Liz Nicol

Research interests

I am interested in the process of photography, particularly the photochemical process and some of the early processes like the cyanototype - the blue print. I respond to the physicality of the process, I like working in the darkroom - many of my works are large scale. I am interested in the relationship between object and image.

Presentation is important and reveals the process of making the work which is oftern reworked over a period of time. For example in the ongoing series of images of figureheads I have layered the figures with some of the first landscapes I took as a student some 25 years ago.

The motivation for working with photography is to make sense of the things around me and to serve as my visual memory. Whether it is looking at my family or looking at how I or the family relate to our culture or simply looking more closely at the objects collected from the beach that could remain on the back door step for years or be brought into the darkroom.

Narratives underly many of the works whether it is collecting rubber bands every day for the period of a year or picking up feathers on a misty walk along the cliffs. Many photographs are taken on holiday - at the zoo, the aquarium or museum, they may be off fish on the market stall in Barcelona or from an adventure in my recently refurbished sailing canoe.

The subject matter is oftern linked to the sea, the coast connected to and by water, they may refer to an epic journey of a figurehead or to the floating sinking actions of the jelly fish.

'Landscape photography' is a definition I have resisted as is the context of the 'photo' gallery. The research question is more of a statement of interest, in the world around me and the floating thoughts around me, moments in time that I pay attention too. The question could be how to capture and play with these moments through the processes of photography.

Other research

Creative practice & artistic projects

I am working on five interconnected projects all of which are ongoing, they are all employing different photographic processes.

FIGUREHEADS - this series brings together my early landscapes with photographs of figureheads collected from many museums from the Isles of Scilly, Paris Maritime Museum, Mystic in America and the Cutty Sark Greenwich.

The photographs are layered, working with two enlagers the lanscape and figure merge, they are sponge developed, they are large black & white photographs about 44" square.

CYANOTYPES - I have worked with the blue print in the following projects: The Rubber band project, 191 prints of rubber bands represent 1 years worth of walking my son to school, Fathom a cyanotype of un-picked lace fragments 30 metres long and A Collection of hankercheifs and River Exe, Swans Feathers.

This body of work is based on the photogram where the objects are place onto the pre coated paper and exposed by an ultra violet light - the object deliniates itself on the print it is a direct trace of the object.

OBJECTOGRAPHS - these images are made in the darkroom, they are negative prints. I am working with an almost obsolete piece of equipment that lies somewhere between a camera and an enlarger.

I have used the term objectograph to reflect the essence of the object and the way it is recorded onto the surface of the film or paper. Although recent work I am working with my collection of objects that span many years - the objects range from shells, stones and sea weed to plastic MacDonallds spoons and there is the begining of a new collection of knotted ropes.

OTHER - this section is everything else I photograph these are camera based photographs, I have been working with an old Mamiya where you look down onto the ground glass and watch indirectly the world as it moves around in from to of me. There is a series of photographs of fish found in markets so far from a market in Faro Portugal and in Barcelona, Spain. Other encompasses family photographs and photographs taken on holidays and recent photographs exhibited at East, Norwich Gallery, photographs of Willy taken in the mortuary.

NEW - it is early days but I have started photographing the land from the sea, more recently I have begun to take photographs from our sailing canoe. Again I am working with Black and White photographs and there is a relation to journey and adventure and there may be a narrative text.

Publications

publications/catalogues

Shifting Horizons: Women’s Landscape Photography Now. Edited by Liz Wells, Kate Newton and Catherine Fehily. I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd. ISBN 1 86064 635 2

Fathom, text by Liz Wells 1999

The Rubber Band Project, Book. 1997

‘Swinging the Lead’ 13 artists, catalogue 1996

‘Umbra Penumbra’, 5 artists essay by Sasha Craddock 1994

Spectrum Women’s Photography Festival catalogue 1989

‘Fixations’, artists prints, limited edition 1988

‘Underwater’ handmade catalogue 1984

The Portrait Show, essay by Lesley Kerman 1984

‘Possessions’ catalogue

Midland Group Photography, selected by J. Szarkowski & R.B. Kitaj

The Rubber Band Project

This is a bookwork of the project, it began close to home, on my daily walk to school with my eight-year old son Charlie. This journey was marked by the number of rubber bands we found; it mapped a relationship. the activity was outside; with our eyes we scanned the streets we observed the pavement as a surface. We experience the weather - how for example the Autumn leaves drenched by rain and dried in the sun left their trace on the pavement rather like a photogramme. This initiated the idea of working with the cyanotype, the wonderful blue print.

I made a cyanotype of the rubber bands collected on each school day, when exhibited these formed an abstract grid almost like a score with gaps of high days and holidays.