essays by Nicky Hamlyn, Mark Edwards, Ed Baxter
edited by Sandra Drew
Richardson spent a year in King’s Wood filming through the seasons. In her resulting 16mm film, 'Aspect', the forest year is condensed into a few minutes. The book places this newly commissioned film in the context of her two previous films, 'Redshift' and 'Nocturne', and uses still images as well as clips from all three to illustrate her use of light and shadow to abstract the real environment in which light is the main protagonist.
Artist Benedict Drew has created the soundtrack to all Richardson’s films, recording on location and manipulating the sounds on a laptop computer. In 'Aspect', fragments of unconscious forest noise – ants in their anthill, the wind across the forest floor, the crack of a twig – are reconfigured into an audio piece which articulates the film (and the forest) in an illusive and ambiguous way. A CD of the soundtrack accompanies the book, which includes artist biographies. Published to coincide with the premiere screening of Aspect in King’s Wood, September 2004.