Patricia Townsend works with photography, video and installation. She draws on psychoanalysis, myth, and religion to create dreamlike pieces which explore the borderline between fantasy and reality. Her current work, supported by an Arts Council Award, explores notions of the sacred and has been inspired by the stone circles of Cumbria. Installation pieces, using photography and video, link elements of the history of the circles to legends, myths and sacred geometry. Orbit is a series of photographic prints referencing the fact that many stone circles are thought to be aligned with the position of the moon at key times of the year. The positon of the images reflects the movement of the moon over the stone circles. Moonstones is a series of photographic prints constructed from photographs of the surfaces of stones at the stone circle sites. The Circles they Desire consists of a stone cairn surrounded by a circle of eight TV monitors showing videos of crackling fire. The cairn references the fact that piles of stones, thought to be burial chambers, have been found in the centre of many stone circles. In this configuration, the monitors represent the stones of the circle. The fiery ring references the many myths and legends about the search for the self in which a sleeper (usually a princess) is surrounded by fire or other hazard that the hero has to pass in order to wake her (e.g. Brunnhilde in Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle)
Patricia also creates short non-narrative video works. She uses a fixed camera position and concentrates on minimal changes and transformations that might otherwise go unnoticed. The resulting pieces have a mesmeric effect and tend to induce a meditative state of mind in the viewer. These works are primarily intended for the gallery or other public spaces where viewers are free to watch the piece for as long as they choose. However, they have also been shown internationally in short film and video screenings.
In her earlier work, Patricia used darkroom techniques of montage to merge landscape with the human figure in surreal images which were concerned with gender and identity, conscious and unconscious, seeing and being seen. Her black-and-white montaged photographs have appeared in a number of publications (including the Women Artist’s Diary 1991, Viewfindings – Women Photographers, Landscape and Environment (Availablelight. 1994), Nexus: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Women’s Photography; Volume 6 Palpable Signs (Scarlet Press, 1999)). She received a London Arts Board award to develop Transforming Myth, a series of installation pieces using montaged black-and-white photographs together with sound and text to retell the stories of seven female characters from Greek myth. This work drew on psychoanalysis to re-examine these myths and relate them to contemporary issues.
Resume
Patricia Townsend was born in Wrawby, England in 1947. She read Physics at Somerville College Oxford, trained and practised as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and gained her MA Photography (Distinction) at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, in 2003. She has recently received an Arts Council Award to develop work for her forthcoming solo exhibition inspired by the stone circles of Cumbria.
Patricia’s photography and installation works have been exhibited widely, including Huddersfield Art Gallery, Herefordshire Photography Festival, Newlyn Orion Gallery and The National Museum of Photography, Bradford. She received a London Arts Board Individual Artist’s Award for Transforming Myth (Solo exhibition Gallery 1885, London,1999; TRACE, 2000). Her photographic images have appeared in a number of publications including Viewfindings – Women Photographers, Landscape and Environment, (Availablelight, 1994), Palpable Signs (Volume 6 of Nexus: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Women’s Photography. Scarlet Press 1999) and Surface (University of Plymouth Press, 2005).
Patricia’s video pieces have been shown nationally and internationally both in gallery exhibitions (including Art Gene, Barrow-in-Furness; raumpool A.V. Frankfurt and Hirschl Contemporary Art, London) and in film and video screenings (including Fotofest 2004, Houston, Texas, Neuer Standort, Vienna, Austria and the Leeds International Film Festival, 2004).
For further information visit
