Excavating scores

Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver | Durlston scores (work in progress) | 2021  

Here is a set of scores quarried from the Durlston Country Park online Daily Diary between Monday 4 January and  Friday 8 January 2021, with an additional compilation from Monday 11 January 

Every day (apart from Christmas Day) the Durlston rangers record their early-morning observations from the site and post them online. Text from these posts has been systematically excavated and reassembled by myself and Megan Calver to create a series of scores for action. 

Durlston is a 320-acre park and nature reserve on the outskirts of Swanage, Dorset. It includes the remains of two quarries: one for Purbeck Stone and the other Portland Limestone.

Every day for five days we created an instruction from the Daily Diary entry and then each enacted it in our own homes, working under the restrictions of lockdown and improvising with what was to hand. 

A selection of the outcomes were documented on Instagram: rapid ‘sketches’ made with a view to creating more ambitious future works with and for the site. 

https://www.durlston.co.uk

blue visible

Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver | blue visible (work in progress) | 2021

'blue visible'

Monday 4 January - Friday 8 January 2021

A series of actions and small works created with Megan Calver in response to the Daily Diary for Durlston Country Park.

Durlston is a 320-acre park and nature reserve on the outskirts of Swanage, Dorset.

Every day (apart from Christmas Day) the Durlston rangers record their early-morning observations from the site and post them online. Text from these posts has been systematically excavated and reassembled by us to create a series of scores (instructions) for action.

Every day for five days we created an instruction from the Daily Diary entry and then each enacted it in our own homes, working under the restrictions of lockdown and improvising with what was to hand.

A selection of the outcomes were documented on Instagram: rapid ‘sketches’ made with a view to creating more ambitious future works with and for the site.

Quarrying at Durlston

skitter Peregrine a shelter | Monday 4 January 2021 

Work in progress with Megan Calver. One of a series of scores (instructions) for action, quarried from the Durlston Country Park online Daily Diary, in which rangers record their observations from the site.

Durlston is a 320-acre park and nature reserve on the outskirts of Swanage, Dorset. It includes the remains of two quarries: one for Purbeck Stone and the other Portland Limestone.

Both Megan and I know the site well as we share family connections with Swanage. We had worked together as artists for some time before we discovered this coincidence. This year, instead of visiting our relatives, we are connecting with the site remotely via the Daily Diary and using it as a source of new collaborative work.
https://www.durlston.co.uk

Social practice in isolation

Preston Street Union | Instructions to live by | 2020

I've spent the autumn immersing myself in social art practice, through two excellent projects. The first was a social art study group - (un)Survey - organised by Blind Ditch. Over six weeks Blind Ditch shared an incredibly rich and thought-provoking range of content including online presentations from Paul Hartley of In-Situ Arts, Natasha Davis, Ellie Harrison and Clare Parker. 

Along with the rest of Preston Street Union (PSU), I've also helped to user-test a new social art practice platform - Social ARTery for Axis. An allied Axis project, the Social Art Library is also underway, to which I/we contributed a case study of PSU's Galleries R Us. 

Both projects raise many interesting questions about the role of artist activists in communities. For example...What kinds of change could or should artists try to effect? How do artists look after themselves and their practices when involved in projects with significant social impact? What are the ethics of involving non-art professionals in your work (eg care of participants, aftercare, legacy, authorship etc)?  

A pandemic is an odd time - but perhaps also the right time - to be thinking about social art practice, which has had to dramatically reinvent itself over the past nine months, but which may also have an important role to play in post-Covid rebuilding. 

Open-Up at Hestercombe

Here's a short video about 'Open Up' at Hestercombe Gardens in Somerset, which features Salt-cat (keeps them at home) - a work I made with Megan Calver -  as well as works by Richard Long, Sarah Bennett, Jon England, Jo Lathwood, Philippa Lawrence and Lucy Soni.

The works, distributed across all three of the period gardens at Hestercombe and beyond, range from subtle interventions involving copper plant tags, pigeon rings and galvanised nails, to bold stacked colours, giant bunting and orchard ladders. All artworks were installed and opened at different times during August and the beginning of September 2020 and are on show into 2021. 

See https://www.hestercombe.com for current opening times and booking details. 

https://vimeo.com/488155018

(be)wilder

Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver | (be)wilder - work in progress | September 2020

Last Saturday Megan Calver and I delivered a workshop for the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton relating to the touring Artist Rooms exhibition: Richard Long’s ‘Being in the Moment’. Commissioned earlier this year, pre-Covid-19, the workshop has been postponed and reshaped several times. Eventually we all agreed we could go ahead with a shortened two-hour session for a small group, accepting we would be constrained by the need to maintain safe distances and keep each participant's tools and materials entirely separate.

Six people joined us in the gallery garden on 19 September to think about landscape, language and movement. Using random processes, we extracted phrases from a range of natural history books. We reordered them both through paper edits and by speaking them out together while moving round the gallery gardens. We wanted to skirt the generalisation and categorisation that necessarily characterises natural history books and instead honour the complexity and specificity of the land and its inhabitants. In short, we hoped to subdue habitual responses and bewilder ourselves into making new connections with the wild.

High winds added to the giddy feeling of being physically reunited with other people in a creative endeavour. Gusts ripped papers from our hands and carried our voices away. At the end we secured everything on the ground with rows of stones: one giant collaborative text for/in/on the wild.

Richard Long ‘Being in the Moment', Thelma Hulbert Gallery - 11 July 2020 to 31 October 2020

(be)wilder workshop 19 September 2020

Open-Up at Hestercombe Gardens

Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver | Salt-cat (keeps them at home) | 2020 | Work in progress for Open-Up, Hestercombe Gardens

Open-Up is a brand new series of outdoor artworks commissioned by Hestercombe Gallery in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This new exhibition features eight artists with intimate knowledge of Hestercombe, many of whom have responded to the landscapes on the estate in the past. The works, on display across all three of the period gardens at Hestercombe and beyond, range from subtle interventions involving copper plant tags, pigeon rings and galvanised nails, to bold stacked colours, giant bunting and orchard ladders.

All artwork will be installed and opened at different times during August and the beginning of September.

The show centres on a flagship commission by Richard Long Jackdaw Line in Hestercombe’s Georgian Landscape Garden. Other artists include Sarah Bennett, Megan Calver & Gabrielle Hoad, Jon England, Jo Lathwood, Philippa Lawrence and Lucy Soni.

Open Wednesday to Sunday each week, 10am – 6pm (last entry 3.30pm). Due to current Covid-19 restrictions, all visits must be pre-booked online by 5pm on the day before you wish to travel.

Hestercombe Gardens, Cheddon Fitzpaine, Taunton, Somerset TA2 8LG

https://www.hestercombe.com/event/open-up-outdoor-gallery-exhibition/