Rolling at Hull & East Riding Museum

Here are some photos from a presentation of Rolling on 7 October at the Hull & East Riding Museum. The work was commissioned earlier this year by Delfina Foundation and the Royal College of Art.

Thanks to Forge Bakehouse, Sheffield and to performers: Jo Ashbridge, Iris Chan, Louise Harman, Meghan Hope, Jane Savage.

Photos: top image, by David Chamlers; all other images by Nick Harrison.

Milling About at Hull & East Riding Museum

Laura Wilson: Milling About
Hull & East Riding Museum
36 High St, Hull HU1 1NQ

7 October - 6 December 2017

Milling About by Laura Wilson explores Hull’s and the East Riding of Yorkshire’s history of growing grain and producing flour for baking bread. Inspired by the archaeological collections in the museum, Wilson worked with archaeologist Dr. Melanie Giles, University of Manchester, to explore the evolution of ancient grinding technologies and their affect on the human body.

This new commission by Invisible Dust for Surroundings, a Humber Museums Partnership programme, was presented within the archaeological galleries, in a building that between 1856 and 1925, was part of the Corn Exchange and is situated opposite the now demolished Clarence Flour Mills. Set to a soundtrack by Mira Calix, the video follows the protagonist enacting the repetitive motions of grinding flour by hand using quern stones, a common practice in Britain until the Romans brought their engineering skills here and as Dr Giles says, ‘eased the burden on the body’.

Wilson states:
‘Historically  quern  stones  would  have  been  very  personal  objects,  and  often destroyed  when the owner died. This was  a daily ritual  producing just enough flour   to make bread, the upper stone is rotated or rubbed to and from on the lower one: the stones grind each other and produce dust. It is rhythmic movement, there is a pace to  it but these movements are laborious, demanding and necessary: the body grinds.’

Laura Wilson’s research included visits to Skidby Windmill, the local family-run organic millers J. Stringers & Sons and the deserted village of Wharram Percy. She also met John Cruse, co-ordinator of the Yorkshire Archaeology Society’s Yorkshire Quern Survey; Dr. Ruth Pelling, Historic England Senior Environmental Archaeologist; and Dr. Richard Osgood, Senior archaeologist of the Ministry of Defence, to discuss her ideas.

Curated by Lara Goodband.

Photo: Laura Wilson, Milling About, 2017 (still from video). Commissioned and produced for Surroundings by Invisible Dust in partnership with Humber Museum Partnership. Photo credit: Laura Wilson

Text about 'Milling About' by Dr. Melanie Giles

Milling About by artist Laura Wilson explores Hull’s and the East Riding of Yorkshire’s history of growing grain and producing our for baking bread. Inspired by the archaeological collections in the Hull and East Riding Museum, Wilson worked with archaeologist Dr. Melanie Giles, University of Manchester, to explore the evolution of ancient grinding technologies and their a ect on the human body who describes the archaeological context here. 

‘The history of milling in the British Isles has a long heritage. From the earliest cultivation of cereal crops in the Neolithic to modern organic farming, the Yorkshire Wolds has been the scene of generations of farmers, using di erent types of quern stones, to mill their wheat, rye and barley, for daily bread. Whilst the technology has changed dramatically over six thousand years of our- making, the intimate knowledge of the soils, the crops that can be best grown, and the skill that goes into the making of our daily bread, links past to present in a powerful way. 

Quernstones tell the day-to-day story of food production. They are often made of a special stone brought into an area: gritty enough to grind grain, but not leave too much sand in the sandwich! Sometimes they are worked into engraved surfaces to help grind the our into a ner grade, and rarely, they are decorated. Some could be worked by grinding back-and-forth (the ‘saddle quern’), and others by turning with a handle (‘beehive’ and ‘rotary’ querns). Most are ceremonially broken and fragmented at the end of their life-use, and placed in special contexts: pits, ditch terminals and rarely, burials. They were bound into the life of a house, perhaps strongly associated with individuals, who had their own, distinctive way of working these stones, and they were clearly powerful symbols of fertility and well-being for those agricultural communities who thrived or starved, according to their harvests. It was only with the Romans that water - and later, wind power - could be used to ease the burden of toil this took on the body. This leaves traces that archaeologists can identify in the shoulders and musculature of prehistoric bodies.

