Fieldwork (once more, with feeling)

Calver David Hoad | lie lie lie | 2016

I’ve just completed a show of work in progress with fellow artists Megan Calver and Susie David. Throw only to an alert catcher was held across three beach huts on the site where we've been working together for the past six months - Dawlish Warren. We showed a series of videos, made a small dark-space installation and shared various objects and traces gathered during our time on site. We also produced a small artists’ publication. It's the culmination of our a-n supported project The Buffer Zone.

Having spent all this time in an intense collaboration with other artists and a site, and thinking/talking as ‘us’ and ‘we’, I’d rather let go of where this work fits into my existing practice. It took a student visitor to the show, who was aware of my previous collaborations with scientists, to ask the question about how it all fits together.

What I brought to this latest collaboration was a desire to work with the idea of the hide. Used by naturalists, film-makers, hunters and soldiers, the hide is a camouflaged structure which seeks to efface the presence of the human observer and encourage 'natural' behaviour in those observed. Hiding was an extension of my previous interest in surveillance, but an approach I hoped would put me back out in the landscape rather than keeping me behind a computer.

Now, through working collaboratively with artists rather than scientists, I've switched from traditional scientific fieldwork to what I and my colleagues have termed ‘poetic fieldwork'. It's quite a change. At one point during Foreign Soil, I was regularly collecting temperature data from field instruments that was used as material for my own work but also as input to verify climate models. These days I still go out into the field armed with various instruments (or prosthetics) and attempt to make observations and discoveries, but it's far more open-ended and intuitive. It’s an attempt to build understanding of the site's nonhuman inhabitants on their own terms.

This playful, spontaneous and slightly ‘magical’ approach is a real contrast to my previous focus on testing the limits of objectivity and rationality – and one I actively sought. We've fostered dialogue, both between ourselves, and with the site and its inhabitants – and been acutely aware of how each affects the other.

Many themes have emerged from our work – of entanglement, liminality, slippage of language, the ‘life’ of ‘inert’ objects but, for me, one of the most resonant has been the idea of lying to get closer to the nonhuman. This is lying in multiple senses: of deceiving (pretending to be what one is not, perhaps through mimicry), of getting physically closer to the earth, and of hiding (by becoming prone) to make observations. And we are not the only ones who do it: lying is a strategy we've observed throughout our time at Dawlish Warren, from man-made objects pretending to be 'natural' objects to a log-like seal basking largely unobserved on a beach.

South West Autumn art blitz

Plymouth Art Weekender: Intercity 16

Crammed in so much art of late, I can do little more than list it.

B-SIDE

Went to the fabulous b-side festival on the Isle of Portland in Dorset on 16th September as part of an artist development day – The Crucible, which was co-organised by OSR Projects  and Six Projects. The b-side team laid on a bus and we had a whirlwind tour of some of the sites on Portland. Highlights for me included The Sonic Anomaly Sideshow by Lee Berwick at the Verne High Battery, Elaine Fisher’s Para(meter) at The Weather Station (lovely use of long-playing records to evoke geology/walking/distance) and Unseen and Unheard Things by Debbie Adele Cooper at St George’s Church (a perfect meeting of site and subject, even though the work, on conscientious objectors, originated at Dartmoor Prison). We spent the late afternoon in wide-ranging discussions on everything from audience engagement to networking, and finished up with a communal dinner at the Drill Hall.

PLYMOUTH ART WEEKENDER 

Another multi-site festival of visual art, Plymouth Art Weekender took place over 23rd, 24th and 25th September. I visited eight amazing shows in one day, but highlights were BimBam in Selbst by architects/sculptors Winter and Hoerbelt at KARST, Low Profile’s Impromptu at the Athenaeum, the ever-inventive Phil Magee at HQ and the tiny living room show of Holly Knowles with his amazing algorithmic drawings. A recent graduate of Plymouth University, his work goes from strength to strength.

EXETER PHOENIX

Back home in Exeter, Beth Emily Richards staged a performance lecture to accompany her Gallery 333 installation, called No such event took place.  A re-enactment of documentary material from the supposed visit of Michael Jackson to Exeter City Football Ground in 2002, it was unexpected and very entertaining. Later in the month, an artists' moving image screening to accompany the Exeter Contemporary Open included work by Anne-Marie Creamer,  Nick Jordan, Naomi Frears and

Dorine van Meel alongside a manic, brutal and extraordinary film by Thomas Yeomans that left me reeling for days afterwards.

MARVIN GAYE CHETWYND 

Finally, a wonderful talk by Marvin Gaye Chetwynd at Exeter School of Art. Like many people I struggle a little with her work, but understanding the sense of fun that drives it, and hearing from the warm and engaging woman behind it, took me a step closer to appreciating the reasons for her critical acclaim.

Throw only to an alert catcher

Calver David Hoad | Throw only to an alert catcher | 2016

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be showing work in progress arising from a collaboration with Megan Calver and Susie David at Dawlish Warren National Nature Reserve.

THROW ONLY TO AN ALERT CATCHER
Red, blue and yellow beach huts, Promenade, Dawlish Warren EX7 0NF
Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd October 2016
11am to 5pm

Supported by a professional development bursary from a-n The Artist Information Company.

Directions and further details.

Open Aviary - 15th July to 30th August

Gabrielle Hoad | Three pigeons, 127 seconds | 2014 |  Laser sintered nylon 

Two of my bird-flight sculptures will be appearing in 'Open Aviary' on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent: Friday 15th July - Tuesday 30 August 2016.

