Rod Maclachlan: Fine Art Contemporary Practice MA graduate

Before joining the MA at Falmouth, Rod studied sculpture at Glasgow School of Art, and following this had established both his individual arts practice, and also collaborative work with the Bristol based art collective Blackout Arts. Rod's projects ranged from the use of video and light installations, VJ-ing, to production design for arts events and music festivals. His practice often involved working collaboratively with community groups, musicians and artists.

Rod's application for the MA Fine Art course at Falmouth was motivated by a desire to create the time and space to undertake a sustained and uninterrupted period of sculptural practice, and to subject his work to dialogue and critique with staff and students on the course.

Whilst on the course, the development of Rod's new artwork was informed by questions that re-evaluated the use of digital projection technologies. Rod became captivated by early chemical, optical, and electrical devices used in 18th and 19th century, where the processes that lay behind the projecting of light were alchemic, sensuous, enchanting, and evoked a sense of wonder. He contrasted such visceral experiences with the processes of digital technologies that he perceived resulted in a detachment by the audience from the forces at work.

Rod began a body of experimental work that explored Phantasmagoria and pre-cinema projection techniques such as simple candle lit white-shadow projection to candle, gas and limelight powered Magic Lanterns, Fantascopes and Megascopes. He made extensive use of the course's dedicated project space to set up experimental assemblages and installations that made use of the sensuous nature of chemical, optical, and electrical apparatus and light sources. He further tested this work further-afield at events in Bristol, and at Tate Britain, in London.

By the end of the course, Rod had undertaken a significant exploration of the relationships between observation and the imagination, the physical and the ethereal, and had produced an array of captivating devices that worked to re-enchant the forces and dynamic processes inherent in Phantasmagoria and pre-cinema techniques.

For his MA show installations, Rod, along with two other MA Fine Art students, was awarded the Sandra Blow Scholarship worth £5,000.

www.rodmaclachlan.co.uk