Come and see the Cork City skyline from a novel perspective!
Campera Obscura: Meet the Artist is an artist’s talk by Helen Horgan taking place at 3.45pm on Sunday 20th November at Tramore Valley Park as part of The KinShip Winter Weekend 2022. This "Meet the Artist" event will take place at KinShip Activity Room, Sports Pavilion, Tramore Valley Park.
Focusing on the parks skyline and harvesting sunlight as source material, Horgans ‘Campera Obscura’ questions what constitutes ‘power’ in terms of the sun and solar energy.
For the KinShip Becoming Kin Winter Weekend artist Helen Horgan is bringing a life size Camera Obscura* to the City View Summit of Tramore Valley Park. Constructed from a converted camper van that has become the vehicle of Horgan’s art practice, participants are invited to enter and view the surrounding Cork city skyline from a novel perspective. By creating a dark space within the van and allowing light to enter through a small hole, the external world is projected on the inside walls upside-down. Using only the power of sunlight, the process is simple but magical to behold, instilling a sense of wonder and providing the viewer with an alternative understanding of the suns ‘power’.
Open to the public Friday 18th, Sat 19th and Sun 20th November 2022 - 12pm to 3pm Artist talk Sunday 20th November at 15:45
Not for those who are scared of the dark or small spaces! Participants will enter in twos and threes. This event is great for adults and kids alike. Kids should be accompanied by a responsible adult. Partially wheelchair accessible.
Helen Horgan is a visual artist working in sculpture, moving image and installation with a background in Graphic Design and Philosophy of Language. Her work is concerned with the sensory effects of language, both visual and verbal, and how our environment and personal histories shape our understanding of the world. She has exhibited widely in Ireland and abroad most recently at the ‘18th Kinemastik Short Film Festival’ (2022) and ‘Debatable Land(s)’ in Malta (2021).
In March 2020 Horgan experienced the first Covid-19 Lockdown in Calabria, Italy while travelling abroad in The LFTT Library van, a camper van converted into a mobile studio and tiny home.
Her decision to remain travelling and documenting throughout the pandemic had a profound effect on her artistic practice. The mobile studios continuously shifting surroundings and capacity for immersion in out of the way places inspired a curiosity and wonder for the physical environment and its psychological effects, which she began to document in video and audio field recording.
At the same time The LFTT Library, a project setup in 2009 to make use of a 400 year old library deemed ‘waste’ by contemporary values, evolved from a travelling archive of books to an expanding collection of curiosities and artefacts recorded or found on the road, much like the early travellers collected wonders that became the first natural history museums or ‘Wunderkammers’ (‘Wonder rooms’).
* What is a Camera Obscura ?
The first known record describing the Camera Obscura (meaning ‘Dark Chamber’) was written by the Chinese Philosopher Mozi, in around 400bc. It’s basic principles; a darkened room with a small hole at one side through which an image is projected, provided the basis for the modern camera. In the second half of the sixteenth century lenses replaced the simple aperture or hole and the Camera Obscura was employed as a drawing and painting tool for artists, aiding the discovery of linear
perspective. The concept was developed further into the photographic camera in the first half of the nineteenth century with the addition of a light sensitive plate that could capture the image. Today’s digital phone cameras still rely on a dark chamber, though its tiny scale hidden amongst the digital components makes the process practically invisible.
The history of the Camera Obscura tells a story of how visual media evolved over time giving rise to new forms of art and ways of seeing. Its invention marked the moment that an image could be captured directly from life for the first time, dramatically changing the ways that people could view themselves and the world. The LFTT Library van came into being in 2019 to support Horgan’s art practice by enabling a more sustainable, minimalist lifestyle and permitting exploration off the beaten track. In this way it also functions as a kind of camera granting forms of immersion in perspectives not otherwise possible. Over the course of the pandemic, when ‘Lockdowns’ and travel bans meant people had their perspectives dramatically shrink, the freedom and mobility The LFTT Library van supported was nothing short of wondrous.