Antonia Beard
Antonia+Beard_Catch+1.jpg

Catch, Leeds 23

CATCH, 2023

CATCH, 2023

Hyde Park Art Club, Leeds, UK

Photographic installation

300 x 600 cm

This photo collage is composed of transient encounters, moments snipped from family memories, Dad’s work shirts, Mum’s wedding veil, childhood ballet teacher, Great Aunt Nora. The work is mixed in with everyday chance moments such as having a shower, washing up, drinking a spritz or cooking pasta… these moments and textures phase in and out, grasped for a second. The residue lives on as technology extends, fragments and distorts. The images are captured using everyday modern technology such as a home office printer or camera phone, to snatch the seconds of even the most mundane of daily rituals, allowing us to hold them for longer than we otherwise would.

Catch.

This exhibition was curated by Benedetta D'Ettorre, in collaboration with choreographer Benjaminn Skinner. An artist talk, discussing the work with the University of Leeds, Pedagogic Research in the Arts research group can be viewed here. Snip bits from the transcript are below.

WEBVTT Antonia Beard: like why the idea about catch came about is that. And I mean this photo is something that I you know I take. I took it on my on my phone on my smartphone. I was having a show. I was having a shower or a bath, and I was, you

WEBVTT

Antonia Beard: like why the idea about catch came about is that. And I mean this photo is something that I you know I take. I took it on my on my phone on my smartphone. I was having a show. I was having a shower or a bath, and I was, you know, and I was really having quite a

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Antonia Beard: strange enough, very low day. I wasn't in a good mood, you know, when you sit in the bar for hours, and you don't want to get out, and you know you should go out ages ago, but you just like lying there, and the the shower head was on it really tiny. It was stopped running, but it was just like

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posting out, and I just. And and it was it was such. It was weird that something happened that moment where I had to focused in on this tiny drop, and I was really interested in the way the water builds.

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Antonia Beard: and you can only catch it for a bit seconds and so and and I guess because we now live in a moment in time where our phones are stuck to our hips. And yeah, I thought, oh, i'm going to start video in this, you know. First I try to take photos wasn't working. It's like taking videos. And, strangely enough, this just is noticing this very tiny.

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Antonia Beard: very tiny moment which I would like if I was in a good mood, I probably would have missed it. That lifted me out of the space that I was in, and then I ran downstairs into like my Parents' garage, which is my studio at the time I started printing it all out.

181 00:32:27.460 --> 00:32:47.970 Antonia Beard: there's something I love about pressing an object to the scanner, and it almost feels like something is underwater, because you get one part, you know, when you, if you would, to go down. And you

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Antonia Beard: there's something I love about pressing an object to the scanner, and it almost feels like something is underwater, because you get one part, you know, when you, if you would, to go down. And you see, one part is really close and in in clear focus, and then the rest of it it washes out, and that's something that.

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Antonia Beard: Yeah, though, I like to to to play with for me, it's kind of a quality of the technology that gives it this quite like.

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Antonia Beard: How do you say that?

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Antonia Beard: Oh, seriously, it doesn't get me

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Antonia Beard: so? Yeah. And then this, you know, this is kind of something where I started start. I try to enlarge and launch this in a different

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Antonia Beard: prints and different sections of of it, and and I love power like linking the papers together. Then for further like signify scale, You know, if you think about the classic map where you fold it up into multiple pieces and you view it from 1 point of view.

Antonia Beard: in different ways. You know I I love to play with this idea that you know you, you you you kind of reading a certain situation one way, and then you add in another another threads, and it might change how you view that view, that obje

Antonia Beard: in different ways. You know I I love to play with this idea that you know you, you you you kind of reading a certain situation one way, and then you add in another another threads, and it might change how you view that view, that object will view that

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Antonia Beard: encounter. And for me it's all about those relationships between our experience of the day to day mixed in with well overlaid with, right? You know, more ancient

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Antonia Beard: ancient ideas around technology. And and

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Antonia Beard: then there's really mundane

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Antonia Beard: moments like just going to work. Basically I'm: very, very interested in work and and and and a lot of the images, you know. Why, I like to keep the this, the the a 4 paper. You might notice that all the prints up.

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Antonia Beard: you know a 4 paper that are printed and stuck together, and I love to keep the margin there, and as almost like a signifier of something that's quite universal, but also something that is part of our like day to day bureaucracy. Really, you know, we use it the world over, just to try and manage and control our lives. So there's an interest to me.

Antonia Beard: right there's the this is this is the seed from the appar of Scripts top, which I became kind of obsessed with. Actually, I just I just loved it. It's like kind of say slinky, and I found it quite sexual, and I found that I don't know

Antonia Beard: right there's the this is this is the seed from the appar of Scripts top, which I became kind of obsessed with. Actually, I just I just loved it. It's like kind of say slinky, and I found it quite sexual, and I found that I don't know me. This little seed had like so many connotations when I like to, when it

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Antonia Beard: I think when I get excited about an image that I've entered into the archive. Is it because it touches upon something which lights up? Not not just one narrative, but but many. And then that's where I'm like, oh, yeah, that's that's interesting. I get the feeling that that that's

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Antonia Beard: I just need to to build on it.

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Antonia Beard: And I did that I I felt

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Antonia Beard: I felt this need for that image to be the size of a door. I don't know why it's like it Felt like I wanted that image, you know. Not just on a on a, you know, like a place to take that it if you need to be dual size, so I i'll i'll. I'll larger my printer.

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Antonia Beard: I just have a classic office printer, so i'm gonna do it step by step, break it up, and then by breaking it up. I noticed that this bit in the top center for me looks like a cell, you know. It looks like a cell from a or a membrane, or from you know this in it really micro. It's probably parts of our body.

Antonia Beard: great like presence, like i'm not a dancer. I yeah, I train and trained as such. But I i'm I am a raver, and there's something that I've always wanted to get across in my work where you know I would always. I always wish that like in

Antonia Beard: great like presence, like i'm not a dancer. I yeah, I train and trained as such. But I i'm I am a raver, and there's something that I've always wanted to get across in my work where you know I would always. I always wish that like in some way. I always like a new reason why I like to specific work as well, is it?

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Antonia Beard: There's something where you feel like when you're on a dance. For when all these various things that we've together with the people who smells of the crazy, you know parents, and you know you can feel like you, Can they?

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Antonia Beard: So for me, anyway, like quite, quite a present, but also completely not present in a space, and for many years I've been exploring in my practice in a very subtle way, because we you wouldn't necessarily connect it to that experience, I don't think, but on a personal level. I,

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Antonia Beard: My favorite state of play is to feel like i'm dancing with the work, whether it's like in a visual sense, or with the objects and to feel that they are gonna they all get added to the mix. And and yeah, what I say is, I could be like a tapestry of life, really, you know.

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Antonia Beard: No, I'm: yeah. I'm always gonna get excited when it's not necessarily about one particular theme or narrative. It's more about how all of those overlay each other, and the the and the the combinations, and also the tension between those different overlay and histories, because that's how we exist and experience well with each other. You know we're all products of.