Work by: Anna Brazier, Anna Kedziora, Mark Coulbrook, Carolin Weinert, Colin Shaw, David John Beesley, Joanna Bond, Jodi Nicholson, Mike Williamson, Mita Solanky, Raksha Patel, Sam Vicary, with additional works by Simon Whitehead, Debbie Rees, Julian McKenny, Madelaine Robinson and Rhys Reece Rees.
Anna Brazier
Large scale drawing made live on the opening day.
‘I am a mature student studying for an MFA at Cardiff met coming into my last term. I was a clinical psychologist (now retired) – and remain an ITM Alexander Teacher.
I am interested in human movement – and in particular our capacity to have joy and full extension through keeping movement in mind throughout our lives. I am exploring these ideas through performance drawings – for me the marks reveal thinking in activity and cumulate to share energy and freedom. It seems to me that ideas about freedom to move over a lifetime are in keeping with the ethos of the project’.
Anna offers Alexander sessions to small groups of people. She held a session at the exhibition opening under our favourite beech tree, overlooked by Y Frenni Fawr.
www.movementinmind.org
Anna Kedziora
“Earthworks”
(awarded an Honorable Mention at EMBARRAT, FESTIVAL DE CREACIÓ CONTEMPORÀNIA in Tarega, Spain.)
Born in 1982, lives and works in Poznan, Poland. Holds MA degrees in English (Adam Mickiewicz University, 2006) and Photography (University of Arts in Poznan, 2009) and a PhD in Photography (University of Arts in Poznan, 2015). Lecturer at the University of Arts.
Co-founder and manager of Poznań Photo Diploma Award.
Mark Coulbrook
Mark Coulbrook is a photographer and experienced teacher of photography based on the Wirral.
His work is a direct response to Basic Human Needs.
Carolin Weinert
“Berries of Wrath” (2013)
Bowl with 1lb strawberries, spoon, white shirt
The work „berries of wrath“, was originally from a live performance in the Gallery “Størpunkt“ in Munich, Germany in 2012. In this works she refers to the self-destructive feminist performance-art of the icons of the 70’s, like Ana Mendieta, Marina Abramović or Carolee Schneeman. Well aware of the fact that it’s hard to shock the audience nowadays with body liquids, she mocks the viewer by using sweet strawberries as a symbol of wrath and the human need to eat by making a parody of it. The usual picture of a woman’s sexy eating of strawberries is contradicted by the constant disgorging of the chewed fruits just to fill the spoon with them again. The performance is finished when the bowl is emptied.
Carolin Weinert studied Media Arts at the Academy for Visual Arts in Leipzig. In her practice, which is medially exceedingly diversified, she focuses on printing graphics as well as on performance based video works. Characteristic of her work is the way she exposes historical artworks and socially defined roles using irony. Carolin Weinert celebrates with subtle and ambiguous humor, how an examination can be held artistically without getting doctrinal.
Colin Shaw
“Quarried”
The images are from an exhibition that was shown at Buxton Museum and Art gallery from February to April 2016. The aim of the project was to show another side of the Peak District that is very different from the conventional landscapes that are used to represent the area.The theme of the exhibition was based around the unintended consequences of the building. Any new house, shop, mall, railway line, motorway or even a humble kitchen extension needs raw materials; the ‘bricks and mortar’ which have to be quarried.
Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky said that for every new building there is a corresponding hole in the ground. It is that simple. That is the link I wanted to make.
Colin Shaw recently completed an MA in Photography at Nottingham.
www.colinshaw.co.uk
David John Beesley
“Genosis”
Filmed in an abandoned hospital looks to how government cuts act as land-grabs for property developers. The area has lost two hospitals in recent years, where the land has been used to generate more housing. Though, in this act, the government and local council leaves the local citizens at a disadvantage in the care available to them. This appears to be happening around the country as the government makes it ‘cuts’ through imposed austerity.
The work relates to Basic Human Needs around the concept of Protection. In this case: issues around care, a growing population and this governments austerity measures deny basic human needs to many of it’s citizens; those on disability benefits and job seekers mental well-being is not being served properly.
My work critiques power structures and social conditioning within our social & political landscape.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmWIBObOKBbK7kDSdlyiNuQ
Joanna Bond
“Becoming wall” site specific performance art piece. Music by Stuart Hampton and film by Sam Christie.
