Such an exciting way to begin the year to be long listed for one of the most dynamic international contemporary art prizes. I can’t wait for the Future Now symposium that launches the exhibition in York in February where I look forward to meeting the other selected artists and enjoying plenty of debate.
Daleks visit Social Scaffolding in Swindon
We had some strange extra terrestial visitors today at the Designer Mall in Swindon …
Datafield selected for RWA Open 2023
I’m so pleased to see Datafield being exhibited at RWA Open this year. I’m still very proud of this work and feel it remains incredibly contemporary. Catch the exhibition from 9th September till 14th January 2024.
Project Becomings
I wrote before about a project I have been facilitating creative workshops for with people exploring ideas around recovery from past trauma and I felt it would be great to share a few images of some of the amazing work that has been created in the sessions. It has been my great pleasure to help the group develop ideas around exhibiting their work as artists sharing a theme as opposed to participants in a project and I am so proud of the show they have put on at The Galleries in Bristol. I really recommend dropping in for a visit between 14-20th August.
Commission for Forest of the Imagination
It has been lovely to work with the children of St Keyna Primary School to create a tree for the Forest of Imagination 2023 in Bath Assembly Rooms. I was commissioned to create a tree recycling old furniture grafted together like broken limbs in plaster casts with an abject quality of an arboreal Frankenstein monster. We had great fun in the school making leaves to dress the tree from old book pages with biro doodles picking out poems in the style of Tom Phillips. Later the children visited the Forest installation in Bath and created paper origami animals to inhabit the tree.
New postcards
I’ve never had postcards of my work printed before but it seems a good thing to do to support the Social Scaffolding tour to have a small memento to take away. I’m very pleased with how they have come out.
Busy first few days
Social Scaffolding is open until 6th May, 11-4 Thursday-Saturday at Create@#8 on Town Street Shepton Mallet
Social Scaffolding launched at Shepton Mallet last week with over 250 visitors in the first two days. We were a little overwhelmed but excited to welcome so many people into the space to engage with our artworks.
The surface of the new pods looked so blank before people sat together to stitch into them cocreating the work itself. I’ve embraced the cables organically becoming part of the work so the pods look like they are on life support systems, somewhat reminiscent of the Matrix but less sinester.
Thanks to RedGreenGoProductions I have a fantastic new CCTV system recording in timelapse both inside the pods and mapping the visitors engaging with the work like insects swarming around a hive.
And so many new marks have been stitched into the surface of the pods, such variety slowly filling the gaps but plenty more space if you want to come and make your own mark!
Tour launch at Shepton Mallet
Social Scaffolding invite you to the launch of their tour!
We did it! Social Scaffolding have been awarded funding by ACE
Super excited to announce that my work Synapse will be going on tour with Social Scaffolding Art Collective to six venues in the West of England over the next nine months. We launch in Shepton Mallet in April, Weston Super Mare for May, Gloucester in June and Bristol July. Then a short break for summer and Yeovil in September and Swindon in November. It will be hard work but socially engaged art is only relevant when it is engaged so getting out to where audiences are is vitally important to my practice. Very excited to be touring with Lou Baker & Juliet Duckworth.
Social Scaffolding Art Collective
Working with other artists provides a certain solidarity. I’ve been planning and applying for funding with Lou Baker & Juliet Duckworth to get our socially engaged work out on tour. Socially engaged practice is quite challenging when not exhibiting as the work doesn’t have the same meaning without the interaction so it can get quite lonely persevering on your own.
Successful or not, the process of reviewing the pilot exhibitions we made last year in order to make a submission to Arts Council England has been a positive one to build the vision of what we want to do. We now have a logo, some policies, potential partnerships to deliver across the West of England and the passionate intent to get our work out there! Now we just have to wait 3 months until we find out.
