Tsuyu / Plum Rain
Karen Heald & Susan Matthews, 2025
Time is a material which appears to metamorphosize, becoming more ‘unmeasureable’ and ‘messy’ the further we explore it, creating more questions than answers.
Water in all its diverse forms has been a current theme within my moving images - Frozen Seas, Intangible Fluidity, and The Timekeeper and the Hour Glass, all conveying a painterly aesthetic. The latter film, a collaboration between Susan Matthews and Karen Heald, features unfamiliar locations, where the spatial ‘in-between-ness’ within the film footage and sound conveys the sea, as a kind of a place that is not a place. As in its various states sea-water itself can be classified as homogeneous as well as a heterogeneous mixture.
Together we are attempting to articulate the abstractness of time via the visual analysis of artist moving image and sound art through poetic nonlinear aspects of time and space, Collaborating on Tsuyu/Plum Rain enabled us to test this out further by creating a new audio-visual installation that explores the Metamorphoses of Time. Incorporating contemporary footage filmed during a recent visit to Japan, in June the ‘month of water’. Here we have explored water in different complexities: raindrops, streams, mist, ritual pools etc – in juxtaposed slow paced and high speed environments.
We are also exploring the development of our personal collaborative relationship which began 20 years ago with the work Pra II (2005). Having reconnected in 2023 we are exploring the themes through our working relationship.
梅雨 Tsuyu / Plum Rain: Visual Analysis in Contemporary Art was presented at the International Conference on Metamorphoses of Time, held at the Institute of English and American Studies, University of Gdańsk, Poland from 28th -30th May, 2025.
Tsuyu / Plum Rain the dual audio visual installation was exhibited at Ty Pawb, international gallery in Wrexham, Wales.
One screen exhibited a 7’ 07” slow paced variation of triptych and diptych montages with images captured in Japan, and Wales, featuring images from the second screen and an experimental electroacoustic sound track.
The second screen with a duration of 10’ 26” presented fast paced images intermittently showing glimpses of abstract and representational industrial scapes and rural scenery in Japan. The glitching sound resonates with the moving images.
The two screens, set on industrial structural stands faced away from each other and situated back to back. The two sound tracks merged to complete a cacophony, as the film’s durations enabled audiences to move around the sculptural forms, experiencing different sensory experiences.
Ensuing artworks will be progressed by Karen and Susan for further exhibitions and dissemination.
Tsuyu / Plum Rain I, duration 7’ 07”, Karen Heald & Susan Matthews (2025).
Tsuyu / Plum Rain II, duration 10’ 26”, Karen Heald & Susan Matthews (2025).
Tsuyu / Plum Rain, brief documentation of installation, Karen Heald & Susan Matthews (2025).