Online: Yellowfields
Saturday, 24 October 2020
2.30 – 5pm
This live event launches the second volume of Yellowfields, a curated publication for and by emerging artists and art professionals. Throughout each season thematic project groups work together to produce a collaborative publication and event which explores the artworks of the artists who are involved.
This publication features four artist texts by Jade Montserrat, Freya Dooley, Jo Lathwood and Harriet Bowman, connected through an essay by Ellen Wilkinson.
Feminism, economy, race and sustainability run through this season’s connected practices, underpinned by a shared interest in the labours of production which manifest through physical and emotional experience.
Online Event Programme
2.30 pm Welcome and introduction to the project and participating artists
2.45 pm Improvised spoken-word performance by Harriet Bowman exploring Birmingham’s car-industry.
(Ideally heard through headphones)
3 pm Between the Mountains and the Sea – Film screening by Freya Dooley (16 minutes )
3.30 pm Reciprocity – Reading by Jade Montserrat
3.40 pm Live conversation – the artists will respond to questions or comments submitted by the audience during the event.
3.55 pm Binding film recording the publication production, by Conway and Young, filmed by Jas Roberts.
4 pm Print production – Live discussion and printing by Jo Lathwood and Ellen Wilkinson
Join Jo Lathwood screen-printing her manifesto on sustainability entitled ‘Material as labour. Labour as value.’ with additional contributions from participants. Jo Lathwood will be in conversation with artist and writer Ellen Wilkinson discussing ideas of production and sustainability behind the manifesto, offering guidelines for artists to consider when making work. This manifesto began during the text Lathwood wrote as part of the yellowfields publication ‘Production’ and it was later opened up to the public to expand on.
5pm Finish
This event has formed from an ACE supported R&D project called yellowfields which produced three publications with twelve artists. Limited handmade prints are available online and are £10 per print / £20 for volumes 1,2 & 3. Publications have been designed and produced by designers Conway and Young.
Ellen Wilkinson is a writer and artist living in London. Recent commissions and projects include Sitting Show, East Bristol Contemporary (2019); IN DE EP, HER MIT Projects (2018); Sleeping in Public, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (2017); and Something More Permanent Than Concrete, Bristol City Council (2017). Her writing has been published by FACT, This is Tomorrow, Printmaking Today, If I Ran The Circus and artist-led initiatives across the UK.
Freya Dooley (Lives and works in Cardiff). A repetitive concern in Freya’s work is the characterised voice, navigating slippages between private narratives and public performance, thought and feeling. Recent projects have manifested as moving image installations, visual essays, spoken performances, broadcasts, listening events, collaborative fictions and publication. Her text contribution to Production, Production was developed during a residency with Beppu Project in the Oita Prefecture, Japan, and became the basis of her solo exhibition there in March 2020. Her recent projects include Jerwood Solo Presentations, Jerwood Arts, London (forthcoming, 2021); ‘Ventriloquy for Radio’ a broadcast for ‘Interruptions’, Holden Gallery, Manchester (2020); the ‘New Writing with New Contemporaries’ programme, which included performances at Leeds Art Gallery (2019) and South London Gallery (2020); ‘The Song Settles Inside the Body It Borrows’, a solo exhibition at Chapter Gallery, Cardiff (2019); and ‘Somewhere in the Crowd There’s You’, a solo exhibition at Eastside Projects Birmingham (2019). A vinyl record edition of ‘Somewhere in the Crowd There’s You’ was published by Eastside Projects last month. Freya currently holds a two-year Fellowship at g39, Cardiff, which is supported by the Freelands Artist Programme.
Jade Montserrat is the recipient of the Stuart Hall Foundation Scholarship which supports her PhD (via MPhil) at IBAR, UCLan, (Race and Representation in Northern Britain in the context of the Black Atlantic: A Creative Practice Project) and the development of her work from her black diasporic perspective in the North of England. She was also awarded one of two Jerwood Student Drawing Prizes in 2017 for No Need for Clothing, a documentary photograph of a drawing installation at Cooper Gallery DJCAD by Jacquetta Clark. Jade’s Rainbow Tribe project – a combination of historical and contemporary manifestations of Black Culture from the perspective of the Black Diaspora is central to the ways she is producing a body of work, including No Need For Clothing and its iterations, as well as her performance work Revue. Jade was commissioned to present Revue as a 24 hour live performance at SPILL Festival of Performance, October 2018, a solo exhibition at The Bluecoat, Liverpool, (Nov – 10 Mar 2019) which toured to Humber Street Gallery (Jul – Sep 2019) and was commissioned by Art on the Underground to create the 2018 Winter Night Tube cover. Recent selected screenings, performances and presentations include: SPACE studios (2018), ICA Philadelphia (2018), Arnolfini, and Spike Island, Bristol (2017).
Jo Lathwood makes sculptures and large-scale installations which regularly respond to a particular site, event, material or process. Her portfolio varies greatly in form, scale, context and method of production, encompassing: temporary and permanent public art, exhibitions curated for galleries and heritage sites (often as the outcome of an artist residency) and studio-based work. Past activities include: Getting There, solo exhibition at Fabrica, Brighton UK (2018); Curious Formations, Trust New Art commission at Biddulph Grange, Stoke on Trent, UK (2017); Is it magma?, solo exhibition at Earth Gallery, University of Bristol, UK (2016); A Solid Above, Dual exhibition with Solveig Settemsdal at Hardwick Gallery, University of Gloucester, UK (2016); resident artist at Hestercombe Gallery and Gardens, Somerset, UK (2015). Lathwood was co-director of Ore and Ingot, an artist-led fine art bronze foundry in Bristol (2012 – 19). Lathwood’s studio is based at Spike Island, Bristol.
Harriet Bowman lives and works in Bristol. Working across sculpture, text and performance, Harriet’s work is informed by an ongoing fictional narrative which evolves through materials and their site of production. Solo exhibitions include: All Round-er (sad sale), Spike Island, Bristol (2018); putting my foot down, Outpost, Norwich (2018). Selected exhibitions include: Exeter Contemporary Open (2019), OUTPOST MEMBERS show selected by Jessica Warboys (2019), Bankley Open Call, Bankley, Manchester (2019); EBC003, East Bristol Contemporary, Bristol (2016); Plymouth Contemporary Open, Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth (2016). Forthcoming projects include: Desktop Residency, Online; HER MIT, an event in collaboration with Phil Root. Publications include; All Round-er (sad sale) 2018. She has been selected for Outpost Residency 2018, Gane Trust award, and won the Emerging Artist Award at Plymouth Contemporary Open (2015).
Conway and Young are graphic designers and lecturers interested in people, environment and learning. They are motivated by designs of critical, social and political potential. They have been working on commissioned and self-initiated projects together since 2006. Currently Based in Bristol, where they have a studio at Spike Island and lecture at the University of the West of England.
Georgia Hall is a contemporary art curator who builds instructional community-based projects to support and enable the production of new works. Georgia developed and produced yellowfields to explore critical development and peer networking as a curatorial method to commission work. Georgia has previously worked for programming in galleries and museums including Spike Island and Arnolfini.
Credits:
1. Freya Dooley, ‘Scenes from Between the Mountains and the Sea’, Film Still, 2020.
