The situation demands an alternative response, to life and art. This is how I began the last letter. I didn’t think it would still be happening. It is becoming normalised. I have now begun to think of these not as newsletters but as letters, a connection to the outside where contact has become more fluid, words spoken in Zoom, a few lines within a thousand WhatsApp messages exchange.
But things have happened, online exhibitions gather thousands of viewers rather than the usual small numbers who go to galleries. Artist talks require new skills, a steady look and eye contact with the imaginary audience but there is an audience, and one that can listen later, at a time of their own choosing.
The art group, Hatchery, which began as a solo self-directed residency, is now Arts Council funded. Its aim is for artist development and mutual support, with creativity at its heart, trying to provide for a sustainable future, ending the Covid year as better artists than we when we began.
I have been lucky, I have had support in different ways from organisations such as Artcore, Derby and Near Now Studio at Broadway, Nottingham as well as ACE. I have also had a really productive 2019 to build on.
Created as part of Hatchery Artists She'd 2 exhibition hosted by Artcore, Derby,
My favourite piece from this year has been Slow Flow, a one minute film that was accepted by Kerry Baldry and her ongoing volume of films. Earlier volumes, in which I had a couple of films, are archived at the British Film Institute. Kerry has done a tremendous job but is now stepping back through illness. This very short film is no longer or shorter than it needs to be, it epitomises the quietness of the environment as well as the calmness my days passed with. Unity is created by the reflections that entwine with the real as the feather passes. Happenstance, here through the feather falling in the water near me, is a major feature of most of my work, that and seeing opportunities everywhere. Through the Covid situation, I have had to think more carefully about how I make work. Previously, I have used the impetus of the new as a bouncing off point. Now, I have had to dig deep and look at what is around me more closely. Water mostly! It is hard to get excited about the familiar. However, I have used running and walking as a link to my location thus creating a changing space. The second image shows the Mermaid’s Pool on the slopes of Kinder Scout where I used a hydrophone. It makes life easier than the cling film and condom method I used to have to use. Was I hoping to hear the mermaid who lives in the pool and appears only at midnight at Easter to grant eternal life to whoever sees her? The connecting of the real and the myth seem so emblematic of today.
This underwater recording is made below the summit of Kinder Scout in the PeakDistrict where lies the Mermaid's Pool.
Finding ways to change/alter/manipulate/compose sounds has been a challenge as well as finding ways to record. Following on from Early Birds, a keyboard and birdsong piece, I have just finished another very short piece called Angry Gulls with Duck, Crow and Clarinet. I think this will be a continuing strand.
Drawing has long been part of my practice and these miniature drawings are the result of using sanitiser and thermal paper as a basis. The shapes are not controlled but flow from the chemical reaction whilst the pen drawings highlight shapes that may or may not suggest something else.
Drawing 2