Chris Kenworthy – Embodiment facilitator & coach in Leeds

Category: Photography

Refugee Week drama workshop at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
The 14th-20th June 2010 is Refugee Week and I was proud to be part of the activities at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, exploring the experiences and raising awareness of asylum seekers in the UK.
I was drafted in to provide event photography support for an all-day drama workshop hosted by Ice & Fire, a theatre company who “explore human rights stories through performance.”
Through the story of ‘David’ a refugee from Darfur, Ice & Fire used drama techniques like thought tracking and short improvised performance to help a local school relive David’s experiences. They also used sculptures to represent a relationship between David and the strange environment around him.
Ice & Fire were enthusiastic, upbeat and patient mentors for the drama students who, although sometimes reticent to come out of their teenage shells (but who wasn’t at that age?), soon got into the spirit of the workshop.
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David’s story was acted out in role-plays: first happy at home in a Darfur village, next fleeing for his life. Along the way he encountered human trafficking ending up bewildered sleeping on the streets of England at odds with our culture and state agencies like the Home Office and Police.
With rapid changes in setting, harsh midday sun and camera-shy teens, this was probably one of the trickiest assignments I’ve undertaken for Yorkshire Sculpture Park so far. It called for adaptive shooting techniques, my sharp eye for action and cunning stealth: hugging the scenery to take discreet natural photos.
The photographs should give testament to an interesting and engaging day with a serious underlying humanitarian message: that of our duty to respond to the plea of those in danger and to offer them their fundamental rights to shelter and protection.
June 16, 2010
Tread Softly at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Crawling on all fours through thick undergrowth to photograph a family of clay hedgehogs and then being chased by a giant snake? All in a day’s work at the ‘Tread Softly Tracks and Traces’ event at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
The brief was to capture engaging photographs of young aspiring artists enjoying a day in the sunshine, painting on walls, moulding clay and running about with bird puppets trailing behind them to mimic seasonal migration. The theme was “magical trails, moving sensitively through different habitats in the YSP landscape, creating for others to discover.”
Those different habitats meant working in a selection of different challenging environments: baking midday sun, beneath cool dark trees and wide open spaces with fast moving subjects. Add excitable children who never sit still to the mix and you’ve got a real task on your hands.
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Our little friends had to make cave paintings on rock, draw with charcoal and later stitch leaves together with thorns to make an eight foot long snake which was launched enthusiastically into a nearby stream.
The event photographs came out quite nice though considering the stifling heat and animated company I was in. Soon after the event finished I proudly handed over a nice representation of the day’s events including muddy hands, paint, baby hedgehogs and a delightful little photographic whim: some coloured flags fluttering gently in the summer breeze.
June 1, 2010
Degree show at Manchester Metropolitan University
Documenting the art, textiles and sculpture of twenty seven final year Embroidery students was never going to be an easy task. But twenty-one hours later I’d photographed of over eighty different pieces of art during a ruthlessly demanding time scale.
Working fastidiously in a make-shift studio with three high-powered flash units, we had a conveyor belt of students scurrying through with different artistic creations. The time scale was ambitious, as was the sheer volume of work but the brief was at least consistent: high-quality photographs of art work for use in a printed brochure showing the breadth, scale and depth of talent at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU).
There was plenty of creative freedom too. Some students wanted shots of mounted work, others needed macro-detail photos of stitches while others suspended sculptural pieces from above, that I really went to town on with different lighting techniques.
I’ve selected three different pieces of art from the day which give a good representation of the quality of work, not just mine of course, but the incredibly talented Embroidery students at Manchester Metropolitan University.
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The work shown above is by (in order) Lauren Steeper, Katie Smith, Lauren Ashmore, Martha Coates and Sarah Fletcher.
Personally I found this type of photography good practice as well as perhaps lending itself to product shoots. The students were elated with the results, which showcase their work quite nicely – I’ve even got a thank-you card up on my mantelpiece for my efforts too.
***Update***
These photos are now published »
May 31, 2010
Hot & cold metal workshop at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
No one warned me that there’d be shards of white hot metal flying towards my camera lens when I was asked to photograph the ‘Hot and cold metal’ workshop at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Not that I’m complaining though, using a few creative tricks these micro-explosions soon became an ally as the photos show.
The ‘workshop’ was just that: a noisy, vibrant and productive place where a group of talented artists deftly crafted cold metal into new forms using heat and brute force. Using stealth and cunning I was able to position myself (safely!) to make it look as though the sparks were flying into the lens of the camera, for some really dramatic shots.
