Thank you Ryoanji Records for selecting my Storm Darcy/Snow Ball artwork for Ingrid Plum‘s new album, Corporeality. The work was created during Storm Darcy in February 2021, using a melting snow ball, Cyanotype chemicals and several hours outside in the storm
It’s said that more people die in storms named with ‘female’ names because of misogynistic perceptions of femaleness. This research has been challenged, but the weather naming practice has a history of gender politics. Since 1953, the US National Weather Service feminised storms with only female names, following the naval tradition and the practice of men naming storms after their wives, girlfriends and saints. This was challenged by Roxcy Bolton, gender activist and meteorologist, during an 8 year campaign in the US in the 1960s-70s
Bolton’s campaign was part of her wider activism towards liberating women. In her words, the practice of only using female names for weather events “reflects and creates an extremely derogatory attitude toward women,” who “deeply resent being arbitrarily associated with disaster”
Nature has been feminised through Mother Nature and Gaia figures across cultures since early civilization. The modern/Western use – such as that challenged by Bolton – has been toxified in patriarchal society as it mirrors exploitation and extraction of natural resources: if women are close to nature, they can be controlled too
Some argue that moving away from feminising nature using traditional binary could help to deconstruct stereotypes in wider society, stemming from concepts like Charles Darwin’s hierarchy, from top to bottom: male, female, nature. Or perhaps by mutually healing our disrupted relationship with living ecosystems (with ways of being that prioritise care and regeneration) it could also help us to redress other human imbalances
These are some of the ideas that I chew over when I make my work… Do check out Ingrid’s new album! It’s available to listen, download and purchase on Bandcamp
This summer, from 16th July to 1st September, I will have space at The Yare Gallery, Great Yarmouth, in the Fauna and Flora exhibition. The show is a celebration of nature by East Anglian artists from across the region, curated by Sarah Young
I’ll be working in the gallery on Wednesday afternoons in August and at other sporadic times. If you’d like to chat or learn about my processes, do drop by! There is lots to see in the exhibition as well as a cafe and garden. I’ll be working in the gallery and their gardens, as well as at local locations, such as the river, streets, parks and my garden. I will gather plants to use for photographic and textile uses. As the project develops, I will be sharing updates on my social media
I’ve returned back from my train journey across Europe for the CreaTures Festival. I was delighted to bring a patch of Great Yarmouth to the programme, representing the Yarmouth Springs Eternal project in the conference and exhibition programme from 29th June to 1st July in Sevilla, Spain
It was surreal to see melted candle wax collected from Great Yarmouth cemetery in the exhibition venue Real Fábrica de Artillería, an industrial factory established in 1565. I wondered whether the pigeon feathers on the installation table were the ones I brought with me, or ones dropped from the pigeon families now inhabiting the building. It was strange to see ‘Great Yarmouth’ and ‘the season of Spring’ as a contained experience – video, artefacts, posters – arranged on a table so far from home. The object bundles, fresh from the hands of the group, were laid as offerings to the audience. I thought about the snail whose shell home was now on display many miles away from its origin. Each object I laid in the display reminded me of the people and places they derived from
Image: Julio Albarrán
A display, even with Spanish interpretation translation for local visitors, never quite encapsulates it for me like the embodied experience. Maybe that’s because I feel lost and under-skilled in the area of exhibitions and curation, but more at home in facilitation. I was grateful to Thibault Pradet for his curatorial support and to my husband Pete for his on-going technical and emotional care! The range of installations in the exhibition were so rich, with interactive elements and inspiring community stories. A modest display suited Yarmouth Springs Eternal, as this year, for me at least, it was the conversations that felt really special. Spending time together in nature-connection and reflection was a pleasure. I wanted to highlight the words and collected objects in the show, to offer a sense of gentle discovery, intimacy and of the ‘moments’ shared
Thanks to Red Herring Press for printing our risograph posters for Yarmouth Springs Eternal installation exhibition visitors. I’ve still got some left over, so I will find a home for them in time. Thanks to Supporting Your Art for producing the project video, which really helped to bring energy to the still-life display. I have returned with a collection of precious objects – leaves, twigs, a snail shell, flint – which, inspired by the Yarmouth Springs Eternal public event led by Catarina Pimenta and Jacques Nimki, I will offer back to the Earth. Except the litter, plastics and faux plants, which I will dispose of carefully
I particularly enjoyed participating in the exhibition programme of events: a walking experience led by Roberto Martinez and an interspecies meditation led by Ruth Catlow with Andrea Botero. In the latter, we were guided by Ruth to merge our current physical form with that of another living being. I chose to blend with ‘Mind your own business’ (Soleirolia soleirolii), a low-growing matting plant growing abundantly in my garden at home, native to the Mediterranean, which reminded me of the cool dampness I was missing in the 39c heat of Sevilla. I’ve since looked up the plant online and read that the RHS regard it as a “weed” which can be treated with Glyphosate, a pesticide that has been linked to problems with human development, hormonal systems and cancer. Isn’t it strange that when plants flourish in abundance it triggers fear and feelings of oppression? It reminds me of the conversations we had during the Yarmouth Springs Eternal project this year, how our controlling and restrictive relationship to nature mirrors the discrimination experienced by people – we’ll still making choices to toxify our interspecies interconnection at a time of climate and ecological crisis, when our existence relies so much on all beings
