Looking back: The archivists walk... (2018)

breaking the fall | 2018 | Cropped still from 3-minute digital video

One of the ways I’ve been using the time in lockdown for Covid-19 is to reflect on past work. breaking the fall and The archivists walk over the beautiful debris of our broken flowers are two related works with a tangled collaborative history.

The three-minute video, breaking the fall was made with Megan Calver as a postscript to her wider research project with Sarah Bennett and Philippa Lawrence: Disclosures & Dialogues. This considered possible futures for Hestercombe House in Somerset in discussion with artists, writers, curators, historians, architects, archivists and horticulturists.  In relation to ideas of conservation, Megan invited participants (including me) to experience what it felt like to let things go by dropping flowers down an 8.5-metre stairwell at the property. 

She and I later recreated this action to document it for the Hestercombe archive, adding an extra action Megan wanted to explore of trying to catch the blooms. We also filmed ourselves measuring the drop, which we included in the finished film as it added a further thought about how we might best attend to and care for our heritage.

The text work is my personal contribution to the Hestercombe archive and a coda to our actions. The stairwell we used was by the entrance to the archive office. In coming and going during the day of filming, one of the archivists had to pick his way across the flowers we’d left lying. I liked the idea that archivists might try to step carefully around, but might also inadvertently trample on, what history leaves behind.

The archivists walk… | 2018 | Digitally printed text, Epson ink on Tetenal paper 

Looking back: Fatal exchanges (2017)

Fatal exchanges (detail) | 2017 | Site-responsive installation, plus 12-page publication

One of the ways I’ve been using the time in lockdown for Covid-19 is to reflect on past work. Fatal exchanges, made with Megan Calver in 2017, seems especially appropriate as it focuses on the effects of a virus.

Drawing on a text, Murder in the Kitchen by Alice B Toklas, the work examines a network of deaths resulting from instinct, accident, pleasure and necessity. Created during a group residency on the Cotley Estate in Somerset, it was inspired by an event in 1832 when the hounds of the Cotley Hunt were struck by the rabies virus and the Master of the Hunt had to shoot all but one of them.

A lot of people approached the work assuming it was vehemently pro- or anti-hunting but our stance was one of curiosity. We set aside our own abhorrence of blood-sports to try to understand the relationship that the Cotley estate owners and their staff had with fox-hunting. Ultimately, we were able to place hunting in the wider context of land management; not apologising for it but trying to think dispassionately about what humans and non-humans do, not only to survive, but in the pursuit of pleasure. It should be noted the estate now imports fox urine from the US for drag hunting, but memories of the original ‘sport’ live on.

We built our installation out of found objects from the site. At its heart was a  magpie trap, acting as a plinth for a sad old taxidermy fox with bare-boned feet and a stick-like brush. We were told he was about 100 years old; he was also alive with carpet beetles. The cycle of life and death continued.

Looking back: Lark, stone (2016)

Lark, stone still | 2016 | Action to camera 

One of the ways I’ve been using the time in lockdown for Covid-19 is to reflect on past work. Lark, stone was a short action to camera made at Dawlish Warren, Devon, with Megan Calver and Susie David.

The simple gesture of turning a flint in the hand conjured up the song of a skylark, which appeared to coordinate its actions with mine: the weight and inertness of the stone contrasting with the bird’s energetic movements and song. On reviewing the video footage, we discovered that the stone also sings, squeaking gently as it is turned in the hand.

Part of a collaborative inquiry into the possibilities of live experimentation, supported by a bursary from a-n The Artist Information Company. Shown as part of ‘Throw only to an alert catcher’ (2016).

More details.

Lichening

Hide #5 (Lichening) | Digital photograph | 2020

“To be one at all you must be a many – and that’s not a metaphor.” Donna Haraway*

This is the latest in a series of experimental photographs concerned with the idea of the hide – a camouflaged structure that seeks to efface the presence of the observer and encourage 'natural' behaviour in those observed. I am interested in the hide as a means of surreptitiously entering the territory of another, but also in the hide as skin, a notional boundary between self and the world.  

When Haraway says you must be a many, she is referring to the way we are intimately connected with other things, that our bodies are not singular things but whole ecosystems. I am particularly interested in the lichens in this image, which are a symbiosis (a mutually beneficial relationship) between fungi and algae or cyanobacteria. As amalgams of multiple organisms working together, they make with. We are all created by multiple relationships. 

Hide #5 was made following an invitation from Gail Flockhart to respond to the theme 'Selfies together in isolation' as part of her PhD research at the University of Plymouth.

*Donna Haraway Anthropocence, Capitalocene, Chthulucene: Staying with the Trouble (University of California, Santa Cruz, 9 May 2014) 

together / apart

Gabrielle Hoad | Orbit #2 | April 2020 | Polaroid processing by That Art Gallery, Bristol

After the forced closure of their physical space, That Art Gallery, Bristol launched an open call for photos taken during the Covid-19 pandemic. Selected photos were printed using their Polaroid Lab and displayed in the windows of the premises for the duration of lockdown. They were also shared on the gallery's Instagram feed. This is mine: one of a series of abandoned balls, snapped while I was out on a daily circular walk in my immediate neighbourhood.

together / apart, That Art Gallery, 2 Upper Maudlin Street, Bristol BS2 8DJ

Be cloudy

During UK lockdown, I’ve contributed to Forced Collaboration, which brokers cross-disciplinary interactions between artists around the world and shares the results online. It's run by artist Georgia Gendall.

For this quickfire 'Self Isolation Special', I set the instruction 'be cloudy'. The instruction is considered a piece of work as much as the collaborative outcome, and the identities of the paired artists are not revealed (even to each other) until the work is made public. My instructions were realised by Alice Mahoney.

I also made a new piece of work in response to instructions by Haddas Eshel. 

forcedcollaboration.org

about body unknown with something alien

about body unknown

with something alien

the human talk

body unknown about

Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver | Work in progress - THG Nature Shorts | 2020

I'm working with Megan Calver on a new participatory live artwork for the Thelma Hubert Gallery in response to their current (but temporarily closed) Richard Long exhibition. This show is touring as part of ARTIST ROOMS.

All being well, we'll be working with young people in Honiton to realise the work later this year but, for now, the gallery is sharing our work in progress as part of their online Nature Shorts series.

Drawing on Richard Long’s use of words in relation to landscape, we will invite the other-than-human to collaborate in the making of new texts. For now, we are experimenting with buckets, basins and baths in our homes, using items such as wax paper discs to stand in for floating leaves and logs.

Richard Long Being in the Moment at Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton (run extended to cover gallery closure).