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The class was lead by Brian Fell and Owen Cunningham, two artists and both regulars to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park who bring a friendly and helpful hands-on approach. Part of the photography brief was to show how teachers engaged with the students at the event and give an accurate portrayal of what prospective participants can expect.
I set out to meet that brief by focussing my efforts on the techniques people were using, their tools and watching carefully for any conversations or interactions that took place organically. It is these organic situations which make the most natural and reusable photographs – especially if I’m hugging the wall or hiding myself discreetly in some other way.
There were some impressive sculptures being created at the event too including a hinged snake and an ambitious gate for a driveway with two child-like forms attached. Even better, much of the materials were salvaged from elsewhere meaning the workshop was green as well as good fun.
Lively event photography
If you’re running an art class event, then photographs really help convey the excitement of the day and convince other people, clients or customers that this is something that they want to be part of. Get in touch .
May 22, 2010
Bronze casting workshop at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
I can honestly say that this is the first weekend I’ve spent in close proximity to molten metal. And by close I mean hair singeingly close – so much so I’m sure I picked up a tan at the four day Bronze Casting workshop at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
I was asked to photograph the final day of the workshop, as it was to be the day they fired up the furnace, melted the bronze and poured it into the expectant casts which had been carved by the budding sculptors and artists taking part.
I practically leapt at the prospect of taking photographs of all the flames, heat and glowing liquids. It isn’t every day you get to shoot photographs of metal in excess of 1000 degrees centigrade. This was going to call for some creative and careful photography.
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By deftly skipping over all manner of industrial equipment and threading my way neatly between people covered in heat-protective overalls I was able to get stuck right in the thick of the action. There’s some lovely up-close images of the metal being poured which has the appearance of mercury with an orange tinge. The sound was quite distinctive too – a subtle popping and crackling could be heard as the bronze left the crucible and ate through the tinfoil covering the moulds.
Each mould was once filled with a wax carving of a sculpture, the idea being that the wax is melted out of the cast after it has set. The molten bronze is then poured into the void left behind by the wax, replacing it with a new sculpture which then solidifies.
It wasn’t all fire and brimstone though, there was a lot of hard manual work for everyone chipping away at the bronze sculpture once it had been cracked out of its mould. People spent hours hammering at their rough sculptures to remove the plaster that had become anchored to the surface.
Then there was the process of polishing the metal using wire brushes and sand paper to bring it up to a radiant matt golden colour, like the cute sculpture of a bird. All this labour gave me plenty of opportunities to take photographs of people at work, crafting their near-finished pieces to perfection.
The event itself was split between an outdoor courtyard and a large indoor workshop where the lighting was less than ideal, but I enjoy a challenge: adapting and being creative with a situation, as the photographs will attest.
After four straight hours of photography I came away with around four hundred photographs to sift through, documenting the duration of the event from start to finish. The photographs will be used to promote further education activities at Yorkshire Sculpture Park as well as being a nice lasting graphic record of what was a very pleasurable and creative day.
This workshop event was lead by The Castle Fine Arts Foundry.
May 9, 2010
Heritage Leaflet for Yorkshire Sculpture Park
As I hurtled down the M1 motorway last week one eye was safely on the road ahead but the other was firmly fixed on the typically changeable English weather. No, I haven’t skipped a few years of evolution developing independent ocular control – today was another assignment for Yorkshire Sculpture Park: shooting photographs for a heritage leaflet, but with a twist.
The brief for this assignment: take photographs of sixteen unique heritage locations dotted about Bretton Country Park, where the Yorkshire Sculpture Park is based. Things like bridges, buildings, a church and art installations.
The finished photographs would be used in a heritage treasure trail leaflet, which will be given to visitors for them to walk around the park with as they try and find the different buildings and features pictured.
All is not what it seems though: with it being a treasure trail, the photographs had to be ‘visual clues’ rather than obvious depictions of the subject. This called for a little creative flair.
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To rise to the challenge I had to use pretty much every photographic technique I’d learnt to date, things like:
- Depth of field: controlling which parts of the subject were in focus using aperture creatively
- Strobist-type lighting: using mobile strobes (flash guns) to control the contrast between light and dark objects
- Devious angles: composition is everything, so I found myself getting nice and grubby lying on the ground, in flower beds and sheep dung
The photographs are being handed over for inclusion and publication in the leaflet after a period of two weeks hard work, about fifteen hours work and over eight hundred photographs to sift through. It was great fun to be up to my elbows in an exciting job like this though, with an enormous amount of creative freedom and a great brief.
On top of all this, it’ll be great to see my work published by a leading national art organisation and disseminated in such an accessible way to the public as they roam around the park having a fun day out in the sunshine. I hope I have been cunning enough to make them think, but not get them lost.
May 3, 2010