Abstract

Thursday June 9, 2022 @10am - 11:30am CT

A Performance Lecture

Made from earth’s dust - the stuff of stars and pre-solar grains such as graphite, it could be said that we are drawn and shaped by place; and so, if place draws us, constructs us, and makes us, and if i miss a place, does a place miss me?

The artwork is a response to this critical time – the ‘weight of things‘ and the sense of longing…for home and a landscape – with big skies, far-reaching horizon lines and the smell of soil.

Physical encounters with particular materials and a landscape are one thing – and in a time when we have consciously reached an unprecedented moment in history regarding our relationship with the earth’s environmental state, how do artists construct and reflect on this feeling; of which the notion of the landscape has long provided, and to address the now human effect on the Earth? Historically the canon of art has presented landscape dominated via painting and photography; the image describing a sense of vast escapism or nostalgic landscape has long underpinned an artists’ practice. To encounter, to hold a bit of landscape and feel the weight of things… the artwork and artist presentation is a performative event, wondering and thinking – if i miss the land, does the land miss me?

References – Research 

Drawing Discussion with R&F Mo (Maryclare Foá) Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020

Among The Trees, Hayward Gallery. (2021)

Counter-Landscapes: Performative Actions from the 1970s – Now (2019)