Remembering Air

"Remembering Air", an exhibit created as part of the group show "The Only Thing More Slippery Than the Elbow", at Auction House, Redruth. "Remembering Air" visualises spatial relations between air, breath and speech, proposing the three as unpredictable yet linked, spatial yet indiscernible.

Participants from the 2019 Cornwall Workshop reconvened after the pandemic interrupted several attempts at a reading group. Following on from ideas and conversations that began at the 2019 workshop – led by artist Andy Holden – the participants are making work that falls between the eerie suspended seeping state they find themselves in. Process and conversation, hyperobjects and second bodies have informed the work and there is no going back.

The Cornwall Workshop, established in 2011, is a week-long intensive residential workshop for artists, curators and writers based in Cornwall and the South West, organised by CAST and hosted at Kestle Barton on the Lizard Peninsula.

Featuring: Finlay Abbott-Ellwood, Simon Bayblis, Olivia Bradf, Flo Brooks, Jane Darke, Leila Galloway, Georgia Gendall, Mollie Goldstrum, Andy Harper, Emily Hawes, Rachael Jones, Alice Mahoney, Lizzie Ridout

Photos: Oliver Udy / Lizzie Ridout

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300-word supporting statement for ‘On Paper, Lines & Puffs of Language’ [video]; ‘Little Clouds: Speech Balloons & the Air of Language’ [book chapter]; ‘Remembering Air’ [works for an exhibition]:

This body of work further explored my interest in orality, breath and air, through a repositioning of the subject within an ecologically-conscious practice. Both studio-practice and writing examined the speech balloon and the cloud, unfolding our existing understanding of each, through a detailed breakdown from multiple viewpoints. The work was underpinned by the theories of ecologist/philosopher David Abram, concerning speech as shaped-air and the dichotomy of writing’s significance in ‘civilizing’ humans, whilst simultaneously contributing to our distancing from the natural world. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘Aspect Change’ – the ability to see one thing in multiple ways – was also a bedrock concept.

Funding through an Artist’s Development Bursary from The Box, Plymouth facilitated a 4-week artist’s residency at ‘Allotment Club’ (Penryn) which provided research time and space, fundamental in achieving a variety of explorative artistic/written/filmic outputs. It also supported the creation of the film ‘On Paper, Lines & Puffs of Language’ with film-maker Jasper Fell-Clark – for me a new way of documenting my practice – and the delivery of a paper at ‘Symposium on Aspect Change’, HBK Bern, Switzerland, 2021.

The book ‘Atlas of Aspect Change’ is sold in outlets worldwide and my article appeared alongside contributions from a diverse and respected array of designers/artists/writers/thinkers. Tine Melzer, its editor, asserts Aspect Seeing’s importance beyond arts and literary practices, because it allows us to transfer single truths into a conscious spectrum of meanings, suggesting its value not only as an essential cultural tool, but I propose, as a means for more empathetic modes of seeing and thinking.

Residencies at Allotment Club between 2019–2021 (of which I was one) demonstrated a lineage of reputable artists, and a need for residencies allowing connection and reflection upon nature, helping secure ACE funding (by Georgia Gendall) for a subsequent residency scheme in 2023, in which I was a mentor.

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