Giles W. Bennett's installations are often immersive, minimalist, and experiential. He uses materials like neon, LED lights, and mirrors Giles W. Bennett's installations explore themes of perception, space, and the human experience. They often invite viewers to question their relationship with their surroundings, and can evoke feelings of wonder, disorientation, and introspection. Giles W. Bennett's installations often incorporate elements of nature, such as light, water, and organic materials, to create immersive and contemplative environments.
The Duddon valley has been an important place to me all my life, growing up over the fells in Seascale I used to come on holiday here as a child and have continued to visit ever since and now live on a boat on the edge of the Duddon estuary.
“I am a Neurodivergent Visual Artist, I work as an experimental analogue photographer and immersive installation artist, my practice driven from a need to look at and understand the environment and explore the world around me. I make cameras out of found objects including books, sweet tins, and beer cans. I use these to create solargraphs. Solargraphs are made with photographic paper in a pinhole camera to create the negative. My exposures range from 24h to over a year to create an image, no developer or fixer is needed as the images are ’burned’ into the paper. I have managed to combine my love of recycling and messing about with stuff to create a unique style of images by building solargraphic contraptions using old motors, solar panels and mechanical devices.
I also create immersive installation pieces using multiple projectors and multi-channel soundscapes based on the natural world around us. The projections are from footage I have filmed and field recordings out on location. By combining the two I recreate the world as I experience it, my installations are an audio-visual representation of my neurodivergent mind.
I have been a lifelong environmentalist, protesting, educating and advocating for change, working with NGOs, campaign groups and on my own, this is at the center of all my work. I feel it is importance to reintroduce people to the nature/world around them. My intention is to create engaging work that can be appreciated on any level, either as something to be experienced and enjoyed or as a deeper environmental piece. It is important to me for my work to be engaging and for the meaning not to be rammed down the audiences throat, as I strongly believe this can often have the opposite effect.
As a neurodivergent artist, I have an unusual way of looking at and interpreting the world, unaware that a box is for thinking inside!? I don’t think in words. I see, think and experience the word in emotions. I want my work to share the excitement I get when I see a ripple in the water, the shadow of a wind turbine blade, clouds forming in a forest or the line ‘drawn’ on a piece of photographic paper by the sun that has been rotated by the same solar rays.”