From discussions with experts in ancient querns, archaeological botanists and experimental archaeological farms, to modern organic farming on the Wolds, Laura has produced a film inspired by the transition in the Iron Age to early Roman period (about 500 BC to 100 AD), from simple saddle quern to beehive and rotary quern. Drawing on her previous artworks on the making of bread, Laura brings to this project an understanding of the way in which the body, the quernstones and the grain, are fused in a dance-like, entrancing relationship of everyday labour’. 
 

Dr Melanie Giles, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Manchester and author of Archaeologists & the Dead: Mortuary Archaeology in Contemporary Society (Howard Williams and Melanie Giles - Oxford University Press) A forged glamour: landscape, identity and material culture in the Iron Age (Melanie Giles - Windgather Press)

Thanks to all who came on Saturday for the opening of Milling About at the Hull and East Riding Museum in Hull.

Photos: (From top image down) Laura Wilson, Milling About, 2017. Installation view. Photo: David Chalmers; Curator Lara Goodband introducing the work. Photo: Nick Harrison; Laura Wilson and Dr. Melanie Giles, archaeologist. Photo Nick Harrison; Laura Wilson, Dr. Melanie Giles and John Cruse. Photo: Nick Harrison,

 

Exhibition and performance in Hull

Please join me on Saturday 7 October, 2-4pm for the launch of my recent commission with Invisible Dust at the Hull & East Riding Museum as part of Surroundings 2017 for Hull UK City of Culture 2017.

Over the last few months I have been working with Yorkshire-based archaeologist Dr. Melanie Giles to explore the evolution of ancient grinding technologies used to make flour and their affect on the human body. This new video entitled Milling About (2017) will be presented within the archaeological galleries at the Hull & East Riding Museum 7 October - 3 December.

Alongside this, on Saturday 7 October in Hull's Museum Quarter, I will also present my durational performance Rolling (2017) commissioned earlier this year by Delfina Foundation and the Royal College of Art.

For more information click here.

Image credit: Laura Wilson, Milling About, 2017. Commissioned and produced for Surroundings by Invisible Dust in partnership with Humber Museum Partnership. Photo: Laura Wilson.

Lost Senses at Guest Projects

This Monday 7 August, I am presenting Four (2017), a new performance at Guest Projects, London as part of the opening of Lost Senses a programme of events and workshops curated by Linda Rocco. This new work with four bodies in response to the peculiar architecture of the space, uses a score by Mira Calix and the building’s supporting pillars as starting point for this new live work. Featuring dancers: Elina Akhmetova, Iris Chan, Piedad Seiquer and Lucy Suggate.

The evening is 6-9pm, and performance will be around 7.15pm, followed by a live set by Lawrence Lek and Clifford Sage.


LOST SENSES curated by Linda Rocco
7 August - 4 September 2017

Featuring artists: JocJonJosch, Lawrence Lek & Clifford Sage, Laura Wilson, Harold Offeh, Charles Michel, JoDI, Georgia Lucas-Going, the Uncollective & Sara Sassanelli, Tom Railton, Rhine Bernardino, Katharine Vega, Pier Giorgio De Pinto, Eliza Soroga, Andrea Maciel, Luli Perez, Sharon Gal, Diana Policarpo, House of Absolute, Nora Silva, Paloma Proudfoot, Luca Bosani, Finn Thomson, Beatrice Bonafini, Nataliya Chernakova, Federico Guardabrazo, Jay Jay Revlon and more to be announced.

LOST SENSES is a living space for encounters, open every day to everyone.

Revisiting the exhibition as format and exploring the gallery space as a fluid cultural site, artists and practitioners will work in close relation with people reorganising the self’s relation to perception.

The one-month campus wants to create collective experiences and ways to actively participate in everyday life, remembering that embodiment is not just textual but consumed by a world filled with smells, textures, sights, sounds and tastes. Generating a re-opening of senses exploring otherness, lost and participation, everyday life will be critically tested as a never static reality made of bodies, time and experiences. Mainly working as a hub for thinkers and a space for reverie, LOST SENSES will offer daily live experiences to engage diverse audiences through meaningful inter(actions), opening up reflections on a wider scale through processes of documentation and mediation.

