ARTISTS TALKING

# 34 [10 August 2010]

Blea Tarn

Back to the centre - the compass point. This belatedly added entry marks the end of the project and my reluctance to let it go. Writing the blog signals an ending but the thoughts and memories persist and as Richard says, will burn bright and inform new projects.

Already, Richard and I are developing new ideas, submitting new proposals drawing on all the accumulated ideas and experiences of the circle which in its turn drew on previous work.

The circle has become a tangible motif and rolls along quite happily.

Paul

# 33 [27 July 2010]

Blea Tarn 24^th June 2010-07-06

Back to the centre of the circle but via Harrop Tarn from Thirlmere rather than up from Watendlath. We enjoy this route and savour the ‘newness of return’ to an earlier swim that started the circle just over a year ago. There is the excitement of finding the first post used copiously by the sheep to scratch their ticks and the resultant subtle colouring that it imparted to the post, and of finding the tree alive – just – in spite of the drought and predations of the same sheep.

The swim itself is informed by the exhibition; all the elements of the show seem present here and add to it’s intensity so that the sensations of the place are invested with, and filtered through, the very different experience of the film, sound track, pictures, photos, talk, and general hype of preview night. The compound experience is almost too much to fully appreciate – thinking has limits and digestion of this project will spill out over weeks, months, and years into the future.

Richard

# 32 [26 July 2010]

Brewery Arts Centre

The Monday following a well attended preview of the show, I received a telephone call from the Brewery. Did I know that one of my diary paintings had been damaged? A technician had observed an L shaped rip in the canvas and had removed it from the wall. When I realised which painting they were talking about I assured them that was how it was when I had hung it, damaged from a falling slate in the studio fire.

Putting up a show is usually like having a book published in that by the time it comes out in print, the next one is underway and the publication is history. With this show it was still work in progress with the final post and stone drilled to the wall. It had to be removed when we were ready to get to our final swim at the compass point of the circle, back where we started at Blea Tarn.

When I removed it towards the end of the exhibition I left a photograph of what it had been. No one observed me taking it down and I left with it in my bag ready for the last stage.

Paul

# 31 [6 July 2010]

The Brewery Arts Centre 30^th April 2010

Preview night of the exhibition and it’s underway - that cocktail of people and art brought together in one place for a brief encounter. Always unpredictable in it’s results and, seen from a particular point of view, as much a performance-piece as the swim-project itself, the opening night is another pool to dip into and savour - Jill and Pat working round the viewers offering sprayed samples of essence-of-Bowscale Tarn or Bleawater Tarn to cool fevered brows; the sound of trickled water in the background recorded from Bleawater Tarn sending who-knows-what messages to people’s minds and bladders; the acrid smell of Paul’s canvases rescued from the burnt-down Green Door studios mingling with the humid evening air – these are some of the ingredients contributing to the evenings unrecordable performance. Some swim in quite a different sort of tarn.

Richard

# 30 [23 May 2010]

Gurnal Dubs  16th April 2010

What was the last swim round the circumference of the circle is the penultimate of the project. A final swim - a return to Blea Tarn, the start of the swim at its centre - will take place after the exhibition is up.

Strange feelings of ending persist though during the walk up and the swim.

Its familiar territory for us here. Gurnal Dubs was my first open water swim several years ago. It was a sudden decision to enter the water then - an April too, but so cold I couldn't stay in for  more than two minutes. This April its warmer - a pleasant cool.

Afterwards, Richard lolled on the bank near my stone post. I imagined all the waters we had swum in rippling through his head.

Memories.

Paul

# 29 [3 May 2010]

Gurnal Dubs 16.04.10

This is the last tarn in the circle before we revisit the centre, Blea Tarn, and finish the project. We have swum here before so that the novelty of an unvisited tarn was replaced by a heap of past associations and the sense of closure of the circle.

The water was a fresh 11.5 degrees - a quick dip as the sun beamed, followed by post siting and tree planting.

Talk was of the exhibition and of the mixed emotions ending a project. In completing the circle, I wondered what was achieved.  It felt like closing the net on a set of experiences, caught and forever held in time and place, in that circular domain which became a place of heightened sensibility - Swim Circle. From now we would forever locate ourselves in relationship to this aesthetic watery domain when in its vicinity.

We watched as a fish jumped to catch a fly and was in turn soon caught by a lone fly fisher who suddenly appeared - are we all in the same game?

Richard

# 28 [25 April 2010]

Blea Water  13th April 2010

The high level of Blea Water exposes the surface to strong SW winds that drive the water into a see-saw motion. Downward draughts from High Street accentuate this rhythm and create the pulsing overflow of water at the sill that sits on top of the moraine holding back the mass of water that plunges to 60 metres, the deepest cirque tarn in the Lake District.

As we reached the level of the water, the mist clung to the high ridges, gradually peeling back to reveal snow deep in high crevices.

The sound of the pulsing tarn became the recording taken by Richard for a film about water surface for the project's exhibition.

As we descended to Haweswater, the sense of the glacier that scoured the valleys and created the landscape was strong. The boulders that lay scattered on the ground, abandoned by the ice sheet thousands of years ago, were existing on a much slower timescale. We were as May Flies.

Paul

# 27 [15 April 2010]

Blea Water Tarn 13.4.10

Long drive round Shap and through to the head of Hawes Water, thoughts of the watery lost village of Mardale beneath its surface.

Set off into an increasingly wild setting as we ascended to the tarn, flanked by towering cliffs, hidden in cloud.

A cold 5 degree dip in this most perfect of cirques - the last to lose its glacial ice in the district, connected to the Loch Lommond glacier system apparently, and with an ice action that was exceptionally vigorous - how else to explain it's extraordinary depth of 60m.

While Paul sited a post I planted a tiny tree. Then we went to the outlet of the tarn to record the sound of a periodic outflow which could form the audio for Paul's movies of lake surfaces. This was a bit of slap stick as the 'sound engineer' fumbled the takes and a sheep insisted on a voice-over!

Off to the Hawes Water hotel and a pint, but alas no pickled eggs.

Richard

# 26 [15 April 2010]

Ullswater, 8th April

A short walk in on a busy Easter week day full of trippers and walking groups.

We find a relatively quiet spot on the shore, previously visited. The busy activity of boats on the water and walkers on the shore emphasises the isolation of the high tarn swims.

Up high brings greater clarity of light, air, water and thought.

From the high top, wider perspectives can be taken.

At the side of busy Ullswater, we muddle through.

Paul

# 25 [15 April 2010]

Ullswater 8.4.10

We walk along the edge of Ullswater until we are opposite the small island we have swum to before. It is dull and overcast - strangely tranquil - and already a sense of closure is present as we only have two more swims to do after this. The depth of associations increases with each swim as we turn the circle, cycling through memories of earlier expeditions.

Richard