Alchemy and the elements.

Alchemy is defined as a form of chemistry and speculative philosophy practiced in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with defining objectives of:

•  Creating the Philosopher's Stone-turn base metals into noble metals
•  Creating the Elixir of Life-confers youth and immortality

Elements are the most simplistic essential parts and principles that anything consists of, the fundamental powers of which everything is based. The four substances; air, water, earth and fire were formerly believed to compose the physical universe.

This starting point lead to a trip to Magna Science Park near Sheffield last week. I have not been there for at least ten ears, I can definately say the park is aimed at young children, and not nineteen year olds. It did not live up to my memories.

Although the park itself was disappointing, it enabled me to collect first hand images and create a series of drawings, (between sitting in the cafe to warm up, they really need to invest in central heating!!) I have recently broken my camera lens due to general clumsiness, so my camera found it hard to deal with the low lighting, my extremely unsteady hand did not help the situation. This resulted in a series of blurred, out of focus photographs. Instead of hindering me I embraced the blurred lights and colours and intentionally moved the camera around whilst on long exposure. This created some great effects with streaks of different coloured lights merging across the images.