Axis art highlights

The inertia of the unknown | Preston Street Union Random Art Machine | 2017

I'm very pleased to be included in the Axis survey of new work for 7-13 August. They featured an action with Preston Street Union, made as part of the Random Art Machine.

More details at https://gabriellehoad.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/safety-in-numbers.html

Return by 24/09/17

Gabrielle Hoad | Nature Parade | 2017

I've been working outdoors with a collection of unwanted books stored in a barn at West Town Farm, near Exeter. Work in progress to be shared during Devon Open Studios Venue 113, 16 -24 September 2017.

Broadcasts from the Edge of the Horizon

Volkhardt Muller & Dawn Scarfe | The Beacon | 2017

Broadcasts from the Edge of the Horizon -The Beacon:  this film gives a short account of a three-stage research project by artists Volkhardt Müller, Dawn Scarfe and Phil Smith in which they explore the idea of horizon as both a distant dream and a journey experienced.  I was lucky enough to be part of the 'pilgrimage' from Exeter City Centre to a tree on the horizon on 7th May 2017. I was surprised to hear how croaky my voice sounded in the recording, but then remembered Volkhardt had just given us all a shot of plum schnapps to celebrate the journey's end. Prost!

https://vimeo.com/224047299

Makers of the Multiverse (review)

Juneau Projects | Makers of the Multiverse pavilion, Exeter | 2017

Review by Rachel Magdeburg of the recent Makers of the Multiverse project, where I showed work as an individual, in collaboration with Megan Calver and Susie David, and as part of Preston Street Union.

https://www.a-n.co.uk/reviews/market-makers

Street Rockery

Street Rockery (downtime) | 2017 | Public action with Freefall Youth Group 

Arrive unannounced at a busy place and mingle with the crowd.

Pull out blankets large enough to completely cover 
your crouching bodies.

Hide and become rocks for while.

Score by Megan Calver and Gabrielle Hoad from an original work by Calver David Hoad. First enacted by Freefall Youth Group with Megan Calver and Gabrielle Hoad, 25 May 2017, Makers of the Multiverse, Piazza Terracina, Exeter, UK.

This collaboration with Freefall Youth Group allowed for the scaling up of an action originally recorded in the short video rock (passers by). The action of hiding in the landscape was reimagined for an urban setting and a score generated for new players to interpret.

Made with the assistance of Anna Aroussi and George Barron. Supported by Exeter Phoenix and Spacex.

Safety in numbers

Preston Street Union - The inertia of the unknown  - Art Week Exeter 2017

As I disappeared inside a giant improvised paper envelope a couple of weeks ago, I felt a real sense of liberation. I was doing it simply because someone had written 'inside the lining of a duvet' on a card I had been dealt and this was the closest me and my fellow artists could manage with the resources available. We were following instructions generated by the Preston Street Union Random Art Machine.

It may sound odd, but the responsibilities of an artist can sometimes feel onerous. For the best of reasons, you get quite locked into particular themes and particular ways of working, and it seems a little irresponsible to deviate. So the idea of submerging yourself in a group identity, then going on to make spontaneous, randomly generated, collaborative work, feels like a real holiday. Sharing responsibility for outcomes means you can take risks and play in a way you probably haven't done since before college - but you really should do all the time.

Preston Street Union is an affiliation of artists from in and around Exeter who were first brought together by Trevor Pitt during his 2015 residency at Spacex gallery. Given the wild diversity of our artistic concerns and our different career stages, it amazes me that we've continued working together, but we have - each in parallel with our own individual practices. Sometimes all we make when we're together is a mess - that's the nature of experimentation. But this time - for Art Week Exeter - I think we (mostly) got it right. We took the risk of creating works live in the gallery and involved the wider public as contributors, spectators and occasional participants.

Responses were largely positive. We were included in Maddy Hearn's survey of Art Week Exeter for a-n.co.uk and reviewed by Terah Walkup, Curator of Fine Art at Plymouth City Museum for the AWE blog. Her words are quoted below.

"Visitors to PS45 in the former Spacex gallery, hosting the Preston Street Union Random Art Machine and the exhibition, Being Human, were in for a treat. Possibly one of the most joyous collaborations during Art Week Exeter, the Random Art Machine was the modern-day inheritor of Dadaism and mid-century performance art.

One year into their association, the affiliation of artists that make up Preston Street Union came together in a project that was both risky and chaotic but whose end product was a successful collaboration that business consultants would pay oodles to replicate. These artists relinquished control of the material, concept, and even title of the works of art they came together to create. Audiences tweeted titles, visitors brought in assorted objects and materials, and participants at the Art Market jotted down concepts on dozens of note cards. After a bout with a dart gun, I witnessed the creation of a work titled Sky Grid – a response to Tolstoy’s War and Peace (one of the prompts) – that unfolded in a conceptual performance whose real value lay not in the final tug-of-war game – which a more astute reviewer could read as metaphor – but in the preparatory conversations and negotiations that make up the interpretive process of art-making."

The Preston Street Union Random Art Machine featured as part of Art Week Exeter 2017 and was supported by Spacex.

Listening to Dartmoor

I was lucky enough to join Devon naturalist and sound artist Tony Whitehead, and tracker and bushcraft expert Robin Bowman on an early morning listening event organised in conjunction with the RSPB and Art.Earth. Taking place in a private woodland near Moretonhampstead on Dartmoor, it was a chance to listen in to one of the season’s early dawn choruses and learn more about the birds and other living things that inhabit the site.

Setting out at 4.15am and navigating narrow Dartmoor lanes in the darkness and mist, we parked up at Moor Barton at 5.00am and met others by torchlight. Gathering in a tight circle in the dark we listened to the silence (it was an incredibly still night), the owls and eventually the vast sound horizon of the first passing flight. We then walked in silence down a dark woodland path and gathered around a fire to wait for the dawn chorus, which swept towards us from the east as the darkness fell away.

There was a dream-like quality to being awake when I’d usually be asleep, and to being with other people and yet not being able to see their faces or hear their voices (much). Being silent with others in such a remote place felt safe and companionable but, at the same time, offered a sense of connection to the wider, wilder environment.

Over the next few hours, we explored the woodland site in the early morning mist: spending time with a particularly lively yellowhammer, smelling otter spraint and looking closely at deer tracks. I experienced a real tension between wanting to know facts about the place (which necessitated verbal explanation) and not wanting to hear words, just the place itself.

Robert Macfarlane has quite a lot to say about the particularity - and value - you afford something when you name it and, even now, I'm hearing bird voices better as a result of those identifications. But I also walked away feeling I would have liked even more silence from the humans and more voice from the place.

This event on 15th March 2017 was part of a series of listening events leading up to the In Other Tongues creative summit at Dartington Hall, Devon in June.