There lies the fire within the Earth,
and in plants,
and waters carry it;
the fire is in stone.
There is a fire deep within men,
a fire in the kine,
and a fire in horses;
The same fire that burns in the heavens;
the mid-air belongs to this divine Fire.
– Atharva Veda 12.1 अथर्ववेदः
Based in Merseyside, England, I am an inter-disciplinary artist, activist and independent curator of eco-cultural activity. Through my diverse practice I endeavour to reveal creative patterns embodied within our symbiosis with places, environments and 'natural systems'. Very often my artworks address, abstractly, what is commonly perceived and all too often misinterpreted, as an anthropocentric distinction between the 'natural' (organic) and the 'human-made' (artificial).
The ecological possibilities of 'life as art as life as evolution' is what fascinates and inspires me. What drives my activity as a curator, is a desire to connect people, ideas and actions in order to create emerging relationships in our world that might otherwise remain unrealised.
My curatorial practice is an integral extension and evolution of my artistic activity. In recent years I have curated exhibitions and collaborative projects with organisations such as Liverpool Biennial International Festival of Contemporary Art, London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, the BBC and CIWEM (Chartered Institution for Water and Environmental Management). I am the former Co-founder and Curator of High Tide UK, an independent, non-profit environmental arts initiative.
I am one of the few curators in the UK whose practice is engaged primarily in ‘arts, ecology and sustainability’. Characteristics of my curatorial activity include inter-disciplinarity, collaboration and commissioning. Currently I am an Associate of the CIWEM Arts and Environment Network. From 1997 to 2005 I worked in the UK museums and galleries sector, primarily with collections, archives and exhibitions. My academic and early professional background is in Art History/Theory, and Museology.
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| Castell y Gwynt (...all this could be lost), 2008 (digital video, 4min) |
The concept of ‘landscape’ is a human invention and the (art–) history of landscape representation and its significance in forming personal and collective identity is a persistent fascination of mine.
Using digital video I explore remote landscapes and seek to re-work the imagery commonly associated with Romantic landscape painting. Although these images have their roots in an art historical tradition, they are intended to operate consciously within the ideology of Environmentalism – making poetic associations between wilderness and technology, ecology and the sublime, human time and deep time. In an attempt to go ‘beyond Romanticism’ maybe these images of our vulnerable native landscape suggest something more prophetic and urgent than just nostalgic ideas of our picturesque ‘green and pleasant land’?
These landscape video works occupy a challenging and unusual, ever-shifting position somewhere between video and painting. Aesthetically they are objects that often look like painting but are not literally paintings and thus they indicate the possibility of addressing the medium, its history, language and parameters without actually producing it. In these video works we encounter a specific simulacrum of landscape in real-time.
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| Bug Cinema, 2012 (mixed media, Siuslaw Model Forest, Hudson Valley, NY) |
Bug Cinema is a solar power, sculptural light installation: an ecological forest art commission for the Whale Oil to Whole Foods summer 2012 eco-arts festival in Greene County (Hudson Valley), on the edge of the Northern Catskill Mountains, upper New York State. You can read the Bug Cinema project blog here...
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| 2,700 Years, 2012 (live art performance – unfinished, Kentmere Valley, Cumbria – photo by Àgata Alcañiz) |
2,700 Years: The Symbiosis of Art as Life as Evolution, from 300 BCA to Present was commissioned in early 2012 by the Chartered Institution for Water and Environmental Management, Arts and Environment Network. This expansive poetry-collage is included in the CIWEM AEN anthology We Assert!... A Manifesto and is being published in 2012/13.
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| When I die I must give life: Fraxinus spp. No.1 (detail), 2012 (biochar on newsprint paper, 80" x 35") |
This biochar artwork is the first in a new series of my ‘organic compost drawings’. These ephemeral performance–drawings are gifts to the soil and a symbolic ritual of thanks. When hung from a tree or laid to rest on the earth, they decay and (in a humble way) enrich small areas of earth. Through a symbiosis of ideas and organic processes, the drawings celebrate the natural cycle of life, death, rebirth and entropy of which we are all a part. You can read more about the meaning and motivations of the biochar drawings here...
