Now published! Stori Canthrig Bwt - a refabulation of a 4th Century legend of Canthrig Bwt, the cannibal witch of Nant Peris.
In English with Welsh Idioms. With full colour illustrations by Wanda Zyborska, together with photographs by Lindsey Colbourne.
Suitable for adults and for brave children.
21x21cm, printed on non-coated paper with vegetable inks.
46 pages
£10+p&p from Tea with a Tree, or from Palas Print, Caernarfon or Caban, Brynrefail
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Now published! Stori Canthrig Bwt - a refabulation of a 4th Century legend of Canthrig Bwt, the cannibal witch of Nant Peris.
In English with Welsh Idioms. With full colour illustrations by Wanda Zyborska, together with photographs by Lindsey Colbourne.
Suitable for adults and for brave children.
21x21cm, printed on non-coated paper with vegetable inks.
46 pages
£10+p&p from Tea with a Tree, or from Palas Print, Caernarfon or Caban, Brynrefail
A RESIDENCY AND AN INVITATION!
Back in 2020, as we emerged on and off from lockdown, I started a new collaboration, Utopias Bach - revolution in miniature. It wanted to see if we could, in the midst of a pandemic, rethink Utopia as rooted in place, while growing connections across the world. Working alongside Wanda Zyborska, Lisa Hudson, Samina Ali and Julie Upmeyer and a growing community of others, we started inviting people to imagine and try out little things that might in some way help create a better place for people of all kinds (human and more-than-human), especially those who are most badly affected by the state of the world.
Utopias Bach has now become a ‘strawberry plant’ of a collective, with several hundred members and a thriving set of ‘experiments’ in the form of a series of creative invitations to explore personal and communal relationships to the human and more-than-human world. Although our focus is working in community, outside formal institutions, we are this year exploring how we might bring our community into contact with galleries and arts centres. And the first of our ‘residencies’ this year is at Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre in Bangor (3 March - 27 May 2023).
We would like invite you – human people and tree people of all ages - to join us in becoming a symbiotic participants in a co-enquiry with trees. We’ll be finding out: “How can we ‘dod yn ôl at ein coed’ through human-tree collaborations?”. The Welsh idiom ‘dod yn ôl at fy nghoed’ literally translates as ‘coming back to my trees’, meaning returning to your roots/senses/a balanced state of mind.
Using art, photography, poetry, mapping, costume making, performance, storytelling and collaborative enquiry, we will create a forest-like interconnected community of movement, senses, sound, growth and connection.
During the Experimental School you will be invited to take part in a series of six Cylchoedd. Each one will be a creative enquiry, lasting two weeks, and shaped around a different question. There will be opportunities to take part at home, online and at Pontio in Bangor. So you don’t have to be in North Wales to take part!
At the end of the 12 weeks you will be invited to the graduation and to take part in our final dramatic ending as ‘The Forest comes to Pontio’.
If you’d like to join us, I’d be so delighted!
Last week I was interviewed by Sarah Pogoda as part of her Arts and Humanities Research Council research project, exploring how artists are re-inventing the live event in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sarah is an extraordinary person, the opposite of an archetypal academic: She has been central to enabling the creative arts in North Wales to re-emerge from the pandemic - including (but by no means limited to) organising two arts festivals along with Anna Powell - the first Surrealist Saffaru in September 2020 and the second the Metamorffosis festival in North Wales in June 2021.
You can see Sarah’s blog here and her next event “Small Scale Solutions - Re-inventing the Live Event” is on zoom 21-22 February 2022: I’m running a workshop as part of the conference and the programme looks fantastic! See details/register (free) here
The video above is the first time I’ve talked about my ‘practice’, and it includes video clips and images of various of my projects over the years, and how the pandemic has affected my practice. I thought I’d share it, in case of interest…
As the days have been getting shorter and shorter, and winter sets in for real, the Merched Chwarel have been settling down to think about the next phase of the project. We’ve been wondering - and wondering while walking (as above at Cwmorthin) - about the walking element of Merched Chwarel. Not least because that is where we started....
Recently I read “What’s the Use? Constellations of Art, History and Knowledge. A Critical Reader”. It argues that art is best understood through its dialogue with the social sphere, rather than as a ‘thing in itself’. It argues that the modernist, white cube notion of the artist freed of everything, operating in their own world apart (apart that is, from the markets associated with its products), may have had its time.
