Category: Artist Studios

Return to Earth: Buzz Aldrin’s Autobiography

by Leah Clements

A book standing spine-up on a dark cherry wood surface. It is old and beaten up, worn-out blue, with faded gold lettering that just about reads: RETURN TO EARTH. More text underneath and to the side are illegible. It casts a monolithic shadow in front of itself.

I read Buzz Aldrin’s autobiography ‘Return to Earth’ in 2020/1 as part of my research for The Siren of the Deep – a solo show I did at Eastside Projects in Birmingham. The arc of it has stayed with me ever since, and is a part of this work too, so I’ve come back to it now. He describes his whole life leading up to the moon landing – achieving excellence in every stage of the specific path he’d cut out for himself (or sometimes by others), until this extreme pinnacle of achievement – something no-one else had ever done before himself and Niel Armstrong – a transcendence so astounding it had previously barely been imaginable. But then what? This is the bit I’m interested in. He ended up in a psychiatric hospital, because the depression that followed was too much to cope with. Because, what do you do after you’ve landed on the moon? 

I think this is the hole that apophany fills: the absence of epiphany.

An open book. On the left page is a black and white photo of an astronaut in their suit. In the reflection of their helmet is the sketchy figure of someone else, or perhaps just some equipment. The horizon in the reflection and behind the astronaut is black, meeting the edge of the moon they’re standing on. On the right page is text in a dated font which reads ‘RETURN TO EARTH, Colonel Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., with Wayne Warga, Random House, New York.’ A white hand holds the book open, a milky painted thumbnail pins down the left page at the bottom. The book is resting on a white surface.

The Dream Pool Backrooms

by Leah Clements

A computer generated image of a room covered in white tiles, from ceiling to walls to floor. In its centre is a circular hole in the ceiling through which a pillar extends, and a staircase spirals around. The room is half full of turquoise water. In the background, a tunnel leads elsewhere.

Since I went to Bath, I’ve been dreaming about its backrooms. Divots in sandy stone filled with green water that I can slide my arm into, an exact fit. Semi-organic cave networks getting darker and deeper, pools of water deep and shallow suspended and plunging at different levels.

Do you know about The Backrooms? They’re this concept of liminal spaces, usually devoid of living beings, that you can enter by leaving reality. There’s a Dream Pool genre of Backrooms that I’ve been following for a while, and earlier this year a game: Dreamcore, came out which holds a lot of these to explore. There’s something cyclical about recognising these as a pocket of your subconscious mind, then taking the images back into your sleep…

Another entirely tiled room. These tiles are pastel pink, and in the centre of the room is a hexagon shaped pool full of water. The room follows its shape and two doorways are opposite us, on two of the sides of the shape. One leads to darkness, it looks like a stairway downstairs. The other has a staircase upstairs, and an orange rectangular light from an unknown source illuminates it.
Another tiled space, this one dark and gloomy. It's the corner of a swimming pool from above, where the metal ladder leads into the water. It plunges down into an unrealistic depth, mysterious and dark.
A room in a 1960s minimalist style. An expanse of plain floor and ceiling space, marked only by the reflections of ripples of an oblong pool on the left. These reflections also pick out a large sphere at the back of the room, a plain sofa on the right, and some more ornamental sphere shapes, much smaller. Above the pool is a black expanse, perhaps a night sky, perhaps a blank ceiling.
A sunlit white tiled interior. The walls curve in a wavy line, a long thin pool following them, and a pillar that seems architecturally functionally useless. At least, according to waking logic.
A dark underground space, all tiled. It looks like a subway or somewhere corporate and abandoned - but only recently - a still living plant in a plant box at the right. The kind you find outside an office block. A stairway upwards leads to darkness, and an ankle-deep measure of water pervades throughout, strangely purple, showing ripples of movement from nothing we can see capable of motion. It seems lit by a torch, whilst the edges recede into blackness.
A dark white tiled space with a winding thin pool lit by spotlights from above. A rubber ring floats on its surface next to a metal ladder leading into it.
A very creepy pool interior. An abandoned public swimming pool - a colourful spiral flume at the left, and a converted industrial looking ceiling with institutional lighting. But they don't fully light the space, it's a bit too dark to be comfortable, and unnervingly misty.
A sunlit white tiled interior, half full of turquoise water. Two doorways on different wall in front of us fall back into a never-ending series of doorways behind them.

