2016 kicks off with an exciting new project that ceramist Kay Aplin and I have been working on for the last 2 years.

The project started back in November 2014 with an a-n new collaborations bursary funded trip to the Shetland Isles. We met potential partners for a planned residency and exhibition project at Scalloway Booth and Shetland Museum & Archives and I came back with the first set of recordings, mapping the unique soundscape of the islands.

The project continued in August 2015 with a month-long residency at Scalloway Booth, making daily walks across the landscape, recording sounds, gathering plants and taking photographs; ending with an open studio event to showcase the work to the local community.

Autumn 2015, saw us deep in fundraising and administration mode and the first months of the year will see us designing and constructing the ceramic panels and a four channel sound installation for the exhibition. The show “In A Shetland Landscape” opens at Shetland Museum & Archives on April 16th 2016, accompanied by events, talks and workshops, and runs for two months.

 

In May 2016,  we begin a series of works entitled “Landscape : Islands” which follow directly on from our Shetland collaboration, launching with a ceramics exhibition and a series of sound events and talks at The Ceramic House, in partnership  with University of Brighton and Phoenix Brighton. This first exhibition brings together a number of established and emerging artists who live on an island and whose work responds to landscape.

In summer 2016, we are hosting a unique sound and ceramic art collaborative residency programme at Phoenix Brighton for two sets of artists to meet and produce a new body of work. The outputs of these residencies will form the centrepiece of an exhibition in the South Gallery at Phoenix as part of Brighton Digital Festival and will also see the transfer of In A Shetland Landscape to the new gallery at The Ceramic House.

The project will then tour to various venues in the Kent and Medway area in Autumn 2016, subject to funding, co-produced with 51 Zero.

Finally, to support all of this, we will be launching a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo very soon, with some fabulous rewards of ceramic panels and exclusive previews of the exhibitions with accommodation at The Ceramic House.

Landscape : Islands has been made possible with the generous support of Arts Council England and Phoenix Brighton.