Joanna Mayes: artist filmmaker

Joanna Mayes is an artist who works with film, exploring the experience of being in a location at a particular time through the medium of film. Bringing her experience of musical improvisation into her practice, Joanna opens her work up to chance through hand processing and the use of organic materials, to create short film-poems that reverberate between abstraction and control. She represents place through a layering of approaches to materiality: analogue film responds to the light in that place and time, physical outcomes are often charged with atmosphere from the site through use of materials of the locality, such as seawater for processing and lichen & berries for tinting the film.
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artist talk - 25th april 2023

12.30-2pm (screening at 1pm followed by artist talk)
Borlaise Smart Room, Porthmeor Studios, St Ives
FREE - click here to book

Short film screening and artist talk, including 2 short films inspired by music of piano player and composer Bruno Heinen.

An informal film screening and artist talk, taking the opportunity of Bruno Heinen's visit to St Ives to play at the Jazz Club that evening, to share the collaboration between Bruno's music and my 16mm analogue filmmaking, using expired film and alternative processing. I will also be talking about my Filming and Foraging project and sharing some of my plant based analogue film processing techniques.

Films created with 16mm wind up Bolex camera, some hand processed with caffenol and digitally reversed. Shown digitally.

highlight: filming and foraging

Filming and Foraging is an Arts Council England supported project, exploring new ways to document presence through the materiality of analogue film, using foraged materials to create site-specific film poems. This project researches and shares environmentally conscious approaches, supporting innovative use of abundant local plants to replace toxic chemistry and create projection paper from waste materials. This project incorporates an open analogue film call (open now) and online Filming and Foraging symposium planned for June 15th. Click here for more information.

Kodachrome Super8 film processed in nettle developer

work in progress

I am currently working on a 2023 film series entitled Around The Island, St Ives involving taking 100ft of film each month of the year 2023 and hand processing each film with seasonally abundant plants from The Island. Each film incorporates the differences and seasonal changes in plants and the development of the phenols which help to develop the film itself. Within this there are two 50ft batch processes, which incorporates testing of reuse of plant materials (which has variable results) and demonstrates the materiality of the plants, their internal chemistry and how this reacts with the materiality of the film.