Initially, I was confused by the ‘Sleuths, Spies and Lies’ theme to the ‘Origins’ project as I couldn’t quite grasp the idea of approaching a brief as a ‘detective’, but after discussing it with other students on the course and seeing how they were going to approach it, I began to understand what was being asked of me.
We were presented with a large list of places, objects and people associated with Manchester. With no idea of a direction or motive, only that I wanted to base it on a building, I chose the ‘Town Hall’. I have done something similar during my Foundation and looking back now, was probably the reason I felt comfortable with it.
After a week or so, I still didn’t understand how I was going to respond to the brief as a ‘detective’ so decided to forget about it completely and start with the basics. I produced first hand observations of the building’s exterior, using techniques I was practicing in the drawing workshops at the time. I then automatically began to observe the interior or the building, developing colour palettes, photographs and quick sketches to establish a starting point. I then analysed my responses and noticed the linear style that I was drawing in, which resembled the very linear aspects of the Town Hall’s architecture.
It was from then on that my project began to go in its own direction as I used the idea of lines to develop it. I recorded myself walking around the Town Hall, however access was restricted to just the ground floor that day, hence the title of the film, ‘Limited Access’. The idea behind the film was that I would take the line I walked and use it to produce a body of work for both in and out of my sketchbook.
