Biography for Nunnery show

(in)visible exchange
live photographic performance in the Nunnery closet (durational)
28 February-2nd March 2008

Harriet is a visual artist and educator based in South London. She specialises in creating, teaching and co-ordinating projects within the visual and interactive arts, experimenting with live performance and media arts.

Her current MA work explores theories in the work of Roland Barthes and Tino Sehgal, the first for his theories of the ‘mortality’ of the paper based photograph as an ‘impossible’ record of ‘now,’ and the latter for the fleeting materiality of his art works. Harriet is researching principals of non-matrixed theatre and audience participation through the subversion of time based media practices. She pushes the temporal nature of performance through marrying with the temporal nature of photography, placing the process of image making intrinsically at the heart of an intimate performative experience. In (in)visible exchange, made site-specifically for this Nunnery show, stories told in a closet surface momentarily through a photogrammed memory of objects, referencing those tucked away spaces maybe under the stairs, amateur darkroom in the attic, child’s den, inventors quiet paradise to be able to sit and consider one’s thoughts, make new discoveries, or share secrets. The fleeting exchange of memories between two strangers is, as is the problem with photography, of the moment that has passed. This performance thus culminates in marking this fact through the death of the photographs created, as either to become treasured relics, art objects or to emerge carefully under the door of the closet denoting the end of a period of togetherness as two strangers then leave one another.

Previous work has seen Harriet creating a photographic installation exploring invisible performances in a commercial setting. In Give me a new look in August 2007, she asked shop assistants at stores on Oxford Street to give her a new image based entirely on their perceptions and to photograph with a disposable camera the outfits for her, posed as though requesting them for her partner to see how ‘good’ she could look. Other work has included collaborations fusing her work with other arts practitioners be it creating illustrative or interactive visuals for sound art, music, movement, spoken word. She has had a range of visual commissions including for large scale visual-music-theatre work, Sedna Stories, composed by Kerry Andrew, and a collaboration with voice (acapella group, juice), ensemble and electronica artist Paul J Abbott which premiered in York, in 2005 and then Cargo, London June 2006. This work embodied the theatricality of Inuit folk tales. In July 2006 she created a visual score (film) for silent improvisation for Hausmusik (Claudia Molitor – Klangsieben and Sound Source series for spnm - Society for promotion of new music) In September 2006, she created a film played live to sound art performance Solar Noise Generation (SNG- Ash Sargant -!PLOVA) screened as part of Wormhole Saloon at the Whitechapel Art Gallery London. In March 2007 she created live visuals for Gobsmack, an experimental vocals night at The Spitz, London.

Harriet is heavily involved in visual arts and design education, with a variety of experiences in directing, teaching and collaborating within local and international schools, colleges and communities. She is currently on sabbatical leave from her post as Director of Visual Arts and Design at the BRIT School for Performing and Creative Arts in South London, where she champions interdisciplinary and interactive arts projects.

Harriet has a Foundation in Art (Chelsea College of Art and Design, 1994,) BA (Hons) Fine Art (Staffordshire University, 1997) PGCE Art and Design (UWIC, 1998) and PGCERT: Innovation in Education (Warwick University, 2006) and is currently studying MA Theatre: Visual Language of Performance at Wimbledon College of Art.

harrietpoole@gmail.com
http://harrietpoole.blogspot.com
07900 563631

Please contact me for further information, to comment on my work or discuss it further

(in)visible exchange was developed from an original work in progress idea between Harriet Poole and Laura Smith, Cause for an Action, January 2008.