Something a bit different ... memory cushions
It’s a year since my mum died and, as she was a hoarder, there was a lot of stuff to go through to sort out her house so I decided to put some of her clothes to a different use and made them into memory cushions for my sister & I, as well as all her grandchildren. As I rarely do more traditional sewing, it was quite a challenge to discipline myself to keep to a regular pattern. I think I enjoyed the log cabin ones the best but simple squares are by far the easiest and surprisingly effective to look at.
Wellbeing workshops at Weston hospital
I was very pleased to be invited to Weston hospital in a facilitation role for wellbeing workshops with off-duty staff taking time to consider the environment they work in and how they might help shape it in the future. We used old uniforms, cyanatype liquid to create shadow images of hospital equipment and embroidery threads to explore different ways of working with textiles. Participants suggested, as many of the old uniforms were being recycled due to minor damage, that it would be a great to have a regular visible mending group to breathe new life back into them rather than sending them for rags while they were still useful. I think this would be a wonderful idea and provide something to smile at, as a patient, seeing the staff handiwork being worn on the wards.
Body As Evidence as an office backdrop in Zoom calls
Emerge graduate studios at Bath Spa University has been my home for the past two years and I love that my work Body As Evidence has been installed as the office backdrop for people having online meetings.
Synapse goes viral!
Update: 79.5K views on Instagram!!! And over 5K likes … wow! What did I do?
I am not sure what algorythm jackpot I hit but my Instagram reel has now been watched by over 17.5K people with 850+ liking it and my followers going up correspondingly at a good rate. Exciting!
Social Scaffolding at Emerge Showcase 13-24/10
Social Scaffolding Collective will be exhibiting in full at the 2022 Showcase with Alyson Minkley coming to the end of her second year in residence, Juliet Duckworth has been offered a second placement and Lou Baker will be starting as a new resident in Novemeber.
After the success of Taunton, Sion Hill will be a very different experience, definitely not on the High Street! However this time does give us the opportunity to invite specific community groups and we already have bookings from a school and several HE cohorts.
Fantastic response to Social Scaffolding in Taunton
Over 320 people visited the Social Scaffolding art installation in Orchard Shopping Centre during Somerset Art Weeks but most did not know what to expect on entering the pop-up venue. Participants can animate Lou Baker’s Living Sculpture knitwear or relax immersed in the gentle natural outdoor soundtrack of Juliet Duckworth’s Urban Rookery before engaging with Alyson Minkley’s Synapse. This could be through conversation while stitching into the sculpture surface of simply getting inside the cosy pod for some quiet contemplation time.
The video below has been added after the Bath tour dates as a compilation of the making and piloting of Synapse as an immersive, interactive and cocreated artwork. It has been fantastic to relinquish control and allow the work to develop.
Social Scaffolding Coleective pilot in Taunton 24/9-9/10/22
We are very pleased to announce that Lou Baker, Juliet Duckworth & Alyson Minkley will be exhibiting together for Somerset Art Weeks in a vacant property in Orchard Shopping Centre Taunton. Social Scaffolding Collective offers interactive, immersive and socially-engaged art to explore and even co-create.
Alyson’s new work, Synapse, has been supported with a SAW development bursary and will launch at the festival. People are invited to get into or stitch on the surface of Synapse, sharing reflections about social changes and particularly those influenced by repeated lockdowns.
Animation sessions to promote the opening of Cleveland Pools
Summer Sunday Fun sessions promoted by Bath BID to support local charities included a workshop to make quick animations with children to celbrate the reopening of Bath’s lido, the oldest in the country.
Compilation of short animations
Somerset Artworks Development Bursary
I am delighted to have been awarded a SAW development bursary to assist me creating work to be exhibited as part of the Sanctuary Festival 24/9-9/10/22.
Metamorphosis exhibition in Frome Gallery at the Station 19-30/7/22
Second exhibition in Frome this July! Strange Fruit, Weight and one Body As Evidence folded torso are up for sale in Gallery at the Station 19-30th July.