"To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now" Samuel Beckett
A blog about the research behind our Llif installation and performance at the national Eisteddfod, July 2017... Find out about Mynydd Parys Mountain, its mines and the strange story of the outflow in Afon Goch y Gogledd, the most acidic river in Britain... and what we did with it (including how we managed to dissolve 12m of thick steel in just a few weeks)....
Apparently the “heart stopping thrills” of North Wales make it the 4th best place to visit in the world in 2017 (see the feature in Lonely Planet). Llongyfarchiadau to the locally-driven ‘active’ tourist industry, located in quarry towns like Blaenau Ffestiniog and Bethesda. It’s bizarrely thrilling to have them listed alongside Choquequirao, Tarinaki and the Azores. But the attention has a downside too, feeding articles like this one in the Telegraph, assessing the area in terms of its investment potential (“too far from London…But … enough properties … to catch the eye of canny investors”).
These differences in attitude are very much my mind this month while working (with the support of Amgueddfa Lechi Cymru) on an Arts Council Wales-funded Research and Development project called “Merched Chwarel” (Quarry Women) with four other (female) artists. Together we are exploring 5 different quarries, highlighting and questioning the contemporary relevance of the relationship between women and the quarry legacy.....
This second blog about our Llif Flow ‘show’ on 3rd July is about the performance side of things; Pontio is performing arts and innovation centre, after all. Jonathan as scientist, and Lisa and I, as multi-media artists don’t really ‘do’ performance per se, so we had invited three experimental music performers – Rhys Trimble (poetry), Sioned Eleri Roberts (clarinet) and Katherine Betteridge (violin) AKA the Marmaladies – to work with David Hopewell to create and mix the sounds of performance along with that of marble runs and LlifFlowioffonau marble-instruments.
Lisa Hudson and I are artists, and we have marbles. Dr Jonathan Malarkey is an oceanographer, and he has a lab. Rhys Trimble is a poet, and he has a megaphone. And Katherine Betteridge and Sioned Eleri Roberts are musicians, and they have all sorts of instruments. Together, we are going to make something about Llif, /Flow, to show at Bangor’s spanking new theatre, Pontio, on 3rd July.Quite how we are going to do it, we don’t know yet. Although we have a nugget of an idea that involves linking Jonathan’s research and marbles flowing, inside and outside the Pontio building and the Caban, something that is fun and interactive and curious, that is visually, physically and auditorily experiential. We have 2 ½ months to work it out. This first blog about the project describes our visit to Jonathan's lab, our joy at his wave machine and how our collaboration begins...
Some photos and reflections on my "Digging Down II: A Curiously Collaborative Museum of Lost and Found" created with Marged Pendrell as part of (and supported by) National Theatre Wales' residency at Pontio, Bangor, April 2016.
Building on my Digging Down I project, we wanted to see what would happen if we abandoned the traditional model of collection and display, and replaced it with a more interactive exhibition of things found by the public, allowing for exchange and handling, rather than the traditional ‘behind glass’ displays. We thought it would be interesting, but the positive reactions and creative outpourings from young and old took us a bit by surprise. In this blog, you can have a look at what they created...
Spring has Sprung, and the grass is (almost) riz, and art opportunities are unfurling all over the place... I have four shows coming up, from North Wales to New Zealand!
The Eames show (“The World of Charles and Ray Eames”, on til 14th February) at the Barbican showcases their ground breaking use of art, photography, design, science, play, humour, performance, participation and collaboration to explore ideas and their application. They ‘moved fluidly between the mass-production of objects for everyday use and the transmission of ideas in anticipation of the global information age’. And to think I’d always thought of them as ‘just’ designers. Chairs, mostly. Read on for some inspiration!
Reflections on being part of a lively and talented ICAW (International Contemporary Art Wales) delegation of ten artists from Wales, to put on an exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum, Naples. A bit about the piece I put into show "I can't grow potatoes, I can't have children, but I still, somehow manage to enjoy myself" .... and an unexpected trip to heroic Herculaneum.
A blog about my two-week residency at Brisons Veor, an old mine pumping engine house turned artist in residence house. Brisons Veor is perched on a cliff almost at the end of Cape Cornwall. And Cape Cornwall itself is the most (local view) or second most (map view) westerly point at the end of mainland Britain. What an incredible place... in this blog I talk about my work, and the other artists I meet....
