hands on and back again...

 

While sifting through photos, full of renewed commitment to post most regularly on this blog, I’ve come across these images. They were taken at Raversijde in Oostende, with the participants with who helped me create the performative installation Score for the Atlantic Wall, part of the exhibition Private Tag.

We spent the morning taking the piece down, and in the afternoon rehearsed ways of working the material, exploring ideas for producing a new piece with it.

 

As usual, things happened real fast and by surprise. Yours truly luckily managed to record some of the action with these few shots. The aim is now to find means of exploring this further, possibly at the same site. Read about it here a few posts from now… 

The Darlington Post

Here is a visual account of the installation at the Festival of Thrift and some of the twined baskets produced by visitors at the event. 

Three kilometres of sisal twine, a few days to stitch the installation, heaps of green materials, more sisal and yarn still to twine with, involvement from numerous, help from volunteers and well of course as the assistance from the Festival of Thrift's great team and Home Live Art, is all it took to achieve this! A fantastic experience all round and I certainly look forward to going up there again in a few weeks for another outdoor project in the making...

Highlights of the Festival of Thrift weekend? The Disco Bingo girls, thinking about landscape gardening courtesy of Nu-urban Gardeners, hearing but not having to dance the Lambeth Walk lead by Ida Barr during her now world famous Mash Up and meeting all those friendly Darlingtonians to name but a few things. Last but not least I have to add scything reeds and bulrushes in the nature reserve near Lingfield Point when foraging for materials to weave. This was done with the help of Peter and Tim (pictured below). Thanks to them and also to Stella, Alex and David who brought in clematis, willow, crocosmia and peony stems, as well as all the kids fro the nearby school who contributed their gorgeous twined constructions for the occasion.

it ain't nothing without you...

'Art isn't what you make, but what you make happen'
- Jeremy Deller

When working on participatory projects, the challenge always is to know how much information to impart to the participants. Saying too much can result in diminished creative input from the group. So how do you get the most from the participants? How do you best capitalise on their creative ambitions while also managing artistic control over the piece? How do you make on the spot decisions when exploring new creative ideas? These are some of the questions I asked myself during the Delve Deeper Intensive with Helen Carnac and Laïla Diallo last month at Siobhan Davies.

Choreographers by nature of their work are likely to be more familiar with this than other artists. I was most impressed with Laïla’s delivery of various tasks she set to the group: economical, measured, open ended.  It prevented us from ‘end-gaming’ what the outcome would be and helped us embrace the unexpected while also valuing the minutiae of whatever we were doing.

A large part of my installation in the Make Believe exhibition at Nottingham Castle, separate from the weaving between trees (see previous post), involved using fencing pins in the lawn, as you would pins in a lace pillow, to produce ‘lace’ around the grounds of the castle.

To prepare for this I practiced various stitches in the studio on an actual lace pillow and drew up a pattern to follow when making the work on site.  However as soon as we started, the pattern had to be scrapped. The action of working the sisal twine using custom made bobbins to cover the grounds lead me to rework the pattern I had and make up new stitches as we worked our way across the lawn.  What guided me through this was allowing the participants to find their own way of working with the materials and each other. This improvised method, based on set manoeuvres, proved the best way of making the ‘lace’ in the end.

It’s nice to think that with a different group, the outcome would have been very different, and without anyone, the piece could not have been realized at all.

taking on the squirrel super-highway...

A gardener once told me the best way to catch squirrels is to hose them down with water. Their tail gets so heavy they can hardly move. You then seize that moment to throw a blanket over them and grab your humane rodent trap or shotgun, depending on your persuasion, to remove the furry vandals from your garden. Problem solved!  That’s the theory anyway…

follow the red path...

... and the blue one to the left,

My current installation Panoramic Pathways at the Nottingham Castle Museum was damaged the other week due to squirrel activity. It seems one of the stitched pathways crosses over a squirrel super-highway and some sisal was gnawed.  These furry foes hate change apparently and evidence of this on their patch is likely to be challenged.  They stop minding after a year apparently, but that’s no good to me given the work is up for a couple of months only.

duck under...

... and swoop over,

then take a breather and enjoy the view.

As the hosepipe method is not an option on the castle grounds, I went up to Nottingham and repaired the piece with Helen Ansell, one of the volunteers who originally helped with the making of the installation. Together we worked out the most efficient way of doing the repairs, exchanging tips and drawing/ writing these down as instructions for further reference. We’re now ready to take the bushy tailed vandals on!

zig-zag your way along...

In the meanwhile, posted here are a few images taken by John Hartley during the making and filming of the piece.  I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride…

... and finish with a flourish!

knots for Notts

I spent two glorious days in the sun the week before last in the grounds of Nottingham Castle, overlooking the city and rehearsing the making of my next installation for the museum’s forthcoming exhibition Make Believe: re-imagining history and landscape.

The city’s history and connection with lace making informed my contribution to the exhibition: a large scale lace installation created on the lawn around the castle using fencing pins and rope. Helped by three assistants and a group of enthusiastic volunteers, we rehearsed the making of the piece by using our fingers and hands to stitch between trees. We then proceeded to do something close to formation dancing, acting as human bobbins, holding lengths of yarn and winding these around the (metal fencing) pins as you would on a lace pillow. Click here for footage of the rehearsal on the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art website.

Many possibilities and challenges were revealed as we worked and talked about what we were doing and at the end of the two days, I came away from from the activity with a head full of ideas which I’m now processing. I’ve now ordered nearly two hundred fencing pins and can’t wait for the next time I am up there with this lovely group.

Thanks so much to all the volunteers who helped rehearsing the piece, and to my assistants Jess, Sarah and Rossella.  You were all great!