Palace Intrusions – Benchmark 7 (photography)

Message in a Bottle
‘Benchmark’ 7 will take place between Monday 21st July and Sunday 27th July 2008. Anyone interested in Pinhole Photography should look out for artist Fiona Haser as she experiments with her homemade pinhole cameras around the Bishop’s Palace and Palace Green. She will be using bottles as cameras and floating them on the moat to gently, slowly capture time, as they glide around the Bishop’s Palace like the resident swans. The resulting images will be the, Message in a Bottle. She also intends to make photographs underneath the water of the Palace moat, using very slow exposures, she will try to capture images of the weed formations that are clearly visible in the water, looking for all the world like petrified ghosts.

Artmusic will be holding open days on Palace Green on the weekend of 26th and 27th July 2008 between 10am and 6pm, and invite the public to come and meet artist Fiona Haser and join her in her experiments with photography. She will have her portable darkroom with her and will be floating a flotilla of camera bottles on the moat, so come along, make your own Message in a Bottle and join in the fun.

An ongoing exhibition at Wells Museum documents each ‘Benchmark’ throughout the year and the project will culminate in a spectacular live finale inside the Bishop’s Palace Gardens in September 2008.

Photograph: © Alma Haser