'Outdoor artmaking: unpredictable, particular… and lots of mud' (2022)

‘Outdoor artmaking: unpredictable, particular… and lots of mud’
Solo exhibition
University of Chester, Kingsway Campus
November 2022

This exhibition was the fifth occasion (out of six) when I showed artwork and associated materials in connection to my practice-based research project at the University of Chester. This project consisted of the development of a new visual arts practice in response to the landscape of Bakestonedale Moor, an exposed area in the Peak District (UK). The project lasted for six years. The exhibition marked the end of the practical works development stage. The work on display showed work from two veins of practical explorations. In the front room I showed mobile working kit (MWK) artefacts that I had developed to make sculptural installations on Bakestonedale Moor. The display showed MWK modules, their materials and shapes; and the photographs demonstrated their outdoor use. The display also demonstrated my strategy for exhibiting them: the combination of the MWK artefacts in close proximity to photographs of their situations outdoor allowed audiences an intimate way to engage with the sculptural materials, the landscape, weather and vegetation of Bakestonedale Moor. This also facilitated imaginative journeys unique to each individual viewer resonating the use a human body outdoors and a viewer’s knowledge about materials and their cultural contexts.
In the back room I showed a large display of drawings adjacent to MWK artefacts. The drawings demonstrated different aspects of the development and use of the mobile working kit: their material constituents (fabric, string, wood, paper) and use as sculptural modules on landscape, details of the material technology employed for making them and fixing them to the ground outdoors, indoor storage and exhibition options, and the way the materials might get carried over land to the places where they would be implemented.