More moments

by Elora Kadir

A hand hangs out of the car window and is reflected in the wing mirror. The road behind doesn't look too busy.
A hand hangs out of the car window and is reflected in the wing mirror. The fingers are stretched out as if trying to reach or perhaps gently asking for attention. The road behind gets busier. There is a double decker bus and lorry approaching.
A hand hangs out of the car window and is reflected in the wing mirror. The fingers are straight but relaxed as if trying to gently asking for attention or maybe feeling a breeze. The road behind gets busier. There is a double decker bus and the lorry passes by.

Sometimes accidents can be so difficult to recreate. Sometimes in trying to recreate them, they can lead to new things. I loved the gentleness of the hand compared to all the noise and traffic in the background. Not sure if the gesture is quite what I’d like it to be yet.

Lullaby

by Leah Clements

Rebekah Ubuntu has been encouraging us to consider the process of this residency to be ‘the thing’. A big part of my process has been working around looking after my son, so to mark this here is a lullaby that I’ve been singing to him since he was born, recorded on my phone a while ago so he can hear it even on the rare occasion I’m not there.

Video Description: The subtitles of the song are in white text at the bottom of the screen. They overlay a background of refracted light ripples moving leisurely across sand at the bottom of the ocean. Occasionally they bounce backwards and reverse their direction.

Audio Caption: Leah sings in a bathroom – slightly echoey but small-sounding. The mic is just a phone, and sometimes distorts with the sound of breathing. The song is slow, with lots of space in between lines.

Song to the Siren | Tim Buckley

(Lyrics are slightly altered by Leah from the original)

All afloat on the shipless ocean

I did all my best to smile

‘Til your singing eyes and fingers

Drew me loving to your isle

For you sang

Sail to me

Sail to me let me unfold you

Here I am

Here I am

Waiting to hold you

Did I dream 

You dreamed about me?

Were you hare while I was fox?

Now my foolish boat is leaning

Torn lovelorn on your rocks

For you sang

Touch me not

Touch me not come back tomorrow

Oh my heart

Oh my heart

Shies from the sorrow

I’m as puzzled as a newborn child

I’m as riddled as the tide

Should I stand amid the breakers?

Should I lie with death for my bride?

And you sang

Swim to me

Swim to me let me unfold you

Here I am

Here I am

Waiting to hold you.

by Elora Kadir

Had a little moment earlier in the week feeling the breeze on my hand while in traffic. I wanted to recreate this image or at least experiment with this idea a little more but then some barriers got in the way (broken lifts) so I’ve been stuck indoors for a couple days.

An arm hangs out a car window t on a tree-lined street In London. The car's side mirror reflects the hand feeling a gentle breeze. It is a sunny day.

by Elora Kadir

A solid medium orange color background
A solid muted coral-pink color background
A solid warm beige or tan color background

Some colours I noticed dominating previous images I have taken. I had it in my head that I wanted to use more colour in any potential new work. I wondered if some previous work could inform what those colours could be…?

Experimenting…

by Leah Clements

Today I’ve been testing out an experimental way of filming, which I’ll use to make part of the work. Here is a little peek at what’s to come…

ID: Out of the darkness appears a stream of white light. It refracts into rainbow colours, then reassembles its original colour, slipping in and out of pink yellow and blue and back to white again. Waves of more defined lines flow like ripples, but smokey – lighter than water.

At the Altar

by Leah Clements

‘Those seeking divine help for an illness or affliction might rest overnight in special temple buildings. On waking, priests of the Roman god of healing, Aesculapius, helped them interpret their dreams or visions’

I made it to the temple.

A museum banner in a pillared 18th century interior. On it is a Roman sculpted face, obscured on shadow and picked out on dramatic light. It reads ‘the goddess awaits you at the temple of Sulis Minerva’
A stone sculpted head in a dark space. It’s on a plinth and its mouth and nose have eroded away, leaving blank eyes and and impressive plaited hair arrangement like a crown over her head.
A coffin underfoot, under glass. It is small and yellowish, made of an unknown material. It is enclosed at one end, and warped by its two thousand years.
Behind a statue, its cape hanging in folds, we look down upon the green bath from a height. The statue’s counterparts face it opposite, along the walkway which follows around the edge of the bath. Each of them is permanently posed, guarding or adorning the watery centre.
Up close at the corner of the bath. The cut stone corner descends in steps, the water consumes them in its milky green opacity.
A central view of the bath from the bathside: a green rectangular body of water, Roman pillars surrounding it. A small walkway runs behind the pillars, ending at ancient walls. Above, statues line a balcony, and the windows of other old (but perhaps less ancient) buildings surround it.

