The Hide

A short film first shown in the solo exhibition, "below, the rocks fell into darkness" at the Studio Pavilion, Glasgow, May - July 2018. The film was shot on super 16mm digital format. Dur. 9'17"

The film records the passing of time in a wildlife hide on the west coast of Scotland. The hide allows the viewer to look upon the landscape through a long, panoramic viewing aperture. It looks out onto the land and water in a location where time is governed by the inexorable regularity of the tide. It’s mid-summer. The wind rifles through leaves, insects hover, and the camera examines the space viewed from the hide, but also of the hide itself. It’s a place that is almost a pause in the landscape, a place to view a pause in the landscape. Nothing happens. We just watch and wait.

Below, the rocks plunged into darkness

still from "a darkening" super 16mm digital film, 4'33"

Here's a link to my current exhibition at the studio pavilion at the house for an art lover.
https://www.houseforanartlover.co.uk/arts/exhibitions-projects/studio-pavilion-exhibiton

last light - first light II

L Punton, film still - last light 2014, Castle Tioram, Moidart

L Punton, film still - first light 2015, Castle Tioram, Moidart

stilled life with moving trees - a bothy project residency at Inshriach

Inshriach Bothy

view from the porch

I arrived during a week of gales. The Cairngorms are windy at the best of times, yet I’m accustomed to being on the brittle granite plateau where the combination of altitude and the persistence of the wind creates a sub arctic landscape, a place where plants hug the land tightly. However because of the wind’s excessive force and unpredictable cloud level, the snow covered plateau became essentially out of bounds.

arrival at the bothy

I found myself walking in the lower areas of the Cairngorms, along the passes, up into the more modest hills adjacent to the plateau, to hidden lochans, and into the forests – Inshriach and Rothiemurchus, generally less familiar territory for me since I usually seek out high places.

The trees became the most dominant part of my experience. Sat in an elevated hollow, surrounded by a wood of silver birch interspersed with dwarf juniper, the bothy is quite protected and sheltered. Unless you know it’s there, or happen to walk close along the trail, you’d probably be oblivious to its very existence. I spent a good deal of time watching the trees and their movement, and listening to their sound, mixed in with the white noise of the River Spey which flowed in spate and flood nearby.

birch, pine, heather, juniper

 stilled life with moving trees (video documentation of my residency)

I came with a loose idea of some work I could make, thinking that a plan would be wise, but soon abandoned it, and learned to leave preconceived notions well alone, and simply be with the place. Nan Shepherd’s text, the living mountain guided me well in this sense, (and, struck by it’s notable absence on the bothy’s bookshelves, I popped out to Aviemore to buy a copy to leave as a gift).

The work didn’t come, but the time to think, and reassess aspects of my life and practice did, and I felt the repercussions of the trip perhaps more clearly once I returned home. I needed the time away, the space to be undisturbed by modern distractions such as the compulsion to check email. Technology has become particularly invasive and guilty of creating a syncopated rhythm to lifes that can be led more simply. 

As someone who has always loved solitude, I don’t think I’d appreciated how difficult complete solitude is however (thank goodness for a battery powered radio playing Radio 4!). Inshriach can be a quiet place, but on reading the bothy book, it’s clear that for most people, residencies here are anything but solitary, and spur on collaboration.

An Lochan Uaine through Caledonian Pine

from the summit shelter cairn of Meall a' Bhuachaille

But the motion of walking is an antidote to too much solitary sitting and thinking, and a journey to the Lochan Uaine, an unexpectedly bright green lochan nestled amongst the Caledonian pine trees of the Ryvoan Pass, became like a visit to an old, dear friend. Onwards to Ryvoan, and some shelter from the wind for lunch, I made a spur of the moment decision to climb Meall a' Bhuachaille, and despite ferocious winds which made standing near the summit difficult, the addictive lure of a vista, of expansiveness, and of physical exertion made it worth while.

the Cairngorms and Rothiemurchus

Back in the environs of the bothy, life settles into a regular rhythm. Wake up, go to the loo (a composting loo a hundred yards from the bothy), light wood stove, place large urn of water on stove to heat, go back to bed and read or listen to radio until bothy warms up, put the kettle on the trangia (I cheated and cooked on a combination of the wood stove and my trusty Trangia 27), have breakfast, shower (deliciously) outside with the water previously heated on the stove, dress, collect wood from the bottom of the hill in rucksack, re-fill the tea urn with water from the Spey, rest of day is for leisure – reading, writing, drawing, walking, eating,.. At nightfall, light candles, last wood on the stove at 6pm(ish) so that the bed platform isn’t too warm later, retire to bed around 9 or 10, ...etc.

On my last morning, I wake up to snow, the landscape again transformed. After a hot outdoor shower, with the snow still falling, I pack my things, then make the couple of trips back to the car parked almost a mile down the trail, food supplies diminished, and my load lighter than when I arrived. The weight of the city had also been lifted, and I'm reminded (if I ever really need such a thing) that part of me needs to be in the wild. I anticipate being reunited with my 3 year old son, so the departure isn't unwelcome in the way it would have been years ago, but the bothy, a perfectly formed small space packed with the essentials for good living, sends me on my way, nourished, and replete.

the bothy at dusk

nautical twilight

book found in the bothy library

a sun dog through the birch trees

the view North

With thanks to Walter Micklethwait and everyone at Inshriach, and to Bobby Niven of The Bothy Project

all images L Punton, 2014

João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva

some more 16mm films from João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva:

experiments and observations on different kinds of air**

The forthcoming exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham of the work of João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva should be worth seeing. I was hugely impressed by them in Venice earlier in the year in their show experiments and observations on different kinds of air. In amongst the usual lagoon of mediocrity that can be found in Venice, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva in the Portugese Pavillion showed a series of short silent 16mm & 35mm films that held the viewer with a quiet beauty and poetry not found anywhere else in the national pavillions this year.

(Their films are) "the study of singular phenomena in an effort to understand the world, the affection of a scientific methodology, and the understanding of poetry as a possible means of capturing an only partially discernable world...

João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva.
3 Suns, 2009, 16mm film, colour, no sound, 0’50’’

...Through their films and experiments, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva also invoke this hypothesis of other metaphysical abysms with a rather particular sense of humour. Recognising the failure of approximations of the real, they unpeel scientific absurdities to trace new laws in poetry. An adventure in "pataphysics" that presents what may be considered the greatest of all failures: the failure of the ego and its imprisonment, the impossibility of direct access to truth and a mocking and hallucinatory search, whose end is perceivably unreachable." (Natxo Checa)

**A title drawing on the work of the British chemist, physicist and theologian Joseph Priestley (1733-1804). He carried out experiments with electricity and air and for the first time isolated oxygen in a gaseous state. 

On the Movement of the Fried Egg and Other Astronomical Bodies will be on show at the Icon Gallery between 3rd February – 21 March 2010
 

Zabriskie Point

Simon Starling - "Wilhelm Noack oHG"

Wilhelm Noack oHG is a company of metal fabricators in Berlin – this work was made both with and about them. They manufactured the spiral sculpture that the film runs through, and the film in turn documents the making of the sculpture.

I filmed this in the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale 2009