Guest Lecture with Dale Holmes
Dale Holmes is not only an artist, sculptor, painter, but he also authors stories, is a cyclist and draws; making him an incredibly well rounded individual, it also makes him fascinating to me.
Holmes was inspired by Dauchamp's 'The Creative Act'. One of the quotes I found interesting from that work is "The artist may shout from all rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declaration take a social value..."
Essentially, what is being said here is the artist relies on the audience's support and understanding of their work. That art, without being seen, has no social value. Perhaps that is why so many artists become famous posthumously. Because it is only then some talent is discovered. However, I think art in general holds value. Even if it is only value in relation to the artist, I don't think any art is completely valueless.
For my major project, I am wanting to incorporate text alongside the images within the book I am hoping to produce at the end of the year- both my own musings and collaborations with other writers.
One of his written works, entitled 'The Stone That Crashed into the Kneecap was not Moving' is a reimagining of cycling incidents throughout three different texts, the third of which is centred around an incident at the Tour de France in which a cyclist went over a wall during the race. The events described by Holmes are completely hypothesised. Within the text, Holmes speculates that it was a stone that had severely damaged the athlete's kneecap to such an extent. The moment that he describes was an unseen one and it is likely to remain a mystery as to what really happened to cause such an injury. He then persisted to fictionalise the stone by assuming what kind of stone caused the injury and where it came from. I have come to the conclusion that this is quite a unique response to a significant event but also a rather creative one. Instead of just accepting the incident and all it is unknown parts, Holmes theorised and created this whole narrative around what potentially happened.
Whist I was researching into Holmes, I came across his website, with the intentions of going back through this particular text. I must confess to you, that I was rather disappointed with how ablest his website was. For this webpage in particular, there was no offer of a written version of the texts and the video itself offered no captions or subtitles. This means if someone who was deaf was wanting access to the texts, they would have no way of doing so. This did, however, get me thinking about ways in which I could potentially make my work more accessible to people with disabilities, such as an audio book; it would be simple enough, even going as far as to maybe describe my images within the audio.
Back to the performance piece, during which we see Holmes shaving his legs while reciting his texts. Leg shaving is a preponderant part of cycling culture for a number of reasons; one of which is it increases the aerodynamics of the cyclist; another of which implies it is easier for wounds to be cleaned.
The next thing I would like to talk about in terms of Dale Holmes, is his studio space which purely consists of just his bike. Holmes' studio is wherever he cycles to. He gets inspired on his trips then when he arrives home, he sits down and writes about it. This kind of moving studio is an interesting concept and the more I thought about it, the more I realised that as a photographer, it is something that we do naturally. Our camera is our most basic studio. Sure, we sometimes need extra equipment like fill in flash and an abundance of lenses, but you will find most photographers automatically carry these anyway when going out with our cameras as our camera bags that travel with us, are often prepacked with these things just in case. All we really need is our camera on a nice sunny day. Objects and subjects are completely relative depending on what you are doing in terms of your photographic field. For instance, if you are taking landscapes then even having people in shot is less preferable. On a light day you do not need any extra flash to take a decent portrait, so our studios as photography practitioners is just wherever we have access to a camera. To some extent this is an oversimplification of photography, and I would recommend more equipment for a larger scale shoot, but for a small one, this is a rather sweet sentiment.
In terms of the way cyclists look, we see very thin bodies with muscular legs. Unlike my discussions on women and body standards, this physique comes from copious amounts of exercise and so is an actual representation of a healthy body, which is something that should be promoted regularly in our culture, health over aesthetic. When I was talking to my professor, Alex Coles, we began discussing what cyclists wear, which is lycra. He disclosed to me "if I wore that I wouldn't look right." Which I found rather thought provoking, as while my work focuses on women's perceptions of their bodies, this quote from a male educator implies that men are affected too by ideas of beauty, and often think about how they are outwardly perceived.
If this post has peeked your interest in Dale Holmes, you can find his website here.
Blog word count: 921
References:
Holmes, D. (2022,10,21). Dale Holmes: The Mobile Studio Studio [Class notes]. Art, Design and Architecture.
Holmes, D. (N.D). The stone that crashed into the kneecap was not moving. Dale Holmes.
https://www.daleholmes.co.uk/the-stone-that-crashed-into-the-kneecap
Duchamp, M. (1950). The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp. Thames and Hudson.