Still there are seeds to be gathered… 2022-23
Still there are seeds to be gathered … is led by EOP members. Now in its second year, the strand of our programme aims to support members to develop their practice and ideas in public, with others, to facilitate experimentation and expand EOP by creating a polyphonic programme of activity that reflects the many different voices, positions, and perspectives within the membership.
This year we have selected nine proposals that members will be supported to deliver across the next year. We are looking forward to experiencing a unique programme with you, with each event being entirely different to the next.
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PROGRAMME
22 September, 1–2pm
ONLINE: Small Asks, Avril Corroon
A workshop about making small asks* and exploring how we can use them within our practice to create work. What can be creative in the assemblage of small asks? and how do we mindfully frame and develop our own etiquettes of participation?
*Small asks are little actions we ask of others such as favours, giving or saving something.
Read more and book
27 October, 6–8pm
IN PERSON: Singing to Black Holes, Chloe Langlois
Black holes sing to each other in a low B-flat beyond human hearing. This workshop starts with a performance introduction to black holes before creating a choir to develop a set of sounds that could speak to a black hole. Being able to sing in tune, or confidently is not important. Read more and book
13 January, 3 – 5
ONLINE: Artist as Translator, Fatima Hussain (as part of second practice)
At the core of our practice artists, like translators, experience the impossibility of translating thoughts, moments, and observations through material (tangible or intangible). Translation brings to light the relationship of languages and forms. In this workshop we will unpack what translation could mean in artistic practice, and explore where and how translation from an idea to material takes place.
15 February, 12:30 – 2pm
ONLINE: Tools for Rest, resting up collective, Jennifer Brough with Charlotte Heather
Many of us are sick, tired, and in pain. We are, quite simply, not designed to work, sleep, repeat, with allotted weekends the only time for respite. This workshop will offer practical tools to introduce resting through creative praxis into the everyday. Through writing exercises, discussing readings, and collective imagining, resting up will work with you to envisage a world in which rest is as important as working. The toolkits we create collectively are both practical and provocative – offering ways to enact rest in your everyday life through radical thinking. Read more and book
11 March, 1 – 3pm
IN PERSON: ADIRE (Tie and Dye Workshop), Yusuf Dongo
Adire textile is a resist-dyed cloth produced and worn primarily by the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. Yusuf will host a workshop inspired by Yoruba textiles where we will learn different batik and tie dye processes and make our own Tie and Dye, and Batik. The batik process has been handed down to Yusuf through past generations from his hometown, and now shared with you.
2 April, 2 – 4pm
ONLINE Workshop: Meditate, Visualise, Create! by Annabel Pettigrew
Meditate, Visualise, Create is a way of working developed by Annabel following a period of time away from her practice due to a period of deep grief. The workshop facilitates a way of re-connecting with our practices after grief or trauma, or following a period of time away. The workshop will use breathwork and a short guided meditation, followed by a period of making which can be used as a springboard to interact with our practice again.
14 April 2023
IN PERSON: SPREE, Sarah Al-Sarraj
A deconstructed lecture-performance exploring the radical potential of the spree, ride-or-die-escapism and on-the-run-fugitivity. The performance will draw inspiration from films in which two characters become ‘unstuck’ from social convention and embark on a radical exercise in embodying liberation. We will explore how each film creates the conditions for a prefigurative anarchist politics ~ or in other words ~ how the outlaw protagonists willfully practice living in defiance of law and social order, despite the looming threat of state violence.
18 May 2023, 6 – 7.30pm
IN PERSON: Collectivising Studio Practice, Alex Parry collaborating with Eva Freeman and Youngsook Choi
Bringing together methods from the artists’ previous experiences as part of co-ops, women’s circles, and activist groups, we will look at the potential of collectivised studio practices as a micro care system. During the workshop we will explore, reflect on, and speculate about different models of collective care for creative practitioners.
June
IN PERSON: Bodies of Knowledge, Sauren Aru-Blaney
This workshop explores the relationship between cooking and embodied knowledge through activating the body, bringing people together and creating community. Each participant will be provided with flour, water, and oil, and asked to make roti without a recipe. Knowledge will be generated, activated, and shared as we make and eat collectively. Intuitive responses are welcomed and no prior knowledge is required.
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BIOGRAPHIES
Sarah Al-Sarraj(she/they) works with painting, comics, writing, and moving image. Her practice aims to cultivate a visual language that deconstructs power and reimagines liberated futures. Focusing on a curiosity with the unseen – consciousness, desire, spirituality, and dreams – her work engages with the radical potential of imagination and the cultural politics of emotion.
Sauren Aru-Blaney (she/they) is a curator with an interdisciplinary practice and focus on community-engaged projects. Her current research investigates embodied archives through recipes and cooking, through which she is particularly interested in exploring and critiquing notions of “Asianness”. Sauren is also 1/5 of curatorial collective Shed Project and a Library Assistant at Wellcome Collection.
Jennifer Brough is a slow writer from Birmingham. Her work includes fiction and personal essays exploring the body, gender, pain and disability, art and literature. Jennifer is currently working on her first poetry pamphlet. She is involved in projects centred in disability and feminism, and is a member of resting up collective, an interdisciplinary sick group of artists.
Avril Corroon is a visual artist. She has made cheese from black mould in housing and turned a gallery into a car dealership. Her work examines inequity and how architecture manifests governance. She completed a BA at NCAD in Dublin in 2014 and an MFA at Goldsmiths University in 2019.
Yusuf Dongo is a Visual artist, born in Nigeria. Yusuf grew up in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun state. He had his primary and secondary Education in Ogun state, he further proceeded to study Fine and Applied Art at Obafemi Awolowo University (2012-2017) Ile-Ife, Osun State. He is a full-time artist and had his master’s degree in Fine Art at De Montfort University Leicester.
Charlotte Heather is a writer and facilitator exploring unconventional narrative approaches through crip writing. Their work has appeared in Hotel, Spam, New Gothic Review and Lighthouse Journal amongst others and their pamphlet, I Fig Wasp, is forthcoming with Bottlecap Press. Charlotte runs the remote body, a DIY organisation that facilitates online arts events prioritising chronically ill and disabled people, and is a member of resting up collective.
Chloe Langlois, Working with the messy and the magical in video and live performance, my current interests lie in channelling, re-enactment, non-verbal communication, and collective euphoria. During the pandemic, Chloe moved into a circular former care home with thirty people and completed an MA in Moving Image at the RCA.
Studio YEA is a collective of three artists – Alex Parry, Youngsook Choi, and Eva Freeman. They met at RARA Co-operative and went on to set up Studio YEA during the Covid-19 pandemic. Studio YEA has developed around how to create structures to support each other and their practices beyond sharing space.
