As you know, earlier this month I held an exhibition of my own work and that of inter-disciplinary artist Warren Shaw here at The Water Tower as part of Northants & Rutland Open Studios. The nine-day event culminated in collaborative performances combining art, movement and sound around two of my pieces of work (Cage and Alien) by myself, with Warren and dancer Eve McGalashan. The experience I found wonderful and empowering. I couldn’t believe that these improvisations of visual art, sound and dance came together so beautifully and was pretty well how I imagined it through following my intuition and being brave enough to go with it!
Movement has been an important part of my life for a long time, not least when I was running Deep Roots Tall Trees, but I’ve only recently gained the confidence to integrate it into my practice publicly. I met Eve through doing the An Obscure Camera project by Flexer and Sandiland at The Place, London during their annual community weekend: as a second-year student at The Place, Eve had to choose three projects from the programme to participate in and she said she was drawn to ours by the enthusiasm and dedication of us older dancers and the fact that we took it very seriously but also had fun. I noticed her right at the start; I thought she was grounded and dedicated with a lovely presence of gentleness. She interviewed me as part of her course work. So, when I later looked her up on Instagram and saw some strong photographs that she had done with a Central St Martins student’s body jewellery that resonated with my sculpture, Alien, I asked her if she would come and perform here.
Warren, who helps me in my studio as well as being an artist in his own right, is really into sound – like me he really likes minimalist music and improvised music, and we talk about music quite a bit when we’re in the studio – and he also really understands my work and what these two pieces are about, so it seemed obvious to me that he should create the sound to accompany the performances.
CAGE: This is a large-scale site-specific piece made from the metal supports of my old solar panels which have been constructed into frames, and pink baler twine. I had originally planned to weave the panels across as well as up and down, but as soon as I’d finished the warp I knew that the work needed that minimalism and left it at that. I couldn’t believe how well the colour worked in the wildflower field, the man-made set against nature; I actually started with orange baler twine but I ran out then found far more pink twine which comes from large hay bales, and I’m so glad because the colour worked so much better. It was very difficult to install – I couldn’t have done it without Warren and a fencing company! – but it was important to place it in the field because for me, one aspect of it was about its scale in relation to both the landscape and to the human body.
When it came to the performance I was thinking about Rudolph Laban and his ideas around the kinesphere, the imaginary space around an individual that stretches as far as they can extend their limbs. I wanted to explore shape, proportion and linear movements inside the contained space to fit with the simplicity of the work, employing slow, very unemotional, very minimal movements, with Eve and I intermittently looking directly at each other. We walked slowly in opposite directions around a path surrounding structure before meeting inside it, moving together and out again.
As we walked through the field, Eve and I each held two speakers that played a pulsing electronic hum that Warren had recorded from the batteries that store energy from my solar panels. He chose it because it’s repetitive, gentle yet powerful, just like my work, and he recorded it then teased out different frequencies and amplified it to the point of distortion so that it built into an ever-more menacing sound and then died back again. I had initially planned to call the piece Cage because, when it comes to the climate crisis, I feel we are all held inside something without being able to do anything about it and dealing with the frustration of being held without being able to move because the powers that be are just not doing enough to stop our beautiful home, the planet, being stifled. But one side is open, because I do have some hope and I think the pink emphasises this too, even though my heart is also crying inside.
ALIEN: We then moved the audience into the garden where Alien was piled up on the grass with Eve underneath – although a lot of people didn’t realise she was there until a short while into the performance. Alien is about the unnaturalness that the earth is spewing up in response to us poisoning it, and Eve just went with that and then undertook her own interpretation of it. She slowly emerged from it, finding her way through it and moving it, then getting angry with it and kicking it, before ending up actually feeling sorry for it and nurturing it like a baby and putting it down to sleep. Warren was playing his electric guitar in the background, not a melody but deep percussive sounds filtered through feedback and distortion. He was using his own movement and direct physical interaction with the guitar, to explore its relationship to the amplifier to manipulate the sound and feedback, while responding to Eve’s movements. The overall effect was extremely powerful and even darker than I had anticipated through Eve’s strong performance.
The feedback that I’ve had from those who were there has been incredible – people were very moved by both the performances themselves and the field, garden and studio that are so special to me. I so deeply appreciate the fact that some took the time to send messages in the days following the performances to tell me how the experience had made them feel and how they interpreted the art, movement and sound. Their responses will stay with me for a long time.
“Yesterday was great Rosalind. The performance was strong and hardcore. I had a time to pause myself and it was very meaningful. I went emotional and scared a little bit. Eve was fantastic and acted very real. At the end I was worried she is unwell – but it was acting. Last time I felt like this was when I went to contemporary theatre and watched special show about Hiroshima. Very strong and it made me feel sick! Well done to you.” – Anna
“I really enjoyed your event. I think it was the best performance of yours that I’ve seen. I was pulled between emotions, and the sound was very effective. The pink of the rope in the structure is what has stayed with me, for some reason, as hope. Great conversations with Noah about it. He said the first one made him feel wobbly and unnatural He thought the second one was being born into danger.” – James
“Both dances really resonated with us, given us a lot of thoughts. I am battling with my chronic illness a lot at the moment and have very bad reactions to the meds I need to take… and the second dance really expressed exactly how I feel – the black strings are holding me down (like the illness) and on days I feel free of them I want to kick it. The ‘baby’ which was laid to rest at the end symbolised the life it takes away from you when you have a chronic illness – the things you cannot do, the could haves and could do things. This was my interpretation and it really touched me. Well done all of you for a thought provoking and excellent exhibition.” – Sam
“The performance honestly felt so new for me as I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything quite like it. What I’d like to say first is that straight after the performance my mind was racing with thoughts and I could not make sense of them all. I kept thinking about it for days after. I felt the whole performance captivating from start to finish. It felt very dark. Everyone was silent and fully immersed into it. How it felt to me was that the cage represented life as it currently feels at present. Like a theatre curtain slowly closing, but a hopeful chance of an encore. The gaps between the pink strings allow us to always see out of the cage that we have all nearly built for ourselves, giving us a false sense of security, making it feel like ‘it’s not so bad’ and ‘we can fix it if we wanted to’ and that the situation will all magically resolve by itself! For me, the two bodies represented the non-empathetic ‘powers’ conducting a test of acceptance. The sound gradually getting louder and louder as it approached everyone, like someone was trying to test our limits of what everyone collectively believes is acceptable and barely finding that limit, like the gradual uncomfortable surrender of our morals, beliefs and independence, but nevertheless still powerfully enticing us. Occasionally pausing, watching, as if waiting to bait the trap, travelling progressively like pied pipers to the centre of the cage of potentially total imprisonment and control. But the cage is not fully finished yet. So we can still exist freely, which brings us some hope. Maybe the ‘system’ will cage itself, leaving us free to get back to our natural way of life.” – Dave
