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New Art Highlights

20 - 26 September 2021

New Art Highlights of the week includes: Matthew Webber, Jack Ginno, Brighid Black and Arabel Lebrusan.


Night, 2020 by Matthew Webber

Matthew Webber

Oil and acrylic on plywood. 

See Matthew's profile on Axis >


Untitled (Dig), 2021 by Jack Ginno

Jack Ginno

2021.

See Jack's profile on Axis >


Fissure, 2021 by Brighid Black

Brighid Black · Fissure (2020)

This audio work, part of my project Singing Over the Bones (2020) that also involved a live performance at Baltic 39, Newcastle Upon Tyne in 2020, was recorded in a fissure at the entrance to a limestone cave system in the North Pennines. In one of the caves, fossilised remains of a woman, cave bear, brown bear, wolf and lynx were found dating from the last Ice Age. Fissure is a spontaneous vocalisation in response to the cave environment. The whistling and low humming, also recorded onsite, were provided by Connor Mulley, my collaborator on this and other work. The recordings were made on a freezing day in February, with snow on the ground and in the fissure, an embodied connection with the Ice Age ancestors, human and earthothers. The intention was to evoke multiple temporalities, and dissolve human/other-than-human boundaries, communicating embodied experience of that environment.

Ethnographic research revealed that local people referred to a ‘spirit’ or ‘fairy’ or ‘hobthrush’ as occupying the cave. This entity traditionally helped local farmers and leadminers, completing tasks overnight. I conflated this folk being with the Palaeolithic woman’s remains found there: a primordial Mother archetype, dwelling in and manifesting through that place in ways that are appropriate to that particular moment. This present moment is one of climate and ecological crisis: she calls from the cave connecting us with the deep time of the rocks, themselves carrying fossils of long-dead, extinct beings, and the continuum of life on Earth.

See Brighid's profile on Axis >


Toxic Waves I Digital Performance, 28th September 2021 by Arabel Lebrusan

Arabel Lebrusan

Location: Online

Toxic Waves I. Digital Performance
"Harvesting empathy and coping with ecological grief through drawing"
Next week, Tuesday, 28 Sep 2021
4.00 – 5.30pm (BST)
@CCA Brighton, Dorset Place, Online Space
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"Harvesting empathy and coping with ecological grief through drawing"

To the beat of a metronome with 272 different movements, the participant will be invited to draw waves, using charcoal and the movement of their body. Whilst 5 participants will join Arabel in the gallery space, the rest will join remotely via Zoom. The collaborative performance will last around seven minutes, with additional time allocated beforehand to set up and cover explanations, and afterwards to discuss the performance as a group.

Can art making, through embodied thinking, activate our empathy at a deeper and more instinctive level than our rational understanding of events? Can this urge us to act? Investigating the exploitation and inequality deep-rooted in social tragedies, Toxic Waves seeks to engage with such disasters through the medium of art, exploring whether this medium has the power to close the distance between us and the events happening thousands of miles away from us.

Arabel Lebrusan is currently a Research Fellow at the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics at the University of Brighton. This is project #3 of Dorset Place x 11 collaborations – a new series of projects and work responding to the university as a site for experimentation and learning. Admission is free and open to all.

BOOK YOUR FREE PLACE HERE:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/toxic-waves-i-arabel-lebrusan-tickets-170010402691

See Arabel's profile on Axis >


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