INTRODUCTION: WHERE I'M LOOKING

History has always fascinated me. Ever since I was a small boy, flicking through old family photographs or reading tall tales of yesteryear, I have been led a merry dance by notions of memory and the communicating of the past. This ultimately served as a technicolour gateway to the imagination.

What is remembered and what is not and how it is presented. How it is framed within our collective consciousness, and the relationship that we have with the near and distant past, both public and private. As an artist I find I am drawn to the theatricality of the event-orientated, human-dependent, black and white history which is presented to us.

Notions of truth, belief, authenticity, consequence and allegiance are great starting points for all sorts of artistic intervention. Our capacity to acknowledge, accept, turn on or turn off fascinates me.

The framing of an event or a sequence of actions and the considered translation of inter-related periods of perceived time are relevant in terms of my subject matter and with regard to my practice as a whole. History collects, frames and orders events. This is reflected in a practice that constantly relies on the control and processing of the documentation of both one-off and series of events.

The idea of 'staging' and the tools used to 'stage' have greatly influenced my interest in potentially manipulating and re-evaluating memories of the past and the presentation and processing of events in the present. As a fine artist my work has always had a theatrical essence, be it through the use of scripted dialogue, props, characters, the installation of a set or backdrop, or a less specific use of perceived narrative. It seemed a natural transition to make from fine art to scenography.

I have been involved in a number of interesting projects both in the UK and beyond. These include designing productions for the National Theatre of Scotland, work with a number of international opera companies and most recently a number of site-specific theatre productions in which the relationship between the audience and the world created is more akin to an art installation than to a traditional theatre context.

My work as a theatre designer has afforded me an entirely new language which I have subsequently translated within a gallery setting. There is a continual dialogue between the two creative practices which constructively informs, inspires, and offers the tools to negotiate a solution within both spheres which in turn reflect back on each other. As my earlier artworks drew from theatrical form and ephemera, so my theatre work is now informed by the photographic, sculptural, and compositional sense acquired through years of artistic intervention and investigation, quite separate from the theatre world I now inhabit.

It has been my clear intention to push both disciplines as far as possible in the same direction, whereby the line between one and the other is redundant and both forms of installation are regarded as a single body of work. I aim to develop the different potential relationships that can exist between a static or fluid audience in the contrasting contexts of gallery and theatre, and challenge the expectations of the work in each. I hope to educate myself and the audience as this conversation between white cube and black box progresses over time.

ART: HOW I'M LEANING

Over the last ten years my fine art practice has covered many media and assumed the language of various disciplines. In 2003, as part of AKA, we aimed to explore the dialogue between architecture, music and film. In more recent years the crossover between fine art and theatre design has been the focus of my attention. My 2009 exhibition "Far Removed", was the culmination of a number of years artistic development in which I have aimed to express my personal theatrical vocabulary within a fine art context.

I have used the tools of stagecraft - scale models, technical drawing and set-building, to convey a mixture of languages in which the audience becomes performer, and the space becomes tied into a dialogue between an evoked story, an atmospheric effect, and a sense of the ghostly inanimate.

"Office Head", the centrepiece of the exhibition, was a fully realised theatre set - an environment deep in narrative potential but without any prescribed performers. The audience was able to walk through this theatrically lit environment with accompanying soundscape, projecting a scenario upon themselves as they moved from one strand of onstage fakery to an equally evocative backstage environment. Framed so as to distinguish the separation of performer and viewer, the visiting public could assume both roles. Run off a series of digital timers, the space transformed itself in seven minute segments of contrasting light and sound. Thus dawn, midday, midnight and dreams were all evoked, saturating the same space in very different ways.

Another piece, "Line Runs - Mother and Son (after Vinaver)" took a play in which mother and son talk to each other, splitting into two videos in which respective actors, filmed in profile and installed facing each other, read their lines. When these two separate exercises play out alongside one another, looping at different regularities, a continually evolving dialogue is created between the two protagonists in which they sometimes appear to be talking to themselves, at other times in bizarre conversation, and at other times interrupting one another with seemingly irrational statements.

Exhibiting again, after a period of time away from the gallery context, has excited me and there are now a large number of related ideas which I would like to further explore. Specifically, there is a chamber piece I would like to develop, the natural extension to "Line Runs", only working on a much larger scale, working with a large cast of actors. This would use a play with over twenty characters, each filmed independently reading their respective lines and looping accordingly. As a sculptural intervention of television sets talking to one another it would create an incredible cacophony of argument, insult and reflection.

I would also like to work with a fight director to develop a film work exploring the choreography of 'fake' violence. This would potentially take a fight between two characters as a template, in which filmed as a 360 degree pan and slowed down could be seen at times as brutal, at other moments comic and even poetic.

Another area I would like to develop is that of model making. Working as a stage designer, one becomes used to a world in miniature, automatically thinking artistically in 1:25 scale, there are number of sculptural works I have begun to develop which explore the role of the model both as a projection of something 'real' in the future, as well as potentially a reflection, diagram or 3D illustration of something that has happened or has been remembered.

THEATRE: WHAT I'M BUILDING

I feel that my theatrical journey has hardly begun. I have been fortunate to have enjoyed the support and inspiration of a number of theatre practitioners who have made the transition to theatre design an exhilarating and enjoyable step forward. After an initial period in Glasgow working on a range of projects, I moved to London to study on the post-graduate Motley theatre design course. I now split my time between the two places, and enjoy the benefits of embracing both artistic communities.

What has always excited me most about theatre is the way it functions as a collaborative mixing pot of talent, combining the voices, eyes, ears and opinions of many for the greater good. While respecting the traditions of British theatre, I am instinctively wary of treating a script with too much reverance. It is an essential piece of any jigsaw, but the magic exists when taking the instructions on a page as a starting point for creativity, not as an end in itself. If it were thus, we would be better just reading the script and having done with it. Ultimately, we are in the game of creating experiences that touch, stimulate, provoke and educate, whilst also offering a glimpse of some parallel reality. I feel that this is most engagingly achieved as a result of writers, directors, designers, choreographers, composers and performers sharing the creative mantle.

A designer is essentially a problem solver. They digest the varying practical and artistic impact of script, space, budget and personnel, to create a visual solution in three dimensions and in any range of colour, texture and tone. I have always had a particular interest in scene changes. How one space becomes another through either the most simple of gestures or alternatively the most spectacular of transformations. A chair repositioned takes us backwards or forwards in time, from one room into another. Conversely, there is an inevitable pay-off after an unexpected change in which a space we have become familiar or comfortable with becomes unrecognisable in a matter of moments.

Seeing is often believing, but as with all such things there is a reliance on the willing suspension of disbelief. An audience travels on the emotional and visual journey that is set out for them, but ultimately the illusionist is only a magician as long as the audience is kept captive. You mustn't allow them the breathing space to wonder where the rabbit came from.

Will Holt, May 2009