Residencies
April 2009
Installing work for the EROC artists residency, CoCA, Torun, Kujawsko Pomorskie, Poland.
December 2006 - December 2007:
Artist in residence with the National Trust:
The focus of this residency was inspired by the history of the landscape, its changing use and the working processes and that occur there. As a subject matter, Cornwall’s natural environment, geographical position and cultural history are distinctive. I used these features as a starting point for developing my art practice over a year long environmental art residency with the Lizard National Trust. The residency was designed to initiate artists’ responses in a variety of media to a wide range of issues that affect the properties under the management of the NT. These included, for example issues such as small and large scale environmental pollution, visitor pressure and the effects of climate change. My art practice during this time centred on society’s relationship with natural resources and its’ collective use of energy. I tailored the objectives of the first project (CUT/STACK/BURN) toward the collaborative making of a public artwork that could develop a visual dialogue about this. Of particular interest was a desire to use sustainable materials that had been resourced from existing land management practices already occurring in the landscape. My interest in using material such as furze (gorse) harvested from heath land, is informed by my experience as an artist and my involvement in nature conservation over the last decade. I was keen that the evidence of my activities (whose concepts were influenced by traditional management of the landscape) on land, farms and NT properties, was unobtrusive as possible and impermanent. That the collaboration between art, agriculture, conservation, community and habitat would perhaps lead to a mutually beneficial relationship/work in some way.
Through this residency I am explored how a visual interpretation of this might proceed. I am equally interested to understand how contemporary artists can engage with the environment, or landscape, given the legacy that, on a regional level at least, still appears to be encumbered with issues of pictorial representation.
July 2007 – Create/Destroy/Destroy/Create (ongoing)
This durational and performative project is a visual re-evaluation of landscape management lying under the shadow of environmental uncertainty [climate change]. It is an interaction between manager, resource and artist using active site specific intervention as a tool for developing a multiple of visual interactions. The work resulting from this process aims to engage with the challenges that are effecting the implementation of ancient, traditional and sustainable processes in the contemporary management of the landscape and its resources.
(See offsite:inside)
http://createdestroydestroycreate.blogspot.com/
August 2007 - 'Water Treatment Plant’ (ongoing). A postcard/interpretational material and installation project.
'Water Treatment Plant’ is intended to be a functional facility that is to be built in the on the banks of Loe pool in full view of the main house in the heart land of the Penrose estate near Helston, Cornwall. [Loe pool suffers from along history of agricultural and domestic pollution. The bloom from the blue green algae, which is only visible in the summer months, forms rafts that block out sunlight, and has seriously degraded the pools ecology] The utilitarian industrial design, deliberately intended to be obtrusive for its setting, uses temporary scaffolding, plywood exterior walls, doors and a corrugated roof. Installed inside the structure a working model of a working water treatment plant and uses the same principals utilised by Hans Haacke in his work 'Rhine water Purification Plant', installed at Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany in 1972. The physical presentation of 'Water Treatment Plant’ was to cause an abrupt intrusion in the sublime landscape at Penrose. It was intended to stir debate, through visual conversation, about the drastic measures that could be invoked to clean up the pollution encountered in the pool. Is this kind of interaction necessary? And if not, what other options are there?
'Water Treatment Plant’ exists, in its current form, as a web based interpretation project and is working towards its inception as an installation.
http://watertreatmentplant.blogspot.com/