Taking place during the Sheppey Promenade Festival 2016, this exhibition celebrates the island’s strong connection to the idea of flight, both through aviation and avian flight.

Julie Bradshaw | Gen Doy | Lynn Dennison | Anna Bridges | Anne Ho Cooper | Karen Crosby | Paul Crocker | Laurie Harpum | Gabrielle Hoad Amanda Hopkins | Beth Lannings |Victoria McBride | Linda Newcombe Michaela Nettell | Nicole Mollett | Susan Petticrew |Deborah Pugh | Jane Oldfield | Mark Sosbe | Hugh Ribbons | John Gevais-Ross

The exhibition takes place across two venues: Rose St Cottage of Curiosities and Room at Sheerness Dockyard Church, Garrison Road, Blue Town, Sheerness ME12 1RR.

Visit the website for opening hours

http://islandprojects.co.uk/works/open-aviary/

An experiment is not a rehearsal

I was unprepared for making work on a recent trip to Portland, Dorset*, so found myself improvising. I used an old and basic camera to record a snatch of video, but forgot it didn't automatically record audio. So although I have a long and mysterious shot of one of the empty tunnels at the Verne High Angle Battery, I didn't manage to record the startling expletive my colleague shouted down it towards me from the opposite end. She was reading graffiti from the walls outside.

Never mind, we said, we can always come back and do it another day. But it won't have the same sense of eerie anticipation and certainly not the shock value. I won't be waiting and wondering where she is and what she'll say, while feeling slightly spooked by the semi-derelict site around me. You might think the footage would look the same, even if I don't feel the same as I record it - but it won't.

After working together on a series of spontaneous actions, we're discovering that you need to keep the camera rolling (and make sure it's working properly too). You can't treat experiments like rehearsals for the real thing. More often than not the real thing only happens once, when you least expect it, and usually with some inconvenient wind noise or the sound of a passing train in the mix. So maybe on this occasion, the silence says it all.

*I was there with fellow artists Megan Calver and Susie David to learn more about the amazing bi-annual b-side festival and the team behind it, of which more on another day.

Plymouth latest

Vanessa Billy | 'End of Days' |  2013 | Vase, mud, water and used light bulbs

As Exeter watches its art infrastructure wither, Plymouth's galleries are thriving. Last Thursday was an excellent crossover point between five outstanding shows.

Conversations Across Art and Mathematics at Peninsula Arts (9-28 May) was of particular interest to me after my work last year with the Oxford Mathematical Institute. Devised and curated by Barry Phipps, it included work by painter Mark Francis and architect George L. Legendre, alongside a film by Plymouth artist Heidi Morstang. A highlight for me was a wall-size print-out of Legendre's book Pasta by Design and I also enjoyed eavesdropping on mathematicians' thinking processes via Mortstang's film. But I was definitely left on the outside looking in.

good things come... at The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art (25 April - 4 June) curated by Kevin Hunt and Hannah Jones featured (mostly) small works by Agnes Calf, Alex Frost, Clive Murphy, Eric Bainbridge, Hayley Tompkins, Jack Lavender, Jo Addison, Kevin Hunt, Leo Fitzmaurice, Oliver Tirre, Peter Amoore, Richard Wentworth, Ryan Gander, Ruth Proctor, Sean Edwards, Susan Collis and Vanessa Billy.  I found this collection of work very exciting, but couldn't quite get a handle on the underlying concept: that the size of an object and our attention upon it might be intrinsically linked to time.  Sadly I had to skip the companion show at KARST F*** Newton (28 April to 28 May).

Quick look in on on Holly Davey's Here Is Where We Came From at Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery (7 May - 3 September) then on to Kelly Best's All Walls Are Interrupted at Plymouth Arts Centre (15 April - 11 June). I was particularly taken with a site-responsive wall drawing based on the building's slate roof (more geometry). It gave me a way back in to Best's paintings, which I've previously found hard to figure.

A sense of #AWE

Jimmy Cauty | Aftermath Dislocation Principle | 2016

The inaugural Art Week Exeter (AWE), which ran from 9 to 15 May, brought together existing contemporary art events (such as the Sean Lynch show jointly presented by Spacex, Exeter Phoenix and RAMM) with the annual Exeter Open Studios event and its low-profile shadow NOSE. Possibly one of the most successful collaborative arts ventures the city has seen, it was coordinated not by the council or by any of the city's established arts organisations, but by independent artist and curator Stuart Crewes.

I managed to check out Jimmy Cauty's Aftermath Dislocation Principle, Sean Lynch's The Weight of the the World, Lousie Ashcroft's Discrete Infinity, the Museum of Contemporary Commodities' pop-up shop and talk at TOPOS, Konstantin Bayer's art-articles, US CHAPS - a collaboration between Cannon Hill Art School and Preston Street Union and Naomi Hart's Drawn to the North.  I would have liked to do more, but time was short and the listings long (101 events across 56 venues).

The inevitable issue with new arts events in small cities is that the main audience are also the main providers of the event. So everyone's too busy doing their bit to go see anyone else's. But it was a great test-run - drawing together the diverse strands of Exeter's visual arts community in one well coordinated, well marketed and (in certain hot-spots) well attended festival, which could credibly be promoted to a far wider catchment in future years. It made me feel hugely optimistic about the outlook for visual art in Exeter.