As well as being part of the CreaTures Festival exhibition programme at Real Fábrica de Artillería, I was invited to talk at the conference programme at Espacio Santa Clara. I was due to be part of the conversation panel ‘Anticipating Change: From climate collapse to eco-social futures’. Unfortunately – due to the heat or something I ate – I was bed-ridden with a stomach bug that day. I was incredibly grateful to Lara Houston for representing my words during the talk, as I watched on Zoom from my sick bed, crying. Thanks also to Andrea Botero for giving the 5 minute project introduction to Yarmouth Springs Eternal that evening too
Lara Houston presenting Yarmouth Springs Eternal at the Anticipating Change talkAndrea Botero presenting Yarmouth Springs Eternal at the exhibition
After spending 26+ hours on trains across three countries over 10 days, I’m very glad to be home and very grateful to have been part of the CreaTures experience this year. The EU-funded research programme is now drawing to a close, but I’m sure that the projects, relationships and inspiration sparked from the project will live on in and actively build towards eco-social futures across Europe and beyond. I have plans to build on the inspiration too, though a third year of Yarmouth Springs Eternal in 2023, for which I will start funding bid writing after some much needed downtime and rest in the Summer
As I was pulling into Great Yarmouth train station on my way home, I felt welcomed by the familiar plants lining the tracks, including some that I was carrying in their dried form back from their European exhibition trip. I noticed the elderflowers were still just holding on, having seen them in Paris the week before already as ripening berries. The best thing about returning home, for me, is seeing how my garden has changed. I was glad to see the evergreen ‘Mind your own business’ I meditated on at the CreaTures Festival a few days prior, it was looking plump and happy. In my garden, it plays a vital role as a soil protector and low overlooked habitat often occupied by snails. I’ll think about my CreaTures experience when I see this creeping plant and will celebrate its power to spread and flourish in the shady spots
I would like to take a moment to again extend my gratitude to everyone involved in making and supporting Yarmouth Springs Eternal, this year and last year. In 2022, the project was led by:
Project lead: Genevieve Rudd
Project assistant: Moyses Gomes
Images and footage: Genevieve Rudd, Moyses Gomes and Supporting Your Art
Video editing: Supporting Your Art
Print: Red Herring Press
Facilitators: Catarina Pimenta, Henrik Kedves, Holly Sandiford, Jacques Nimki, Kerri Taylor, Ligia Macedo, Russell Hughes, Sara Moreira and Tiffany Wallace
Venue: PRIMEYARC/originalprojects; and Great Yarmouth
Funders: CreaTures/EU Horizon 2020 and Norfolk County Council’s Arts Project Fund
I’ve been an Associate of Climate Museum UK since early 2021, around the time that Yarmouth Springs Eternal was first being developed. I was invited to write a blog for their website, reflecting on the project this year. Last year, Climate Museum UK Associate James Aldridge featured his Queer River project in the Yarmouth Springs Eternal exhibition at PRIMEYARC, Great Yarmouth, alongside informational displays on climate and ecological impacts from Climate Museum UK’s resources
Image credit Moyses Gomes
This invitation to blog came at the right time – over the next few days and weeks, I’ll be reviewing my reflective journal, project materials and Becky is editing the project film – so it was incredibly useful to reflect as a blog post too
Spring was a conscious choice as the season to build a community engagement project within. There is so much symbolism for growth, awakening from hibernation and the burst of verdant abundance. These are things we’ve been exploring through our creative practices, from our external observations and internal reflections, conversations and shared memory-making. But we’ve also been expansive about what we define as ‘nature’ in our experiences together. We’ve been recognising the difference between gardened and wild, valued and neglected, and how this mirrors particular social conditions too
Feedback from a Yarmouth Springs Eternal community workshop in March 2022
I was invited by Folk Features to write an article about the Yarmouth Springs Eternal project so far, before we launch our public programme of community-led events on 19th to 21st May. In Get Creative, Get Outdoors I talk about the background to the project, our intentions this year and our celebration of Creativity & Wellbeing Week 2022
What I think people get out of Yarmouth Springs Eternal is something time and geographically specific, whilst also being very universal and bigger than just the project.
What I mean by that is this project is about Great Yarmouth in Springtime. We’re very honest and open-hearted about how Spring presents to us, we explore the streets as much as we explore the more ‘natural’ spaces. We’re very open to complexity too, recognising that we’re in a time of climate and ecological emergency, and that much that we often define as ‘nature’ is manicured from a human perspective.
By describing the project as ‘universal’, I mean that we, as humans, are nature too. We are in this ecosystem and it’s our right – whoever we are, whatever our experience is – to honour and celebrate our role within the natural world. Our lived experiences shouldn’t be a barrier to this connect. This is what we try to do through Yarmouth Springs Eternal: we bring a huge range of life experiences, but the thing that connects us all is our essential relationship to nature.
Recent Comments