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| Requiem: Lux Aeterna, 2005/6 (plane tree leaves & encaustic on canvas, 24" x 20") |
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| Floodland: study no.1 – visible measures, 2009 (digital video, 12min) |
We measure nature. We read nature’s marks. As the tide turns, what measures are we taking? What marks have we made? I explore my instinctive response to specific places and seek to engage with the ecological histories of where land meets the sea: embodying human time, earth time, celestial time. Through physical interaction and the making of ephemeral marks, I seek a synthesis of body with organic matter. This is a corporeal measure, investigating a spirit of connectedness through environmental change. Floodland can be viewed on-line here...
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| folly, 2009 (wool, woodland installation, Coed Hills Rural Art Space) |
As sea levels rise and rivers flood the lowlands, in the future will we retreat to the hills and build our follies amongst the trees? Is it just folly and ignorance to harbour the belief that we, as humans, exist independently (as superiors) and separately from nature?
An ecological artwork. Low-impact, site-specific, organic matter. folly – an intervention created in the woodland at Coed Hills. Made of wool sheared from the sheep (the Suffolk breed) on the neighbouring farm, folly is built amongst the trees, becoming a site for meeting, performance, ritual, meditation and a new micro-habitat for wildlife.
folly www.folly-project.blogspot.com
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Forthcoming & current activity:
2012 ongoing - The Delph Project (community forest garden project, Wirral, UK – in development)
2012/17 - Water, Water Everywhere (touring group show, United States, various museums)
Group exhibitions & projects:
2012 - Counter Culture Nature (Liverpool city parks, TATE Liverpool)
2012 - 3 Days Without Water (Life Friendly group show, 3 Piccadilly Place Gallery, Manchester, UK)
2012 - Whale Oil to Whole Foods (Greene County Arts and Cornell Agroforestry Centre, NY, United States)
2012 - Life Friendly (group artists’ research/residency, Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, UK)
2011/12 - Photernative (Helfa Gelf, touring collective, North Wales, UK)
2010 - space between (International Gallery, Liverpool Biennial 2010, Liverpool, UK)
2010 - Fabric of the Land: Origin of Colour (University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK)
2010 - What Matters Most? (ecoartspace/Exit Art, New York, United States)
2010 - Climate Change (Rhyl Arts Centre, Denbighshire, North Wales, UK)
2010 - High Tide presents... Mersey Basin (Art & Design Academy, Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
2009 - Climate for Change (FACT - Foundation for Art & Creative Technology, Liverpool, UK)
2008 - Gaia Project: URBAN/ECOLOGY (Liverpool Biennial Independents 08, Liverpool, UK)
2008 - Artranspennine08 (cross-regional, Pennines, Derbyshire, UK)
2008 - Screen Deva Studio (Chester Performs 08, media arts festival, Chester, UK)
2007 - When Anything Looms (Chapman Gallery, University of Salford, UK)
2005 - Being here - Being there: Landscape, Memory, Identity (Zion Arts Centre, Manchester, UK)
Solo exhibitions & projects:
2012 - Ark (sound installation, St. Luke's Church, Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial Independents, UK)
2011 - Hydrography (collaborative research, National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool, UK)
2009 - folly (Woodland Artist in Residence, Coed Hills Rural Artspace, Cowbridge, South Wales, UK)
2009 - distance (Cornerhouse Projects, Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK)
2008/09 - …all this could be lost (Buxton Museum & Art Gallery, Buxton, UK)
2007 - Landscape Video Paintings (Cornerhouse Projects, Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK)
Curated exhibitions & projects:
2011 - International Environmental Photographer of the Year: At Water’s Edge (EDGEspace, Liverpool, UK)
2010 - space between (International Gallery, Liverpool Biennial 2010, Liverpool, UK)
2010 - High Tide presents... Water's Edge (UK-wide, London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, UK)
2010 - High Tide presents... Mersey Basin (Art & Design Academy, Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
2009/10 - The Gathering Storm: COP15 Project (FACT - Foundation for Art & Creative Technology, Liverpool, UK)
2008 - Gaia Project: URBAN/ECOLOGY (Gaia Cabinet, Albert Dock, Liverpool Biennial Independents, UK)
2007 - Gaia Museum (Hope Valley, Peak District National Park, Night of the Museums, UK)
2006 - Interventions (CUBE, Manchester, UK, co-curated)
2005 - Being here - Being there: Landscape, Memory, Identity (Zion Arts Centre, Manchester, UK)
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