I’ve spent the past few days working with Dance artist/Choreographer Vanessa Grasse. I was asked to mentor and collaborate with Vanessa on her R&D Project Elysia, to explore the creation of wearable sculptures made from natural and recycled materials.
Based in Leeds, Vanessa has been staying with me in rural Somerset. We’ve been collecting natural materials on walks, hand colouring natural fabric remnants with homemade botanical dyes, exchanging ideas around contemporary sculpture and dance, slime mould and lichen, and working daily at our residency in a large empty shop space Create@#8, Shepton Mallet. The project name is inspired by the Elysia chlorotica, a sea slug with plant-like qualities - a living testament to hybridity and symbiosis. The themes are very much up my street. See Vanessa’s newsletter here.
It’s been an incredibly refreshing and energising experience, working across disciplines, learning new ways of thinking, approaching art in motion - something I’d like to explore further. We’ve had fun playing with materials, colours, cavities, lines and blobs, improvising with assemblages around the body in movement, hand-stitching…
We’ll be sharing the work in progress on our last day - Thursday 11 April, 4-5pm. Please join us at Create@#8, 8 Town Street, Shepton Mallet. All welcome!
Elysia R&D project delves into the profound interconnection between humans and the non-human world. It blends outdoor choreography, ecological sculpture, and Land Art processes, towards the creation of a visceral, sculptural, and playful outdoor performance, where hybrid creatures, bodies, natural materials, and the landscape are in metamorphosis.
Humans are intricate ecosystems of a multiplicity of species. Awakening an awareness of our inherent hybridity, has the capacity to alter how we perceive our place in the world and our connection with our ecosystems.
The creative research includes exchanges with academic researchers; sculptors, costume makers and land artists. Elysia is supported by Arts Council England, University of Leeds; Yorkshire Dance, Create@#8.
New Courses:
Vanessa and I met when she did my Online Sculpture Course earlier this year. If you’re interested in doing an art course with me, I’ll be running some new adult Love 2 Learn art courses at Bath College from 17 April:
Sculpture: (Wed am and/or pm)
https://www.bathcollege.ac.uk/course/view/3109/introduction-to-sculpture-23-24
Drawing and Painting (Wed or Thurs)
https://www.bathcollege.ac.uk/course/view/3069/drawing-and-painting-23-24
Please book asap as spaces are limited!