Elvey Anna Stedman
Gold Ground, 2023
Film
4m 8s
From the RSA Collection
'Gold Ground' was written, animated and narrated by Elvey Anna Stedman, with a soundtrack performed and recorded in collaboration with Magnus Kramers. It was made in response to a period...
'Gold Ground' was written, animated and narrated by Elvey Anna Stedman, with a soundtrack performed
and recorded in collaboration with Magnus Kramers. It was made in response to a period of three months
that Stedman spent in rural Tuscany and Florence in 2022 as part of the RSA John Kinross Scholarship. The
animation is comprised of hundreds of gold painted paper cut outs, mimicking and extrapolating upon
imagery described in the narrated poem.
The term ‘gold ground’ describes the technique often employed by Byzantine and Renaissance painters to fill
a background with gold leaf. During my time in Florence I became very interested in the use of gold as a
didactic tool. Historically, it had been used to communicate emotion and inspire rapture - divine power was
illustrated in gold, beaming down to the figures in the paintings, but reflecting out at the viewer with equal
strength. Witnessing the gold that adorned the paintings in galleries and the interiors of churches in Florence
drew me to poetry writing, a practise that differed greatly from my previous work as sculptor and printmaker.
Artists like Fillipo Lippi, Beato Angelico and Leonardo Da Vinci manipulated gold in ways that made it feel
like a vital, living thing. It would stun you, absorb you, it would trickle down from the sky, pierce the clouds,
catch the light and move with you. The heady and intoxicating effect that the gold had on me became
synonymous with the way that I felt living day to day Florence and rural Tuscany. My aim for the project
was to borrow the power that gold can wield and use it to celebrate the strength and meaning that small,
insignificant moments can sometimes carry.
Back in my Glasgow studio, I collected my writings and organised them into a loose narrative. I created stop
motion animations out of miniature pieces of paper to illustrate important lines and motifs from my poetry.
The sound design anchors around the poem, using textural percussion, experimental manipulation, and voice
memos we had collected in Italy, like the voices of Gregorian monks at the Basilica San Miniato al Monte,
flocks of pigeons near the train station and an evening busker in Piazza Uffizi. The combination of each layer
invokes a dreamlike, dissociative emotional timbre.
The backdrops used in the animation are sourced from close crops of the following paintings; Moses
Undergoing Trial by Fire by Giorgione, Morte di Adone by Sebastiano del piombo, Italian Landscape with
Ancient Tempietto by Adam Pijnacker, Adoration of the Christ by Correggio and Danaë by Orazio
Gentileschi.
and recorded in collaboration with Magnus Kramers. It was made in response to a period of three months
that Stedman spent in rural Tuscany and Florence in 2022 as part of the RSA John Kinross Scholarship. The
animation is comprised of hundreds of gold painted paper cut outs, mimicking and extrapolating upon
imagery described in the narrated poem.
The term ‘gold ground’ describes the technique often employed by Byzantine and Renaissance painters to fill
a background with gold leaf. During my time in Florence I became very interested in the use of gold as a
didactic tool. Historically, it had been used to communicate emotion and inspire rapture - divine power was
illustrated in gold, beaming down to the figures in the paintings, but reflecting out at the viewer with equal
strength. Witnessing the gold that adorned the paintings in galleries and the interiors of churches in Florence
drew me to poetry writing, a practise that differed greatly from my previous work as sculptor and printmaker.
Artists like Fillipo Lippi, Beato Angelico and Leonardo Da Vinci manipulated gold in ways that made it feel
like a vital, living thing. It would stun you, absorb you, it would trickle down from the sky, pierce the clouds,
catch the light and move with you. The heady and intoxicating effect that the gold had on me became
synonymous with the way that I felt living day to day Florence and rural Tuscany. My aim for the project
was to borrow the power that gold can wield and use it to celebrate the strength and meaning that small,
insignificant moments can sometimes carry.
Back in my Glasgow studio, I collected my writings and organised them into a loose narrative. I created stop
motion animations out of miniature pieces of paper to illustrate important lines and motifs from my poetry.
The sound design anchors around the poem, using textural percussion, experimental manipulation, and voice
memos we had collected in Italy, like the voices of Gregorian monks at the Basilica San Miniato al Monte,
flocks of pigeons near the train station and an evening busker in Piazza Uffizi. The combination of each layer
invokes a dreamlike, dissociative emotional timbre.
The backdrops used in the animation are sourced from close crops of the following paintings; Moses
Undergoing Trial by Fire by Giorgione, Morte di Adone by Sebastiano del piombo, Italian Landscape with
Ancient Tempietto by Adam Pijnacker, Adoration of the Christ by Correggio and Danaë by Orazio
Gentileschi.
