Photo attribution: Image from Worcester City museum collection
Sarah’s response to the painting included creating a modern interpretation of the scene using segments from digital photos of contemporary Worcestershire as photographic tiles laid over the base framework and outline provided by the original painting. The resulting artwork is neither the original painting of Worcester as it was then, nor the Worcestershire landscape as it is now, but a composite abstract created by combining the two. Sarah also produced a hypertext poem and poetryfilm. All three parts of this project can be enjoyed below.
More about the original painting ‘A Prospect of Worcester from the East’ , which was acquired by Worcester City Museum and Art Gallery in 1987 with the support of ArtFund, can be found in this Research Worcestershire post and this Worcester News article.
to late summer’s golden harvests,
green fields, city rooves and spires,
the distant curves of the Malvern hills,
mist and cloud combining in a wide blue sky.
I could step through this past prospect
of Worcester into the picture’s pigments,
and piece together each painstaking detail
to get a sense of eighteenth–century life:
how much, yet how little, has changed.
Fast forward with broad brushstrokes
to the rush of cars and people, the flash
of busy scenes caught by the click
of many cameras – shutters opening,
then closing on glass–eye images.
This modern shape-shifting mosaic
is glimpsed in quick snatches – fixed
not with a painter’s palette of oils,
but pinprick pixels of colour. A different
texture, but richly vibrant all the same.
Six hundred thousand residents *
now sculpt this county with their lives
and dreams. Centuries of construction
have re-patterned the cityscape, yet still
the castle, cathedral and backdrop hills.
Still the River Severn, roads and fields
stretch across the contoured miles –
those slopes and dips that Harris
would have known when he painted
‘A Prospect of Worcester from the East’.
This video may be played and watched like a normal video. However, if you want to look at any of the images for longer, or at a different speed, you can press pause. Then use the video scroll/progress bar (while on pause) to move backwards and forwards through the photos at your own pace.