In Bovey Tracey, Devon, there is a fantastic place called the House of Marbles. You can go there. There is a museum of marbles. There are millions of marbles to buy. There are many marble runs. There are marble jokes. There’s glass blowing. It is heaven. And its free.I popped in this weekend, on my meandering drive from North Wales to Cape Cornwall. I didn’t just go to the House of Marbles because I’ve always loved marbles. I went because I’ve recently been focused on making massive outdoor marble runs, in collaboration with the wonderful artist, Lisa Hudson. This blog is of the trip to the House of Marbles, and our first marble-run, put on as part of Gwyl Afon Ogwen River Festival.
Blog about a little stand I had at Gwyl Ffair Nant, Nantperis’ village fair. The stall was a continuation of my Digging Down project, comprised things dug from our garden, settled in the main marquee, along with the competitions (cakes, jam, collages, photographs, dragons, flower arrangemente involving a bottle and the like) and a wonderful photographic exhibition of old photos of Nantperis by John Ellis (Nantperis Ddoe a Heddiw). I wasn't sure if it'd work, but it seemed to generate a lot of interest and interaction. I was delighted!
Some reflections on the joy of punk (and some photos of my teenage friends), stimulated by two hourson MonFM radio with punk legend archaeologist Rhys Mwyn, discussing my ‘digging down’ project.
Followng the traces of those three nights, of my Digging Down Show: trying to work out what to do with them, and where to go next. And links if you'd like to see or read more....
Just a week to go before my 'sharing' event for my Waleslab Digging Down project. And just a few days before my collaborators, Chris. Dugrenier and Sam Fox arrive to work with me on the project R&D for five days. Then we have 4 days of working together, exploring the ideas in the project, and composing at least some of those ideas, before we have our 'sharing event' over supper in the barn, and then two pop up restaurants on the following nights. There is so much to do! I sometimes feel the theme of the fragment, or absence, is taking over.... what is missing > than what's present! This is a blog of the insights and joys from collaboration...
I spent Monday - Friday last week working with asylum seekers and refugees at the Oasis Centre on Splott Road in Cardiff as part of National Theatre Wales’ Big Democracy Project. There must have been more than 20 people involved over the 5 days, with many more joining in for an impromptu bit of music, a game, a dance. What an incredible set of resilient, fun, creative, generous, gentle, open-hearted, honest, joyful, talented people. I was massively humbled, and inspired. Here's a glimpse of what happened...
I had a session yesterday, with Marged Pendrell, my art tutor/mentor. It was, as always, incredibly helpful to stop and talk about where I’d got to. She could see all the work I was doing with research, coordinating and facilitating the ‘Digging Down’ project, but asked what was going on with my relationship with the objects and the ground they come from? Was, for example, I going to choose 3 things from the hoard I’ve laid out in the barn?
I wondered whether my selection should be based on the three that are most evocative for me? Or three most reminiscent? Or three most me? Which make me feel most connected? Which do I like best aesthetically? Which 3 would I keep if I had to get rid of all the others?
In the end, I think my choices were in response to a mix of all of those questions...
I’ve been trying a bit of detective work over the last few weeks, to find out who might have been throwing away the ‘rubbish’ that I’ve been digging up as treasure in the garden of my home, Coed Gwydr. I’ve been to the Caernarfon Record office, on the ancestery websites and to the incredibly atmospheric Nantperis graveyard. I did some rubbings of the gravestones yesterday, one of which (the one which turns out to be very significant in my detective story) was not legible until I’d done the impression of it.
What I’ve discovered makes, I think, for an amazing story....
As well as trying to get some ideas down about the content of my 'Digging Down' project (see my first blog), I have been starting to think a bit about where and how it might lead up to what Waleslab call a 'sharing event', which will happen at the end of my development week (around April time). These are very much just starting points, but I'm so excited about it all, that I can't help but get them down!
Again, any ideas, feedback and so on are welcomed!...
My first ever blog! A primer, sharing ideas for my first funded art project, Digging Down: Fragmented Totalities, supported in its initial R&D phase by National Theatre Wales' Waleslab.
This week, I invited two artist friends to look at my collection of objects and fragments that I’ve dug from the garden. I wanted to know whether others would find something in them, even though they haven’t ‘discovered’ them themselves in the same way, in the sense of digging them up, but in discovering them in my ‘collection’ in the barn. Inspired by Rebecca Solnit, this is what I found out...