Image IDs in Alt Text, Video IDs here:

  1. A green body of water, edged in stone. At this corner, a flat rock – perhaps an ancient seat – is laid over a stream trickling underneath it, from a source behind, into the milky green pool. We zoom out and see more of the walkway behind, and the length of the bath. Pillars surround the edge of the pool, receding into darkness behind. We zoom back in to the gentle trickling. 
  2. Hot steaming water gushes out of an arched hole. Dark and underground, its surfaces stained orange by sulphur or some mysterious element.
  3. A hot, bubbling green thermal spring. It is contained by straight stone edges, cut into a square with a corner lopped off where the wall of a building in the same material meets it.  We zoom into the bubbles, becoming consumed by it.
  4. Water rippling gently in the sun, down its shallow stone path. The surface underneath is stained orange by something, something invisible in the clear water. It flows underneath a stone slab, and into its destination: the large body of green water. We follow its small journey.

REST without AI

by Lazarus Chan

This week, Hong Kong was battered by heavy rain, and I took the chance to take a breather and recharge. The last few weeks have been manic. I’ve been working on three software projects at once. The non-stop pace had left me totally overloaded, so this rain break was just what I needed. I decided to visit my wife home village, a recharging place in the middle of the city’s forests. The air smelt of earth, and the quiet beauty of the landscape was a nice change. I could feel the tension of my tightly wound days begin to unravel, replaced by a sense of calm that felt long overdue. The mountains were like silent guards, making me think about the balance between creativity and rest.

by Elora Kadir

I might have got myself a little stuck in my searches. I tried a few online image libraries… trawling the many pages of the Wellcome Collection’s catalogue which I still haven’t reached the end of.

I already have examples of what I would like from some of my previous work that I have shared so I’m giving myself a reminder that the task isn’t impossible. I am considering the thought that maybe I’m already surrounded by the images I’m looking for. For example, I have a mug with this John William Waterhouse painting on it.

A 19th-century painting depicting Saint Cecilia seated in a garden, eyes closed in serene contemplation, with an open book resting on her lap. Two angels kneel before her, one playing a violin and the other holding an instrument. Behind them, a stone balustrade overlooks a harbor with ships and distant mountains. The scene is filled with lush roses and greenery, evoking a peaceful, spiritual atmosphere.
Saint Cecilia (1895) by John William Waterhouse

Books on Drawing™️

by Elora Kadir

Wanted to include some phone images I took from a book on drawing people that I found in the local library. There are loads of them on drawing people, cats, dogs, flowers, buildings… It’s all very Drawing™️.

An image of an open book. The left page shows a man's trunk sketched and his head turned to the side. The right page includes a few sketches each focusing on different sections of the trunk.

A little fascinated by the eery “perfection” of it all. Especially in this book which was full of sketches and descriptions of muscles that make up a body part and how to combine it all together on a super athletic male body. It’s quite the opposite to what I was hoping to find when I set out on this search for images. It’s almost too healthy and tense. There’s no ease.

An image of an open book. The left pag has text explaining how different parts of the head come together. The right page includes a few sketches each focusing on different aspects of a head such as the skull and different perspectives.

A page from a book showing a drawing of a shoulder with every muscle clearly highlighted.

by Elora Kadir

On the left, a vintage ad shows a woman lighting a "Metro" gas burner in a classic interior. On the right, a modern photo in a black frame depicts a hand holding a rain-soaked handrail.

I was digging through old images and enjoyed how, upon opening the image on the left, it brought up the one on the right which was buried under windows and tabs on my screen.

The Question: 11AUG2025

by Lazarus Chan

The modern AI, most prominently represented by the Large Language Models (LLMs), prompts a fundamental question: Does it contain consciousness? To pose the question another way, the original wellspring of the AI concept is found where brain scientists, computer scientists and mathematicians began to explore if consciousness itself could be understood as a mathematical or computational process, as a system. This inquiry delves into whether today’s advanced automation is merely sophisticated mimicry or a genuine step towards the sentient machines envisioned by pioneers of the field. As Noam Chomsky openly criticises the GPT model as a fake intelligence, a copycat only. Or is there an even deeper question: is there any form of computing that can capture the differences between intelligence, awareness and consciousness? Or we simply don’t understand our kind. Those three words are just a game of our language, a misconception; they never exist.

Searching for the right images

by Elora Kadir

Since my last post, I decided I wanted try and find more instructional images. I was really averse to going online and doing some simple searches as I thought they wouldn’t lead me to anything interesting so I made a plan to try out my local library. I hoped to magically be drawn to something but it didn’t quite work out like that. 

