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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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 (now closed) and online Film and Forage symposium (click for details) planned for July 18th 4-8pm UTC/GMT+1.
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Kodachrome Super8 film processed in nettle developer

work in progress - Around the island

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.

Around The Island - February, Winter Heliotrope; 16mm Orwo PF2

artist talk & screening - JUNE 2023

About Place Symposium - Plymouth University
Jill Craigie Cinema, Plymouth University

I was delighted to be invited to give an artist talk and short film screening, including showing of my short film Golow Kernow and an introduction to the premiere of the 10 films which make up the Sound Signatures film call that I curated for Mayes Creative in partnership with Jacqui Knight of Cinestar.

Golow Kernow was created with 16mm wind up Bolex camera, filmed on expired Fuji 50D, hand processed and digitally reversed.