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. 

Locked-down freedoms

Still from ORBIT (out of play) | 1m 20s digital video | 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic marks a period in which many of the activities that had become the core of my practice - collaboration, participation and working with specific sites - became impossible or severely curtailed. The shock of work being halted and cancelled, literally overnight, was immense. But I am one of the lucky ones, with reasonable living space and just enough resources to tide me over.  I've therefore enjoyed some positive aspects to lockdown. This pause in business as usual has provided me with my first extended time out in about six (frankly exhausting) years. After 12 weeks, I feel I have just about caught up with myself.

It took me a couple of weeks to get my bearings. While many arts organisations immediately went into overdrive, recruiting artists to generate digital content and participate in online activities, I was still trying to process the immensity of what we were facing and work out the basic elements of survival for myself and those close to me.

Initially I was glad of the time to wrap up Anyone may come and go Preston Street Union's commission for RAMM. As a group, we then went on the contribute to Adam Garratt's online 'lightboxcolab' project.  I  also worked with Megan Calver to put our future work for the Thelma Hulbert Gallery on ice with a short promo video. She and I later set to work on a long-postponed publication to wrap up LEAN, our project for Od Festival in 2018.

Although the empty weeks that stretched ahead encouraged me to think big, I settled instead for working in short bursts on small projects to allow for the other inevitable tensions, intrusions, worries and responsibilities of  living through a pandemic. I made a couple of unsuccessful applications(what's new?) but have also had a few generous invitations to make new work.

I set about teaching myself editing with Vegas Movie Studio, trying to work with video as a medium in its own right, rather than just a means of documentation. It's early days but I contributed a video work the predecessor to your prayer to Forced Collaboration and made ORBIT (out of play), based on my daily circular lockdown walks, for an informal Zoom project 'Stilled Lives'. This film grew from an image I made for a lockdown show 'together / apart' at That Art Gallery, Bristol.

I've been incredibly appreciative of the opportunity to view online and for free, gallery, film and performance works that would otherwise have required a trip to London (or even further afield). Highlights have been Tacita Dean's Event for a Stage (a rare opportunity to see her work in digital format), Mark Wallinger's Threshold to the Kingdom, Helen Cammock's They Call It Idlewild, John Smith's The Black Tower, Ed Atkins' Old Food, Hofesh Schecter's Clowns, Fabrizio Terranova's Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival, Complicite's The Encounter and Simon Stephens' The Sea Wall.

No doubt we will emerge from lockdown to a changed world, but I feel more ready to face it after this chance to pause and reflect. I hope we can 'build back better' - politically, socially and environmentally. There are interesting times ahead, in which activism may be one of the most important uses of artists' time and effort.

Looking back: LEAN (2018)

This score, devised by myself and Megan Calver was part of LEAN. Made for the Od Arts Festival 2018, LEAN was a series of objects and actions designed to prompt thought and conversation around ideas of rivalry and cooperation. Visit the show of a rival was inspired by a conversation we'd had about objects that get parked or left in gallery spaces. Two of our favourites were an electric organ and a sandwich trolley, but things such as brooms, dustbins, clipboards, clothes, toys and scrawled notes have also appeared in our shows over the years.

Lean (Tools for Rivals) for Od 2018, was a series of everyday leaning objects such as a clothes prop, door wedges, branches and walking sticks that were inserted into displays across the festival. They were identifiable only by subtle markings in fluorescent paint or tape and were used to distract from and disrupt our artistic rivals’ work. Over the following 18 months, we continued to place objects in various south-west galleries and to document them. A forthcoming 12-page publication showcases a few of those actions and invites new ones.

LEAN was originally commissioned by Simon Lee Dicker & Bob Gelsthorpe for The Art of Rivalry, Od Arts Festival 2018. 

Looking back: River Bovey Walk (2008)

The distance travelled by foot, travelled by hand (River Bovey Walk) - detail with pedometer | 2008 - | Pencil on paper

One of the ways I’ve been using the time in lockdown for Covid-19 is to reflect on past work.

Although this is an old work, it relates to my ongoing interest in tracking movement and measuring. It came to mind again when I visited the (currently suspended) Richard Long show at Thelma Hulbert Gallery Here I was reunited with Long’s Silbury Hill (1970-1), which acted as a major inspiration.

I was attempting to tie together, as closely as possible, the experience of a riverside walk and the process of remembering it later in the studio. Rather than re-walking it, I chose a slower method more akin to writing: I am drew a fine, condensed pencil line on paper.

I recreated the walk in sections, drawing a continuous line between two markers 50cm apart. Each section covers approximately 220 metres of the 6.643km walk and took about eight hours to complete. The walk itself, in total, lasted about 90 minutes. Yet the enormous difference in pace and duration belies the similarities between the two events. As I drew, I was constantly reminded of the process of walking. The drawing was repetitive, rhythmic, meditative. It slowed my mind and allowed it to wander. Both events were about my body moving through space. The paper, like the landscape, has a terrain which the pencil has to accommodate – sometimes it slows it progress, sometimes it throws it off the intended path. Small wobbles of the hand disturbed the precise measure and begin to form ripples that recall the flow of water and the strata of rocks.

Sections of this work were shown in 'Torre Abbey Contemporary Open' (2009), 'Drawn In' (2009) and 'River Bovey Walk' (2008).

Looking back: Working with mathematical surfaces (2012- )

The Luminous Envelope #3 (Unravelled octahedron) | 2015 | Digital photograph 59.4 x 84.1 cm

One of the ways I’ve been using the time in lockdown for Covid-19 is to reflect on past work. Although I find advanced mathematics utterly bewildering, I notice there is a common thread in a lot of my digital work that relates to surfaces. I don’t mean surfaces in the usual artistic sense of touch and texture but abstract entities of infinite scale (but no volume) described by points and lines. Mathematicians talk about them using symbols and numbers and, more recently, model and view them using 3D visualisation software.

My first encounter with mathematical surfaces was when I tried to use 3-D printing (laser sintering) to create objects from GPS flight data generated by gliders and birds. It’s relatively easy to plot successive points in space in a computer program and to link them into a screen-based ‘surface’ that you can manipulate in virtual space, but turning those points into a scaled, real-world object with physical volume is a whole other matter.

I encountered a similar issue when in 2015 I was invited to work with a range of 19th century teaching aids held at Oxford University Mathematical Institute. These rendered mathematical formulae as plaster models (ie represented abstract entities as tangible objects you could sit on a shelf). I was particularly fascinated by the claim that such objects were locked away in the 1940s "to protect students from the dangers of intuition". In fact, the constant refrain from Professor Sam Howison, who patiently guided a group of artists through engagement with the collection, was that we were dealing with “surfaces not solids”, even as we held the heavy plaster objects in our hands.

The image above shows one of the photographs I made in response to a model of Fresnel's Wave Surface. The original model represents light waves emanating from a crystal as a solid object. The photographs make use of polarisation to dissolve sculptural objects into zones of colour. (Polarisation, incidentally, is a technique frequently used in the study of crystals.)  It was commissioned by Metron in collaboration with Oxford University Mathematical Institute and shown as part of ‘Illegitimate Objects’ at Oxford University Mathematical Institute (2015).

In this context of things that (imperfectly) co-exist in the infinite abstract and bounded physical realms, I was fascinated to be introduced last year to the myth of Skidbladnir by Anna Heinrich and Leon Palmer. Skidbladnir was the ship of the Norse gods, which was so large that it could hold on board all the gods with all their weapons, arms, and horses, yet could be folded up and put in a pocket like a handkerchief (or possibly, I considered, a memory stick).

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