This work started with a postcard of a couple standing up to their knees in the sea looking away from the camera out to the horizon. This spoke to a long term togetherness and sense of peace and wellbeing to the artist who brought it to the group.
The collaborating artist who received it next saw it differently, to her the couple seemed separate even though they shared a space. She saw the woman waiting for the man, who stood further out that she did, with his attention elsewhere. This artist brought a collection of quotes and images which resonated with this for her. She also wrote a poem from the woman's perspective exploring what might be in her mind, and a collage on the back of a cereal packet in which coloured shapes were connected to each other via string, in a web of attachments.
Photograph from one collaborating artist's personal collection
A Wordsworth quote
A photograph of Anthony Gormley's Another Place sculptures
The artist who received it next tried to unify these two very different responses to the original image by cutting the image up and swapping the figures over so that they now gazed out to sea in the same direction. Words from the poem were collaged over each figure, This felt like it gave the pair a shared purpose, bringing them back together while giving them each a level of independence.
The last artist unified all the previous work and took this resolution further by creating a diorama out of the two collages; the one from the postcard and the cereal packet collage - in which was stored the poem, tied in a bow. Holes were punched through the front image so glimpses of the poem and the collage behind could be seen, providing access to the whole journey of the piece and the work that goes on behind the scenes of any sense of resolution.