Looking back: The Buffer Zone (2016)

Gabrielle Hoad, Megan Calver & Susie David: 'Throw only to an alert catcher'  |  2016

Focused on Dawlish Warren National Nature Reserve, The Buffer Zone was a site-responsive collaboration between myself, Megan Calver and Susie David, supported by a bursary from a-n The Artist Information Company. Setting out to create dialogue between the human and nonhuman, often through strategies such as mimicry and hiding, this self-organised residency sowed the seeds of many approaches I still work with and a collaboration that continues to the present day with Megan Calver.

This is the blog entry I wrote for a-n on 4th May 2016 - and it still feels relevant.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve found ourselves almost overwhelmed by the possibilities for work that Dawlish Warren opens up for us. The a-n Professional Development Bursary is something of an anchor. So I’m returning to our starting point – the Buffer Zone – to think about our progress so far.

Dawlish Warren includes a popular beach resort and a nature reserve that extends across a low-lying and constantly shifting spit of sand; in between them is an area known as the Buffer Zone. According to a 2006 Teignbridge Council report, the Buffer Zone exists “to absorb and dissipate the high level visitor usage pressure […] minimising conflicts with the demands of protecting the Nature Reserve”. It’s also an important habitat in its own right, where many species thrive ̶ alongside humans and their dogs.

While the Nature Reserve raises questions about what constitutes ‘nature’ and whether it can or should be ‘reserved’ or ‘preserved’ or ‘conserved’ in relation to human activity, the Buffer Zone is a complex, transitional site that acknowledges the interrelationship between human and other interests. It’s been a powerful trigger for our shared inquiry into human/nonhuman dialogue.

It also stands as a useful metaphor for our own collaboration. The project brings together three independent but related practices with a view to finding out more about where they intersect. The Buffer Zone is a designated ‘soft’ space where our practices can safely bump up against one another and mingle. But it often also results in work no one of us would have devised alone. So in this second sense, a buffer might be a way of moderating the impact of self-censorship and allowing a wider range of ideas to thrive.

In a third sense, found in computing, a buffer is a shared area or holding place where data is screened and processed. So our buffer zone is where we consider together what can be publicly shared – and how; what should be held back and what needs more space to grow. These conversations can be complex.

While at the Dawlish Warren Buffer Zone and Nature Reserve, we’re each gathering research and documentation to feed individual work. But we’re also taking advantage of the opportunity to work together in ways that are new to all of us – specifically, experimenting with live activations of space, body and matter. In challenging and supporting each other to take creative risks, we’ve entered a territory where none of us feels completely comfortable. We also find ourselves creating a new and unruly body of shared work that is disrupting our ideas about how to document, develop, refine and attribute outcomes. It feels like a fitting response to this dynamic, liminal place.

Resulting work was shown in 'Throw only to an alert catcher' in three beach huts on site at Dawlish in October 2016. The work, which included a video reel and artist publication lie lie lie, later transferred to Gallery 333, Exeter Phoenix.

The project was also featured in a paper presented by Mark Leahy ‘after alert catchers: a report on an other (than) worded event’ at Beyond Words: Privileging the Unspoken in Arts and Communities in a Posthuman World, Plymouth University, March 2017 . An edited version of the film Throw only to an alert catcher (2016) was screened at Jamboree 2018, Dartington, Devon.

not really now not any more

The Abode of Love (Unrealised Project) | 2020

Some thoughts on an unrealised project: The Abode of Love (2020)

The wonderfully named ‘Abode of Love’ is a secluded area under the promenade at Exmouth beach. Dating back to the 1930s (or earlier), it's around 100 metres long and consists of nine concrete seating bays. Last year, the Town Council partnered up with the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in nearby Honiton to ask artists to consider its future. I was invited, with Megan Calver, to propose a way of engaging local young people creatively with the space, to encourage a sense of ownership and responsibility for it.

The Abode of Love is an ideal hideaway for all kinds of secretive activity (which is presumably also what earned this space its local nickname - and its bad reputation). One of the most notable features of the site was years-worth of overwritten graffiti. Far from being the usual tagging and spray-painting, the Abode’s graffiti mostly consisted of lightly scratched names and dates, and many references to sex and romance. Occasional high tides also leave their own mark on the site, washing away paint and depositing debris. Making frequent visits, we observed changes to the site over time and talked to some of the people who used it and cared for it.

Rather than erase or ignore the graffiti, Megan Calver and I devised a plan to work with local young people to amplify and transform what we found there, reading it closely and then taking it out of the shelter into the world through formalised speaking and walking actions (and ultimately through soundwork and publications). We were interested in why people wrote on and marked the space and what they hoped to achieve in these acts of private yet public expression. We also wondered about things that still needed to be said and if there might be alternative ways of sharing them. The work was partly informed by an enigmatic piece of graffiti at a train station that inspired Alan Garner’s 1973 novel Red Shift – “not really now not any more”. Written beneath two lovers’ names, the graffiti led Garner to create three intertwined stories of adolescent love, set in different time periods but within the same landscape.

Our proposal was initially accepted, but then circumstances changed and the Covid-19 epidemic hit. The gallery asked us to rethink our commission for a different site and suddenly the Abode was covered in colourful murals.

I feel disappointed that our proposal for this space has now been closed down indefinitely by the comprehensive overpainting of many layers of public writing. I wish we had enacted it, if only with friends. It raises all kinds of questions about what public space is for and who gets to use it: questions we rather hoped to explore with our young collaborators.

Visit the show of a rival...

LEAN | 12-page publication | 2020

Just released: Visit the show of a rival... a tiny 12-page publication (8.5 x 9.5cm) documenting a number of actions I made with Megan Calver at various exhibitions across the South West 2018-19.  Each of these slight and fleeting interventions enacts a score first devised for a project called LEAN, commissioned for the Od Arts Festival in 2018.  As part of an exploration of rivalry and cooperation, we elbowed in on shows by, among others, Philippa Lawrence, Janet Sainsbury, Jacqui Hallum, Susie David, Jon England and Scott McMillan -- and recorded the results.