I am a multidisciplinary artist working in ceramics, voice and performance art influenced by dance and improvisation. My work is often a response to the relationships and connections we all have with the natural world and how creative activity itself connects individuals and communities, both to nature and each other.
Joanna’s work is an exploration into the livingness of clay and how she might integrate her energetic imprint into the fabric of the wall. Using movement and music she wants to explore how she might dissolve the separation between man made and wild nature.
Exploring her own awareness of the liveness in everything, treating everything as alive and responding to it creatively.The performance will involve plastering the wall of the straw bale structure, using dance and nature as influence. Accompanied by music from Stuart Hampton using instruments such as Gong, Singing Bowls, Bells, Chimes, and Shruti Box, and a film by Sam Christie of Joanna digging the clay up from a section of the six and a half acre permaculture site.
http://joannabond.co.uk/performance-art/
Madelaine Robinson
“Solar Mandala”
A new work by Madelaine Robinson has been added to the show this week, Madelaine is WWOOFing with us and has brought a fantastic new dimension to the exchange between WWOOF host and volunteer!
Madelaine graduated from Goldsmiths in 2010 with BA in Art Practice. After taking a break from art to work on organic farms and market gardens in the UK and New Zealand, she has been inspired at Blaenffos Permaculture Market Garden to create a new set of works, inspired by Manfred Max Neef and permaculture principles. Solar Mandala highlights the fundamental needs of subsistence and understanding.
Jodi Nicholson
“Shirt” (2016)
denim shirt, cotton muslin, dye, digital stitch, hand embroidery, rolo sweet packet, satin rose petals.
“Shirt” is an autobiographical piece inspired by Gill Scott-Heron’s spoken-word piece: Pieces of a Man. Drawn to the idea of memories acting as patches in our lives that we piece together and hold onto to form our individual identities. Using my past experiences I have looked at how identity is formed through our relationships, memories and experiences. Seeing clothing as a second skin to our identities the shirt becomes the body in which embedded are the patches and stitching’s of memories and life’s experiences holding it together.
www.jodiannnicholson.weebly.com
Mike Williamson
“Mr. Buckethead”
A response to ideas of identity, protection and surveillance in the modern world.
Mike Williamson is studying for a BA in Photography at Carmarthen.
http://mikewilliamsonphotography.co.uk
Mita Solanky
“Sleep Walks” (2015) oil on canvas.
Mita Solanky is a UK based artist and presents an installation of her recent ‘Sleep Walks’ series which is inspired by the basic human need for rest, reflection, idleness and time away from work, production, consumption and technology.
The work explores the connection between humans and nature, in response to the increasingly technologised lifestyles we lead. The works themselves were made by the act of sleeping, revealing a trace of human sleep, using oil paints derived from earth pigments and autumn leaves as a bed.
Raksha Patel
I have been making work that draws upon the connection between the human body and landscape, exploring the food that we eat and our impact upon landscape.
My recent drawings are portraits vegetables that celebrate them in their own right and give status to the otherwise neglected root vegetable.
Sam Vicary
“Tree Bud I” water based oil on board, 20cms x 20cms, 2016
“Tree Bud II” water based oil on board, 22cms x 22cms, 2016
“Tree Bud III” water based oil on board, 18cms x 18cms, 2016
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night and spring after winter.” [Rachel Larson, Silent Spring]
A walk in the aftermath of a storm at the beginning of this year confirmed that the lanes and bridal ways of Pembrokeshire are wild and un-kept. They already showed signs of Spring even in the wettest, coldest weather and the promise of renewal. For me making new work is about showing the ‘struggle’. I leave behind the physical process of drawing, continually over-painting and rejecting marks and colours for the sake of the form. Painting is about finding the correct balance, enjoying the subtlety of the relationship between form and surface. Revealing just enough of the intended.
Framing the smallest patches of land and sky, I realised my expectations of regeneration were replaced with a sense of loss and detachment. I noticed changes in the landscape and a much quieter dawn chorus. Flooding and high winds had felled great trees and paths had been washed away. Instead I saw hedges and trees cleared to make way for fresh tarmac and last year’s patches of flowers had gone. Those spaces reflecting the times and people I have lost in just one year.
