2019

Ingrid Pumayalla Michael Taiwo

Based in Trujillo, Peru Based in London, UK

Kirsten Bertelsen Christopher Pearson

Based in Copenhagen, Denmark Based in London, UK

Michael Taiwo was the first artist to invite the artists into his practice. He asked them to participate in a writing exercise ‘from the ground and out’. The artists looked at the world from the perspective of the ground and met up to generate new text work from the four pieces of writing. The aim of the workshop was to challenge the group to realign their thinking to consider looking at the world and their surroundings through the eyes and body of the landscape. The landscape as a living archive of experience was a reoccurring theme that was returned to throughout the writing exercises. The workshop aimed to communicate the experiences of the ground the perspective of the sky, the trauma and healing of the environment we were working in as a way of understanding it through a sensory experience rather than just observation. Seeing the natural environment as a livingbody encapsulating memories, thoughts and feelings.

The second day’s workshop was led by Kirsten Bertelsen. It took its starting point in an earlier discussion within the group revolving around norms and how different cultures have it in their DNA to celebrate and encourage individuals who stand out. 

In her practice, Kirsten often explores hidden assumptions and underlying norms. She is interested in the way tacit knowledge in a culture can structure and influence human behaviour. The conversation around the cultural DNA of a country, and how it can enable an individual and generate diversity, led to the overall theme of the workshop. The sentence ’Why must you be different?’ came up in discussions and became the conceptual foundation of the workshop. The group decided to work with clay and explore what happens in the field between material and idea when four artists with different methods conjoin their practices. 

The works made during the day led to thoughts around the agency of the material and one’s respect for it, and how to let go of control and work less intentionally in order to let the material ’do its thing’

Ingrid Pumayalla (Trujillo, 1989) held the third workshop in which the artists were given knitted wool pieces (blue, red and green) to explore the landscape, place the pieces according to their sense of belonging. At the same time, they were asked to make a sound recording from this interaction with the nature. 

The workshop took place as a ritual to introduce us as artists to this new nature in which we were going to inhabit and create for a month. 

The pieces were situated to fill cracks in between the rocks, they become also offerings to go into the sea, and also as part of the trees swang by the wind.

The last workshop, conducted by sculptor and printmaker Christopher Pearson (b. 1994, London), began with an introduction to the artist’s practice, past projects and approach to making, followed by a brainstorming session where each artist shared key terms and topics related to their own field of research from which we discovered common interests and how our work intersects and overlaps.

After this, Christopher’s workshop involved the collaborative production of three series of sculptures which each focused on being performed by a different environmental force: gravity, wind or light. These site-specific conditions respectively became the momentum behind the making of each sculpture, shaping the processes at hand whilst staging an active interplay between factors such as tension, movement, balance, weight, precariousness, colour and location.

The resultant ‘material performances’ took the form of contorted metal rods wrapped in strips of brightly coloured cotton, scrap fabrics and metallic ribbon with crocheted cord and tasselled rope which were installed on the cliffside (gravity), assemblages comprising discarded metal hoops, plants, air-dried clay, wool, string, wooden beads and lengths of fabric which were hung from a tree (wind), and various rocks, stones, pebbles, shells, beads and other found items wrapped in reflective foil and two-tone fabric and placed in and around rockpools and other aspects of the rocky coastline (light).

Throughout this workshop, it was vital that all participants surrender control over the materials to the materials themselves in order to allow the process to become as automatic as possible and so that the outcome emerged not from the imposition of meaning on matter, but from the continuous ‘teasing-out’ of possibilities and connections from the evolving forms. Amongst other experiences, this led us to consider the inevitable agency of materiality and, correspondingly, that of the ever-changing natural environment.