In October 2019 Found Theatre will be bringing ‘White Light White Peak’ to our theatre and gallery space. The exhibition will run from October 3rd - 10th with the performance on the final night of the exhibition (October 10th). To book tickets for the live performance click here.
We spoke to Simon from Found Theatre to get an insight into the themes and inspiration behind the exhibition and performance.
What is your background/the background of your group? (How long have you been a practising professional, when was the group founded, previous projects etc.)
I trained as an actor, originally, but quickly started to create my own work for the theatre, firstly as a site-specific theatre maker, working in some very wild places and then as a writer. It was during this phase of my career that I started getting into photography, as the productions were by their nature highly photogenic. I only started to take my self seriously as a photographer when other people told me I had an eye for it. At about the same time I got more and more into poetry and the subjects for both poems and photographs began to merge, quite naturally. Around ten years ago I moved to the White Peak area of Derbyshire and it is my life here that is the source of inspiration for this current work – as the title suggests.
What is the name of the exhibition?
White Light White Peak. The musically knowledgeable might realise that is it a play on “White Light White Heat” – the title track from an album by The Velvet Underground. Every time I picked up the local Ordnance Survey map “Peak District: White Peak”, this hypnotic track would play in my head. When I realised that I wanted the photography to be in black-and-white, it became a no-brainer as a title for the whole project – so much of it is all about the clean light we get up here.
What materials have you used to create the work in the exhibition?
The black-and-white prints are on both canvas and aluminium sheets. Something about the clean texture of aluminium chimes well with the monochrome images, while the canvas brings a feel of classic landscape painting to the wider subject.
What have you taken inspiration from to create this exhibition?
It is all about my feelings for the natural world, and our place within it. As with “the live experience” and the book, there is also a journey through the seasons, with different kinds of weather an important part of the changes in mood.
What made you chose West Studios when deciding where you should exhibit your work?
We are performing in the theatre space here, so having the gallery adjacent was an obvious draw. When I saw the space, with plain white walls and so much gorgeous natural light, I realised it was perfect for the exhibition.