The campus will use Live art to explore the now: to reorganise, open and reshape senses, generating reflections on our own identities, our communities and beyond.

Trio at the V&A

Last night I presented a new performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as part of We Portal, a curated programme by Mira Calix. 

Thank you to the performers, Elina Akhmetova, Iris Chan and Piedad Seiquer, and to Yeast Bakery.

Laura Wilson, Trio, 2017

Available as a live stream on the V&A’s Facebook page, the broadcast will ran from 6-9pm and featured 14 specially commissioned performances, which played out alongside a series of artworks by a further 12 artists, to be viewed on the museum’s Twitter and Instagram platforms. We Portal live stream was part of Reveal, a free, week-long public festival that runs at the V&A museum from 30 June to 7 July 2017.

 You can view the stream here: http://www.miracalix.com/news/weportal-livestream-event-from-the-va/

We Portal Artists: Anneke Kampman/Laura Wilson/Mike Harvey/Holly Pester/Mira Calix and Darrah Morgan/Dr Louis Moreno/Luke McCreadie/Ellas Robson Guillfoyle/Deboragh Coughlin?Luarie Tompkins and Susie Whaite/Tom Smit/Dylan Spencer Davidson/Peter Liversidge/Andy Holden

Instagram exhibition artists: Nimble News Network/Dom Aversino/Original Swimming Party/Peter Liversidge/Mira Calix/Mathew de Kersaint Giradea

Twitter exhibiton artists: Ian Macmillan/Hannah Morrish/David Whyte/Mira Calix/Peter Liversidge/Nick Ryan/Nimble News

We Portal at the V&A Museum was on Monday 26th June 2017 from 6pm, tune-in at:
Facebook: @victoriaandalbertmuseum  |  Instagram:@vamuseum  |  Twitter: @V_and_A

The Opposite of Now at Guest Projects

If you are in London this weekend please pop by Guest Projects where i'm part of an exhibition with Syllabus II.

We have invited writer Emily LaBarge to produce a text under the title 'The Opposite of Now' for our residency at Guest Projects. A week of production in response to the text will culminate in a public presentation of new works, talks and music.

Syllabus II is a peer-led programme for ten artists over a ten-month period with Wysing Arts Centre, Eastside Projects, New Contemporaries, S1 Artspace, Spike Island, and Studio Voltaire.

Participating artists are Mira Calix, Faye Claridge, Mike Harvey, E. Jackson, Tyler Mallison, Nika Neelova, Tom Smith, Dylan Spencer-Davidson, Thomas Whittle and Laura Wilson.

PERFORMANCE, Sunday 28th, 7pm
Dylan Spencer-Davidson with Luke Bafico and Hannah Parsons

SLIDE NIGHT, Sunday 28th, 8pm
Patrick Cole, Mike Harvey, Tyler Mallison, Thomas Whittle and Laura Wilson

Exhibition open 12-6, Saturday & Sunday, 27th & 28th May.

Guest Projects
Sunbury House
1 Andrews Road
London E8 4QL
guestprojects.com

Images from 'Rolling' at Delfina Foundation

Thanks to all who came on Saturday to see my new performance Rolling, 2017 at Delfina Foundation, presented as part of Open House curated by Kerry Campbell, Cecilia Giurgevich, Zena Khan, Nicholas Osborne, Linda Rocco, Elizabeth Thornhill. Please find below some images from the performance.
Special thanks to the performers: Elina Akhmetova, Iris Chan, Nicholas Keegan, Piedad Seiquer and Eliza Soroga.

Open House at Delfina Foundation

Laura Wilson, Rolling, 2017

This Saturday 20 May, 12-3pm I am presenting Rolling (2017), a new performance at Delfina Foundation as part of Open House.

Open House

Saturday 20–Sunday 21 May: Open to the public, 12–8pm
Delfina Foundation, 29–31 Catherine Place, London, SW1E 6DY

Open House responds to Delfina Foundation’s acclaimed international artist-in-residence programme during which creative producers live and work at the Foundation’s base in Central London. Drawing on the personal memories of participants’ residency experiences over the last eleven years, writers, curators, artists and performers, have been commissioned to produce temporary interventions in the private and public areas of the Delfina space. Over a single weekend this programme of vibrant participatory and performative work will catalyse the Foundation’s architecture, to explore ideas of ‘being in residence’, the intersections between public and private, and what it means to collect intangible experiences, rather than physical artifacts.

