OUGD602 - Visiting Professional - Talk at Harewood House - Lord Whitney and Geraldine Pilgrim

Harewood House - Lord Whitney and Geraldine Pilgrim 

Harewood House 

- Aim to tell a story of the people who worked at Harewood House and bring the past to life through exhibitions 
- Art allows people to access places and allows the public to see the collections in a new light 

Geraldine Pilgrim 

- Went to London St Martins and had an interest in Theatre and Art so went into Performance Art as a way of combining the two 
- She set up a visual theatre company and works on site specific work / performance and site specific installations
- Her work is shown to small audiences with lots of showings to allow people to properly experience the work 
- She works in spaces that already have history  
- Site specific work is about finding a space and being inspired by it, using the space and history of the place to inform the work created within it  
- A site specific installation uses the same principles but the work stays within the space afterwards 
- Research is heavily embedded in her work
- The company works with local groups and young people to create the performances or work 
- The works are her vision however she works with other people to create them 
- The site specific installation she created for Harewood House reflects the family history of Thomas Chippendale and the tree combined with the wooden bed reflects how wood comes from a tree.
- She said it was important not to categorise yourself otherwise you will be limited to what you can do

Lord Whitney (Rebecca and Lins) on their Seeds of Hope Exhibition

- Work as Art Directors and Set Designers
- They didn't want to be pigeon holed in to a specific type of work so titled themselves as the Connoissers of Make Believe
- They aim to create worlds with a focus on creating immersive and experiential work for adverts, brands and events
- It is not a bad thing to have different interests and like different disciplines 
- Their Studio is at Scott Hall Mills
- They work across different industries such as music, immersive, adverts, Arts Council etc 
- Worked for people such as ITV Creatives and Nicki Manaj
- Sometimes they work on a job from start to finish and it is their vision, other times they have a purely making / construction role of someone elses vision / direction
- They have  Lord Whitney Bible in which they write down DIY techniques and things that they've learnt from doing a project so that they have a record of how to do things for other projects 
- Their job includes a lot of research, prop making and sourcing, practical elements, attention to detail and being good at working out the practicalities of something 
- They often collaborate with other people to allow projects to be more manageable and they work with people with similar interests to themselves
- The Wood Beneath the World project aimed to move away from the commercialism of Christmas to create a new type of Christmas Experience. There wasn't much time available so the ambitiousness of the set allowed the work to mean different things to different people and create stories of their own.
- After graduation they did temp jobs and any creative work that came to them as well as doing personal projects 
- It is important to keep setting mini creative briefs to keep you going when their is perhaps less work 
- After uni they lost a little of their creative feeling and needed to get back into it 
- Sometimes project ideas need to be downscaled depending on the project 
- They sometimes do extra work on passion projects especially if its something they want in their portfolio

Seeds of Hope Exhibition 

- The exhibition is supposed to be a living breathing immersive experience 
- The project was heavily researched with lots of details within the project tied to research
- It tells complex wider stories that were happening through the war through the stories of individuals 
- Allows the public to connect to these stories 
- Characters represent key themes in the story
- The story was developed by them and fleshed out by a writer 
- The exhibition would be open for a long time (4 months) so the use of a guide / journal would help and guide people around the place and story within the exhibition 
- Because of the length of time the exhibition would be on the work had to be a site specific installation rather than a performance 
- For set design they create initial design sheets of ideas of  how they envisage it will look (moodboard) 
- They used things that already existed on site 
- They aimed to create two distinct feels to the different rooms 
- Using Sketch Up allows them to model / show how the layout of the design would work. Combining this with design sheets allows them to show the mood and layout of the design that they aim to create
- They created visual ties within the set from the writing in the journal 
- Historical references were created buy buying original items or creating them 
- The exhibition meets the needs of different audiences, some may like history, others like the sense / atmosphere or trying to find all the different elements 
- The guide took inspiration from autograph books and used different handwriting for different people within the story 
- They also influenced what was grown in the garden, with the flowers used representing peace and vegetables were planted with old tools 
- Historical pieces were used as reference to design graphic elements in the set and details were added such as names
- The sound design was created using objects in an experimental way e.g. tools scraping