Simon Whitehead & Barnaby Oliver
“Young Ravens” with Zither & Gatewind Banjo (Simon Whitehead & Barnaby Oliver)
Simon is a movement artist, Barnaby is a sound artist. Their working process has developed remotely between Whitehead’s base in rural Wales and Oliver’s base in Melbourne, Australia over the last 20 years. They are friends.
Whitehead and Oliver have collaborated remotely for many years now. Originally using the postal service as a means to exchange material between their relative geographical locations, they have now developed an online process of sharing and altering materials as part of a long term commitment. In 2010 they developed PINGS, a year long process of live exchange from their respective local rivers in Pembrokeshire and Melbourne Australia, using the web as an interface for wide public engagement and as means to accumulate and archive performance material. In the 90‘s they would meet regularly to perform together and construct spaces with shared materials. They now rarely meet in person and location and concentrate instead on a process of working with an emphasis on materiality and a constant cycle of alteration. Here the work, though referencing discrete locations, becomes so altered that it appears to hover between places…
“Coedmor”
In 2013 Whitehead began to make binaural field recordings on his daily cycle ride through Coedmor to his studio. Pausing in gateways along the route, he began to make seasonal recordings of the fields, ravens, animals and weather. The tubular steel gates installed with microphones, augment and alter the sensitivity of the recordings and these are then treated as landscapes in which Barnaby Oliver visits and adds accompaniment.
Some of these places I might know, some I don’t. In my studio halfway around the world I listen, and imagine I can play my way into these places. When I’m there, I don’t do much, just look, listen and be part of things.
Debbie Rees
“Opie and D”
The pair are considering an OPD (One Planet Development) on a village edge site in Blaenffos. They are a little overwhelmed by the number of skills they need to acquire to make a life and livelihood but excited at the thought of a self determined future living a low impact life. They are a bit worried about the neighbours.
“Abundance”
Julian McKenny
“Means of Escape”
Julian McKenny is a photographic artist whose recent work reflects life on a small market garden in West Wales. Excerpts from this sequence have recently featured in The Lampeter Review magazine (scroll down the tLR page for free online version of magazine) and at www.envirohum.com.
Julian has an MA in Photography and a BA in Fine Art (Painting).
Rhys Reece Rees
Rhys Reece Rees are collaborative palavarists deeply concerned about quite a lot of things. Earnest in their tackling of big issues in little ways. Having worked together for some time they have recently galvanised around the ideas of the ecological economist Manfred Max Neef and his concept of fundamental human needs providing an inspiring method for societal and economic change. They think he is quite important.
Basic Human Needs Seeds – Sowing Instructions –
To PARTICIPATE, take a moment of IDLENESS in which to
CREATIVELY sow your seeds with AFFECTION.
Feel the FREEDOM to express your IDENTITY in the sowing and
therefore gain UNDERSTANDING through self-reliance and SUBSISTENCE living.
Don’t forgot to give the new shoots adequate PROTECTION
[ and water … ].
Ask The Wall – Visitors were asked to choose the need they most felt the lack of and to place the folded paper in the wall. This will be covered in clay and become part of the fabric of the house. By doing this they Participated in the exhibition and had physical contact with the straw bale walls.
One of three wallets containing a Participation Donor Card and various local currency notes such at the Totnes Pound, Brixton Pound, Stroud Pound, etc.
Basic Human Needs Seeds packets and BHN Donor Cards for visitors to take away.
General exhibition images
Participating artist Sam Vicary (left) and visitor Rob Oakey at the opening.
Works by Madelaine Robinson and Carolin Weinert
Exhibition notes against the straw bale with clay slip walls
Works by Colin Shaw (foreground) and Mita Solanky.
Quote by Joseph Beuys
“For example, it’s the question of agriculture as a question of art. That strikes you as an absurd idea doesn’t it? No? It’s not, because agriculture basically just deals with the things that are there: the topsoil is principally chalk, silica, clay and then of course one must make sure that there’s humus, ensure the soils’s well aired, ensure that no substances enter the soil that muck up this process, such as artificial fertilizers or minerals, etc. Agriculture is a question of art, which for me is the engagement with substances. In other words, if one understands the spirit of substances, one can only really do agriculture. So we come back to the head of lettuce, these connections to life are everywhere. That’s why I have only one, what shall I call it, suspicion, that people always want to separate the artwork out, and this is then art! ” Joseph Beuys
All photographs of work in exhibition by Julian McKenny
Vegetable Agenda 