Transmission Members Show 2015

'Our Beautiful Words Are'

I was asked to submit in this group show, 'Total Recall' celebrating 20 years of Tony Trehy at Bury Art Museum, and also ten years of The Text festival, which has shown several of my pieces. (Print, calligraphy, hand sewn text embroidery, size A4.)

TOTAL RECALL 1 August — 3 October, 2015 

BURY ART MUSEUM

Moss St, Bury, Lancashire BL9 0DR, United Kingdom

How do you remember the people who are important to you? How do you conjure your shared past? Is it in an image, a sound, a smell, a touch? Or do you use words?

We invited world-leading poets and text-artists to make a language-memory for Tony Trehy, who has directed the internationally renownedText Festival at Bury Art Museum since 2005. This exhibition celebrates a 10-year anniversary of the Festival and a 20-year anniversary of Tony’s time at Bury. Writing on a wall, an Internet search, a diary entry, a flurry of thoughts … what is remembering and who is it for?

Tony Trehy has been the ring-leader of decade-long conversations, new opportunities, challenges and heated debates. Each of his four Text Festivals has added to a continuing dialogue between language and art. Every Text Festival has asked the audience a simple-but-complex question: How do I read?

Into the historic space of Bury Art Museum, Trehy has injected text that is a new ‘language art’ for the 21st Century. Bury was once the centre of paper-making in Britain, now it is a pioneer of language-making, with its Text Archive welcoming readers from all over the world.

TOTAL RECALL is a guerrilla makeover, an A4 invasion of reading into the larger narrative of looking. Unlike the street signs outside, these are not corporate instructions or sales pitches; they are antidotes. Walls, vitrine, archival box—nary a “book” to be found, but a heap of language left in memory.

TOTAL RECALL includes work by local, national and international text-based artists and poets: angela rawlings, Alan Halsey, Barrie Tullett, Carolyn Thompson, Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim, Darren Marsh, derek beaulieu, Emma Cocker, Eric Zboya, Erica Baum, Jaap Blonk, James Davies, Jayne Dyer, Jesse Glass, Karri Kokko, Kristen Mueller, Lawrence Weiner, Leanne Bridgewater, Liz Collini, Lucy Harvest Clarke, Marco Giovenale, Márton Koppány, Matt Dalby, Mike Chavez-Dawson, Paula Claire, Penny Anderson, Peter Jaeger, Philip Davenport, Rachel Defay-Liautard, Robert Grenier, Ron Silliman, Satu Kaikkonen, Sarah Sanders, Seekers of Lice, Stephen Emmerson, Steve Giasson, Steve Miller, Tom Jenks, and Tony Lopez.

— derek beaulieu and Phil Davenport, Curators

Am I Here

I had an event as part of Glasgow's Open House. Am I Here  was an interactive event which used storytelling/performance, assemblage, sculpture, site specific text and embroidery to tell of a haunted house, as told by an atheist who doesn't believe in ghosts.

I asked The British Humanists about the format for an exorcism (well, they do weddings, funerals and christenings) and they provided this gem: 'It is impossible to imagine such a request without it involving a referral to mental health services.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8d3r8NUDyY

There was a 'witches bottle' - which I opened.

Over afternoon tea (as was often the case with Victorian seances, I chatted with a Georgian ghost, replicated a Victorian haunting (complete with 'ectoplasm and a poltergiest's 'knocking') shared the picture of the supposed Glasgow School of Art JD Kelly 'ghost' (fyi - the man who took the photo does not believe in ghosts).

Am I Here - Open House Glasgow.

I am part of Open House Glasgow.

Sunday, May 3 2015 3-4.30

Am I Here is a performance and exhibition exploring paranormal events and memory. There will be a humanist exorcism, a ghost, and evidence of a haunting, during a tea party. Join me here: Please book a ticket here:



https://www.facebook.com/events/1563715727206516/

'No Show' Performance. Tramway, Glasgow. March 2015

Performance. Must a piece of work be physical in nature? Or is it possible to create an exhibition without the carbon intensity of wasteful preparation, abandoned experiments and rejected pieces for open calls? I made no work. I made no work. I used no resources. I travelled across the globe, sharing this journey of imagined made outcomes by vivid description.  No costumes. No materials. No resources used, no carbon output. 

'Speech Baubles' Installation (hand sewn textile, ready-made) The Library at GOMA 2014/2015 (Xmas)

Let MeStay, Solo exhibiton, Studio 41 Glasgow, 2013.

No No No. Hand sewn textile/embroidery. May 2014 Transmission members show.

Am I Here? Hand sewn textile, ready mades. 2013.