted surfaces, echoing the remixing of images in photoshop or the superimposed layers of photos in computer graphics software. There is a certain destructive activity in the way I work, as fractured formations of paint emerge from this process. I believe this illustrates the dislocated sense of reality we are subject to in this day and age.

The studio space was comfortable and bright, on the top floor of the forge, and I also had the privilege of working alongside Peter Corr there, a very talented artist. It was fascinating seeing the work progress during the two weeks. We were made to feel very welcome by the forge manager on the ground floor; it was a real hive of activity and we felt really inspired by the work they produce there. 

The journey in and out of the studio offered an interesting progression through the industrial landscape of Southampton Docks to the forest at Ashurst… Spring sunshine appeared and we witnessed a real explosion of colours, as the foliage really started to fill the tree canopy… The impact on my work was immediate and I shifted my palette from a rather restrained selection into a veritable kaleidoscope array of glitches. These glitches — unexpected results or malfunctions, especially occurring with digital devices — often manifest themselves through a faulty interaction with digital technology, and offer a sort of distorted pixelized reality. I spent several days gathering images of the surroundings with my digital camera. I often manipulate the images to generate interesting and unexpected arrays of colour, which I use as inspiration for my works.

I wanted to illustrate this fractured vision of Nature that we sometimes have. The tessellated technique I used on these works echoes the kaleidoscopic view we often have of the world through the use of digital technology. Our perception becomes compressed and pixelated, often in constant motion; it seems incomplete yet it has a certain beauty too. I also arc back to painterly techniques used by the Vorticists and the Futurists. Similar use of dynamic strokes of colour can be found in my work.

The intense use of the colour green was definitely in response to the new leaves that appeared in the last couple of weeks there. The tessera of paint also echo the foliage of the trees and the movement of their leaves in the wind. Geology is also present, as the stacks of colours reminds me of the strata of different soils.

Eco responsibility

No matter how aesthetically oriented my work is it is undeniable that I also want to treat the subject of eco-responsibility in my work. Technology allows us to analyse and study our environment so we can understand it better but it has the effect of distancing us from it. From this abstracted digital space we can experience the world in the safety of our own virtual shells, choosing to be blissfully unaware of the impact our activities are having on our environment.

I often mix traditional materials such as paint and pigment with found manmade materials: metallic foil, electric wires and plastics. My use of recycled materials is also a comment on our relationship with the natural environment and how we are truly living in a geological age dominated by our own activity. I included some flexes of copper and metallic material throughout the works as a reminder of human activity in the landscape and also a nod to the activity at the forge where the studio is based. To me, the layering of marks, materials and imagery during my creative process is in many ways akin to the stratification of meaning, of human activities and histories.

In this series I was particularly interested in using the circular frame because of its scientific connotation. I am thinking of petri dishes or microscopic images; this series of works represent almost a series of individual experiments in shape and colour, each forming its own world, its own microcosm. Finally I am planning to display these works as a series: carefully arranging them almost as a comparative study.

The residency took place in a studio on the top floor of a forge, and this industrial space was at odds with the idyllic view of the area. However I felt this was very appropriate considering my interests in the sometimes uncomfortable juxtaposition of a manmade landscape and a wild landscape. The New Forest itself is a human creation, managed for centuries to exploit its various resources.

Find out more

The LGV Residency “accommodating an artist in the New Forest National Park for the development of their creative practice” is a scheme provided by Little Van Gogh, an agency that delivers programmes and projects that help organisations to support and promote emerging artists, “be it through our workplace art exhibitions or the commissioning and purchase of original fine art.”

A tondo (plural: tondi or tondos) — Wikipedia tells me — “is a Renaissance term for a circular work of art, either a painting or a sculpture. The word derives from the Italian rotondo, ’round.'” 

The New Forest was created by King William I in 1079 as his royal hunting park following the Norman Conquest; the ‘new’ forest became one of England’s National Parks in 2005. The New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority, while the Verderers of the New Forest – the commoners whose rights are protected by statutes – manage many of the traditional agricultural practices in the area.

LIDAR — Wikipedia again — is a surveying technique for 3D laser scanning for ‘Light Detection and Ranging’, which “measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with pulsed laser light and measuring the reflected pulses with a sensor. Differences in laser return times and wavelengths can then be used to make digital 3-D representations of the target.” At the website of the Verderers of the New Forest High Level Stewardship Scheme, you can see two interesting films of the technique being used in the New Forest to understand more about the human and natural characteristics of the area.

Julien Masson

An artist whose works are all, in some way, related to technology and our relation with it and wishes to expand notions of what is art.
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