Matter the Matters: Horizon Is Not Necessarily Even
Multifaceted practice-led research and socially, spatially and environmentally engaged activities tackle the trilogy of culture-nature-urbanisation by investigating the influence of Yohaku No Bi, Kintsugi, Shintō, “Aesthetic of Impossibility” and the Golden Ratio on our lives and the complex universe in which we live through examining wide-ranging and diverse representations found in art, architecture, literature, nature, physics, economics, history, and science. What was known? How was this knowledge used in the past? How can it help us to understand the world around us today?
I’ll create porcelain sculptural plant pots to construct portable ‘Hanging Gardens’ (micro-gardening installations) with participative, performative and interventional remits. The plant pots’ forms will be derived from various seeds. I’ll install plant pots in timber architectural construction in or around Tees Cottage Pumping Station and/or another public buidling in DarlingTon, on its façade, columns, walls, roof, windowsills, etc., without using fasteners or causing harm. Every finished plant pot will be lent to a resident for a few days and then toured to others. The public is invited to tour the plant pots on their bicycles’ front and/or rear racks to tour them around DarlingTon. I’ll install a few plant pots in public buildings and shops. I’ll hang a translucent fabric from the ceiling to coil a plant pot on a table, pedestal, or floor. The residents and visitors are encouraged to carry the plant pots across County Durham. I’ll design plant pot carriers with shoulder and waist belts and adjustable straps for carrying the plant pots. The carriers will be active agents in disseminating the pressing issues and engaging a wider public. We could invite people from different walks of life as individuals or in small groups to compose gardens. My project resonates with the lifecycle of silkworms and the serial progressions of development, particularly the four distinct stages: ova, larvae, pupa, and imago; each stage requires a different environment and performance. I’ll design a gazette, create an interactive info-installation about my research process and outcomes and deliver a performative presentation. My project creates spaces for initiatives, civic engagement, social cohesion, cultural and artistic experiences, and aesthetic, educational and environmental awareness. It engenders places of encounter, exchange, inspiration, engagement and collaboration.
The Dover Prize Fund has its roots in Darlington. Please explain how you believe your work might enhance and raise the profile of the creative arts in the area. 200w
I’ll create limited editions of the plant pots that vary in size; some could be awarded as a gratitude gesture to residents who have made a significant contribution to the community, and for sale. People are encouraged to put the plant pots outdoors on 22 April, International Mother Earth Day and World Environment Day on 5 June. Thus, the location and duration of my project and debating the pressing issues will be expanded into people’s minds and places. The revenue could be used to finance local projects. This would engage with a wide range of the public on many levels. It creates a series of ever-widening networks, each working through its means of communication, thus broadening the involvement of the Point North Community Foundation and its activities.
Knowledge-sharing takes a central role in my vision of a dialogue-based practice that intends to develop a sustainable human-centred research perspective from the inside out, focusing on human concerns. It examines the human condition from an anthropological, philosophical and cultural vantage point. Public participation throughout the conceptualisation, creation and presentation processes is the core of my practice. I would suggest doing one or more of these activities: a performative presentation, studio visit, participatory workshop with schools, youth clubs, community groups and/or cultural organisations; giving a lecture at university; thematic dining conversation in collaboration with local chefs and food experts, e.g., setting up cooking workshops about affordable healthy food recipes out of limited ingredients; in the inspiration of the book, “The Wartime Kitchen: Living off Rations”. The cost of living crisis has highlighted societal inequalities and the challenges many families face globally.
My practice-based research has been deeply influenced by the specificity of the sites where I work: the architectures that house them and the society, culture and politics that constitute them. The specificity of situation settings engenders an artistic approach, vocabularies, medium, work strategy and vital techniques for mediating the public’s reactions to art and its contexts. I create a complex and diverse body of work with participative, performative and interventional remits, including art-led intervention, installation art, drawing, sculpture, photography, video and performance. Attention is directed to the sensorial relationship between the object, spatial properties and the public. The imaginative combination of different textures, colours and daring forms results in novel works that incite public engagement. An artist who is not defined by the accidental nature of socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender and sexuality or the tradition of a discipline. An artist is created by means of the (re)invention of himself through a series of practices that project metaphorically, but also possibly literally – metaphorically, but also possibly literally – a territory derived from the investigation of particular possibilities of life. The possibilities offered by a particular reading of culture are what is of most interest, in other words, how some works, ideas, and gestures transform people’s perception of an environment and their ability to act. By means of a poetic operation, they revise what people understand as “the situation.” My artistic research emphasises the employment of cultures’ richness, diversity and depth to animate art concepts in a sociocultural-political context. In the realm of globalised ideas of progress, the arts have come to express a certain degree of sameness worldwide. Therefore, we need more than ever to understand and cherish all cultural diversities and contributions of various cultures and societies. I view contemporary art as not an international movement of style that can be located within one specific culture, one single history or space, but rather as a set of cultural transitions. In this context, it becomes evident that the artist-researcher concept needs to be expanded to an initiator of settings that provide space and a process open to evolving.
