April’s session focused on the exhibition ‘Leaves Turn Inside You’ by artist Charlie Hodgson at the David Dale Gallery, Glasgow.

In this workshop we aimed for our prompts to become a suggestive tool to encourage participants to freely question and speculate the narratives of the work, the subtleness of the story that is being told in the work, individually and together. Creating a new dynamic in the session which is opened up for interpretation, resonating to each individual’s personal imagination or reading of the space. 

By combining the idea of self reflection with the influence of site writing, the critical art theory by Jane Renedell, we begin to explore this obscure form of viewing the exhibition with little context or the context being also of the personal interpretation of another. It was interesting to explore how each person read the space – Asking do we read the space from left to right or right to left – how do we navigate the way the space is read. How this might influence the story and perspective of each imagined story. The speculative and the introspective. 

‘Combining image and text to produce variations in spatial relations; exploring the architectural and spatial qualities of storytelling’ – Jane Rendell https://site-writing.co.uk/

We were fortunate that artist Charlie joined us in the space and could talk to us more about the work, facilitating this speculative session about the work. Charlie also wrote to us detailing further of the concepts intended. Exploring how the narrative is to become absorbed by the viewer, there is a story to be told, but whose story?

“As the work started to come together, I realised that there was a kind of storytelling beginning to happen and this interested me; as if a narrative was opening, or a story was starting to take form, but I was not committing to actually telling it, or rather refused to. There was something that interested me in setting a scene, or a number of scenes, and then letting go and allowing whatever story the viewer wanted to happen take place. Maybe the paintings in that sense are all points of departure.”

Having to extrapolate a meaning from the work posed a different approach to the writing, we especially honed in on the observational role of the audience which generates a sense of normalcy in the everyday. There is a beauty of the everyday, the details of the bodies in the paintings created a sense of soft intimacy but perhaps missing the identity of the self in the eye of the painter. 

The memories from the past captured in still featureless expressions – captured in the flat forms of the self. An event, creates an exposure, never before, invaded myself. The observer continues to press. I begin to feel as though I am being watched. Fragile exteriors of the skin, flesh pale and grey, it feels as exposed as the red brick and mortar. 

– Eliza

We are hosting [synonym] sessions writing events each month and have announced our fourth instalment taking place at the Listen Gallery, date 22nd June 2024.

All are welcome, we aim for this workshop to be casual and we aim for this group to give space for all voices, expertise and experiences and very much encourage people who wish to also develop their writing, however, previous art writing is not essential.

For more information and tickets to our next [synonym] session click here.