INSTALLATION / ARTWORKS / THE SENSES
The Great Turning was commissioned by Harbour House Arts and Yoga and was exhibited in their gallery space in Kingsbridge, Devon from 7 October – 11 November 2023. I was invited to document and creatively respond to Harbour House’s new community engaged arts programme. The programme was developed collaboratively between Harbour House and the Young Curators, a group of local sixth form students, to address the climate crisis and a lack of intergenerational cohesion in their local area.
I created a fictional narrative that told the story of the project through a moving image work, a series of latex lightbox sculptures containing digital images and a video projection that was encountered in a fabric environment. Incorporating our different senses and ways of engaging was essential to me in creating an immersive installation: visually my work drew on a variety of materials and media and sound-wise the exhibition was accompanied by an experimental audio piece from Alex Kearney with the opening event featuring a sound bath by Carly Seller. I drew on our sense of smell by creating a concoction of oils and scents in the central room and I designed a tactile clay activity for visitors to engage with touch.
COMMUNITY / WORKSHOPS / ACTIVITES
The exhibition also brought together artworks from the local community that came out of the summer programme of workshops that I documented, which were led by artists from across Devon and Cornwall: Crab & Bee, Bronwen Buckeridge, Tricia Stubberfield and Erika Cann. These included cyanotypes displayed in the second room, and artworks across a range of media in the third room.
As part of the commission I held a collaborative large scale map-making workshop with the sixth form students. We created a chalkboard map to reflect on the students experience of their hometown and the summer programme they had designed. I drew on themes from my commission for the workshop by sourcing examples of ancient maps of ley lines and sacred sites in the south west. I also designed a clay activity for children and visitors that ran throughout the month-long exhibition that engaged with concepts of the show through physical making and tactile engagement. I wanted the activity to focus on the sense of touch, as the installation brought together sight / hearing / scent through the artworks.
commissioned by: @harbourhousearts
install images: @richthecameraguy
Images below are stills from The Great Turning video.
install images: @richthecameraguy