2021–2023 MArch in Architectural Design, The Bartlett, University College London
2017–2019 MFA in Fine Arts, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Oslo
2011–2015 BA in Fine Arts, Chelsea College, University of the Arts, London
2021 Freelands Foundation Grant, Kent.UK
2020 Project Revival Fund, Warehouse421, Abu Dhabi.UAE
2020 Travel Grant, Wijhat, Culture Resource, Beirut.LB
2019 Research project Grant, Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam.NL
2018 BKH kunstnerstipend (Artist stipend), Kunstfond, Oslo.NO
2015 International Development Fund, Arts Council England.UK
I curated workshops and delivered open studios and presentations.
Committions
2023 ACC Cultural Product Residency, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju.KR
2021 Climbing Invisible Structures, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Oslo
2019 A practice-based research project on the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Shropshire Union Canal, Wales. The Arts Council of Wales, Glandŵr Cymru, the Canal and River Trust in Wales and Addo.
Solo Exhibitions
2023 Horses do not Look in the Mirror, Kunsthalle Nairs, Scuol.CH
2019 How can you shape the future if you are recommending furniture from the past? PuntWG, Amsterdam.NL
2019 Re-public the politics, Warehouse Gallery, Incheon.KR
2018 flowers are not always tulip, NAC, Neringa.LT
2017 Horizon is not Necessarily Even, Hedah Art Center, Maastricht.NL
2016 Aftermath, Mosaic Rooms, London.UK
Group Exhibitions
2023 Radical imagination, Goethe Institut, Sofia.BG
2022 World Script Symposia, Seoul.KR
2021 Climbing Invisible Structures, Akershus Kunstsenter, Lillestrøm.NO
2019 Waterlines, Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown.UK
2019 Campos Alterados, MAC Museu de Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo.BR
2019 Wall Beyond Wall, Dyson Gallery, London.UK
2019 Forecast, The Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.DE
2018 REVERSED, Fotogalleriet, Oslo.NO
2018 We in Contemporary Tense, NN Contemporary Art, Northampton.UK
2018 Walls, Si Said Museum, Marrakech.MA
2018 Turning Point, Tashkeel, Dubai.UAE
2017 Cover, Göteborgs konsthall, Göteborg.SE
2017 International Sculpture Symposium, National Gallery, Amman.JO
2016 Undo, The Dazed Gallery, London.UK
2016 The Third Culture, Kaapelitehdas-Puristamo, Helsinki.FI
2015 The Current of Currency, The Bunker Gallery, London.UK
Presentations and lectures
2022 Conference Nature Arts-Interconnections, Faculty of Arts and Design, West University of Timișoara.RO
2021 Conference Dysfunctionalities in Contemporary Art, A.G.Leventis Gallery, Cyprus Chamber of fine arts, Nicosia.CY
2018 Presentation, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast.UK
2018 Presentation, Art & Design Faculty, University of Chester, England.UK
2018 Lecture, Wales School of Art and Design, Glyndwr University, Wrexham, Wales.UK
2017 Lecture, 9th annual conference of the Association of Cultural Management, Heilbronn University.DE
2016 Presentation, British Council, Addis Ababa.ET
2016 Presentation, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw.PL
2015 Presentation, Cornerhouse, Manchester.UK
2014 Lecture, Norwich University of the Arts, Norwich, England.UK
2023 Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart.DE
2022 Siena Art Institute residency, Siena.IT
2021 Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris.FR
2015 International Development Fund, Arts Council England.UK
2019 ACC Cultural Product Residency, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju.KR
2018 Digital Arts Studios International Residency, Belfast.UK
2017 Gasworks’ International Fellowships Programme, 32° East residency, Ugandan Arts Trust, Kampala.UG
2017 BeMA Artists-in-Residence programme, Jezzine.LB
2015 ICI Curatorial Intensive Programme, Zoma Contemporary Art Center (ZCAC), Addis Ababa.ET
2015 Curatorial research residencies programme, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw.PL
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