Artists: Manal Al Dowayan, Mudar Alhajji, Kathrin Böhm, Leone Contini, Srajana Kaikini, Yazan Khalili, Hala Muhanna, Judy Price, Alessandra Saviotti, Laura Wilson

Curators: Kerry Campbell, Cecilia Giurgevich, Zena Khan, Nicholas Osborne, Linda Rocco, Elizabeth Thornhill

Open House is a partnership between Delfina Foundation and six curators from the Curating Contemporary Art MA Programme at the Royal College of Art, part of Graduate Projects 2017.

Images from Holding Space

Here are some images from Holding Space which took place at The Brick Cube, Hunts Wharf, Leaside Road, E5 9LU on Saturday 25 March, 6-9pm. I presented a new performance called The Golden Stairs, 2017.
Special thanks to the performers: Anna, Johan, Kate, Kendra, Lucia, Sacha and Shamica.
Photos: Manuela Barczewski.

Institute of Light & final weeks of 'Folds' at SPACE

I am really excited to be presenting a screening programme at The Institute of Light with films by Mika Rottenberg, Fatou Kande Senghor and John Smith on Thursday 23 March, 6.30pm. The screening is programmed in response to my current exhibition, 'Folds' at SPACE on Mare Street, which runs until Saturday 25 March.

Photo: Tim Bowditch

Short Film Programme in response to Folds at the Institute of Light

Screening: Thu 23 Mar, 6.30 – 8.30pm
Tickets from £6

An evening of artist films curated by Laura Wilson and SPACE. The programme draws out themes in Wilson’s SPACE commission Folds, which translates textures and folds of dough into stone, making visible the passage of time and the processes of craft and collaboration that transform the material world. Wilson has worked in collaboration with SPACE to select films that expand on some of the ideas inherent in Folds and within her practice as a whole. The three films in this programme – Dough by Mika Rottenberg, Giving Birth by Fatou Kande Senghor, and Slow Glass by John Smith – all depict processes of material production and examine different aspects of the relationship between fabrication and society.

Mika Rottenberg, Dough (2006) 07:00
Dough depicts an elaborate production process involving tears, air and pollen, in which four uniformed women use a primitive set of machinery designed to make dough rise.

Fatou Kandé Senghor, Giving Birth (2015) 30:00
Giving Birth follows the creative process of Senegalese sculptor and ceramist Seni Awa Camara. Camara’s sculptures were included in the landmark French exhibition Magiciens de la terre (1989) as an example of contemporary art from the non-West. (First UK screening)

John Smith, Slow Glass (1988-91) 40:00
Taking glassmaking processes and history as its central theme, Slow Glass explores ideas about memory, perception and change.

SPACE commission Laura Wilson: Folds can be visited till 6pm before the screening

Holding Space

Saturday 25th March, 6-9PM

Hunts Wharf, Leaside Road, E5 9LU

For one night only, in a vacated factory, on a plot destined for property development, in an era of conspicuous imposition, a programme of site-specific film and video installations and performances, that will only be occurring at this place and time.

Featuring new work from: Amy Dickson, Nicky Hamlyn, Jamie Jenkinson, Deniz Johns, Jennifer Nightingale, Simon Payne, Gareth Polmeer, Francesco Tacchini & Oliver Smith, Hannah Taverner, Andrew Vallance and Laura Wilson.

Holding Space is programmed by Amy Dickson, Jamie Jenkinson, Simon Payne and Andrew Vallance.

Second set of images from Folds at SPACE

Here are a selection of images from the mid-point of my current exhibition Folds at SPACE, 13 January - 25 March. Over the duration of the show I am working with two stonemasons, Nancy Peskett and Lily Marsh to carve a piece of bath stone into the form of dough.
Photos: Tim Bowditch

  

First set of images from Folds at SPACE

Here are a selection of images from my current exhibition at SPACE, 13 January - 25 March.
Photos: Tim Bowditch