Born in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, Guy Dickinson trained as an Architect in London, winning a number of awards including the RIBA President's Medal. He has been an associate at John Pawson since 2003. The seeds of his tracing silence project, established in 2011, were sown during a 14 day immersion in the Yorkshire Moors in 1992. Experimenting with methods of construction, weaving, stitching, thatching and casting, he created a series of simple shelters that sought to unearth the intrinsic nature of the places he inhabited. Now utilising the mediums of photography and poetry, Guy's work continues to explore place, but also the consonance between internal and external passage, the similitude between the passage of thoughts and the passage of the body.
What value does craft have in daily life?
The transformation of matter into objects through the medium of craft is a tradition as old as ourselves. Since the fashioning of the first knapped flint this essential alchemy has been, and continues to be, fundamental to our survival. Our objects are interfaces and intermediaries. Through them we navigate and make sense of the world around us.
As an Architect I have a clear link to craft and the manifestation of objects. As a photographer the link is less tangible. My medium is light and the ephemeral.
What does Scottishness mean to you?
“Gales crash into the mountain with the boom of angry seas; one can hear the air shattering itself against rock. Cloud-bursts batter the earth and roar down ravines, and thunder reverberates with a prolonged and menacing roll. Mankind is sated with noise; but up here, this naked, this elemental savagery, this infinitesimal cross-section from the energies that have been at work for aeons in the universe, exhilarates rather than destroys”
Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain, 1977
Come and visit us at Bard in Leith to see Guy’s work, or get in touch with us directly.