I looked through books on health and drawing but the images and illustrations were a bit too… anatomical. I found one on stretches featuring people photographed at every stage of the movement and maybe it’s that the images were too active.

I will revisit this post again tomorrow because there may be more to add after I’ve slept on it. It may be that I need to reluctantly make use of online search engines too.

Zeitgeist

by Leah Clements

A low-res image of a roughly drawn, or maybe carved, golden sun shape with protruding rays, and a corona around it with more rays. The surface it’s carved into appears to be white or pale blue stone.

Still from Zeitgeist (2007)

This film was circulating the internet when I was a teenager. It’s a conspiracy theory-style documentary that connects recurring themes throughout many of the world’s most prominent religions, some still practiced, some not. We passed it between us like contraband, thinking we’d been given a clear-headed, logical way to understand much of the totality of human history.  I mean, we had been given a logic, but it was off.

A pixelated astrological wheel with images of the different star signs (the crab for cancer, the scales for libra, etc) in black on a mustard browny yellowish background. Over the top is a faint network of something white - maybe stars joined by lines? Labelled in green writing that we can’t read.

Aside from being fundamentally irrelevant to the actual point of religion, many of its claims are totally factually incorrect. For one thing they equate ‘the sun’ with ‘the son’ (referring to Horus, Jesus, and other figures) because said out loud, they’re the same word. In English. Which didn’t exist five thousand years ago. A quick check of the Aramaic and they don’t seem so related…

The sun | שמש | “shmash”

The son | בר | “bar”

A pixelated astrological wheel with images of the different star signs (the crab for cancer, the scales for libra, etc) in black on a yellow background. A glowing light has been layered on top, in the right hand corner of the diagram.

But now I worry I’m falling into an ancient rabbit hole. Can a deep debunking of a conspiracy theory become apophenic? I have to stop.

A low-res photo of an artwork, probably a mosaic. In orange, red and brown earth tones, a person in a headdress is at the centre, two cows, or maybe bulls, are to each side of her.

I find myself thinking about the warped, low-res audio and image of this film, and of the layered diagrams and crafted depictions of deities. It’s an aesthetic that I think is still with us, if a little updated. I’m very much holding it in mind as I work on this piece.

Sound

by Leah Clements

I’ve started experimenting with some sound for the work. Here’s a little sneak preview…

Image Description: A spectral, bouncing waveform in pale lilac shakes with the sound, on a black background. It’s like a hundred extremely thin horizontal lines zigzagging across the screen, slowly changing formation.

Audio Description: An echoey hum pulses in and out, as if a hundred people with the same voice are all humming the same thing at the same time in an underground cave. A kind of haunting wind flows throughout.

Going back in (short) time

by Elora Kadir

Since the start of the residency, I’ve had these flashbacks to making in 2020. The Zooms and online uploads and sharing screens. These are all embedded in our daily lives now but the exclusivity of it in this residency really reminds me of that time. I think perhaps some clues about how to approach this month might lie in those flashbacks.

I thought back to work I had made then and thoughts I had about my practice and how it changed. There was something about being able to work entirely from my immediate surroundings (home) or my inner thoughts and memories. For my time here, I would really like to draw on that. It feels like a gentler way of working? 

I went back to some drawings from 2022 which were my quick interpretations of instructional images. I always found it tricky to explain what I liked about them or their function within my practice. Fast forward to last night and I think it finally clicked (better late than never!) that my translation of them into drawing seems to soften them and give them a tenderness which would hopefully say something about how those actions feel?

A pencil sketch divided into two panels, each depicting a person slouched in a large, cushioned armchair. In the top panel, the person sits with their legs crossed, leaning forward with their head resting on one hand, appearing tired or contemplative. In the bottom panel, the same person is reclined further back in the chair, with one leg stretched out and the other bent. Their head is tilted slightly backward, and they appear more relaxed or possibly asleep. The chair remains consistent between both panels, with simple shading to define its form.
Drawing of a recliner armchair in two different positions
A black-and-white pen sketch showing a series of repeated hand gestures between two people, arranged in a 2x4 grid across two pages. Each panel features a pair of hands interacting gently—holding, touching, or clasping forearms and wrists. The gestures convey tenderness, support, or examination, with one set of hands often initiating touch while the other remains passive. The figures wear long sleeves, and the shading is minimal, focusing on the contours and emotion in the hand movements.
Repeated drawings from an illustration of a hand massage technique from 1910s book on Massage Therapy

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