#4 Field Work
FieldWork at GroundWork Gallery is an exhibition about the spaces that exist between the urban and the rural. It is about exploration, observation and presentation with field work methodologies as both a lens through which to view urban nature, and a description of artistic practice.
For this project we want to challenge many of our ingrained images of urban-rural as binary opposites. Looking at the fringes of the city where rural and urban meet and merge. Exploring spaces such as rivers, woodlands, paths or wastelands. Spaces where urban nature thrives.
GroundWork Gallery is dedicated to art and environment. Exhibitions and creative programmes explore how art can enable us to respond to the changing environment and imagine how we can shape its future.
Invited Exhibitors
Annie Woodford
Annie Woodford is a multi disciplinary artist who aims to transform materials into something unexpected, mysterious and ambiguous. Making is always preceded by a period of research, often involving a detailed examination of elements from the natural world or, sometimes, by time spent immersed within a landscape, space or place. Woodford studied at the Royal College of Art, receiving a travel scholarship and graduating with an MA in Ceramics and Glass. Exhibiting nationally and internationally – often with an emphasis on site-specific research and installation – her work has received wide acclaim. She is the recipient of several major prizes and awards, most recently The Inches Carr Trust Bursary for Research and Development and her pieces are included in many private and public collections. Woodford lives and works in Highland Perthshire, Scotland.
For FIELDWORK she has made a series of work based on her research project THE LANGUAGE of LICHEN. Using the themes of ecology, colonisation and climate change she has observed and examined the world of lichen, in the field, the herbarium and the laboratory at both a macroscopic and microscopic level.
Nicky Hirst
Nicky Hirst’s work is perhaps best described as an exploration of serendipity that can occur in unintended and unexpected places. Her stimulus can range from particular objects, places and activities, to language and metaphor. She has a daily practice of exploring her vicinity and taking closely observed photographs which she describes, ‘pointing and stuff and conflating things’. She has also said, ‘I think it is about language and ambiguity. It is about trying to unearth something such as possibility and the way things connect.’ This selection of photos for Fieldwork depict the urban and natural worlds rubbing up against one another through the use of shadows, water and human intervention.
After studying Fine Art followed by Art and Architecture she has pursued a parallel practice both in her studio creating works for exhibition, and collaboratively with others to produce many diverse projects for the public realm. Nicky was appointed as Election Artist for the 2019 General Election by the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art. The resulting artwork will form part of the Parliamentary Art Collection. She is currently co-editor of MASS Sculpture Magazine and a mentor on the MASS Sculpture Programme.
Robert Cooper
Robert Cooper is an established ceramicist who has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. He is fascinated by the persistence of artefacts and ideas. He often uses found objects, such as pottery shards from the Thames foreshore, which are imbued with a previous life and function, as a starting point for his work.
He has, for many years, employed recycling as a mode of working. Different elements such as clays, oxides and glazes left over from teaching sessions, discontinued ceramic transfers, printed imagery from popular culture and even pieces of previous work are recombined to create new narratives with multiple meanings.
Essay
John Rogers
Author of This Other London – adventures in the overlooked city, and director of the documentaries London Overground (with Iain Sinclair), The London Perambulator, Make Your Own Damn Art – the world of Bob and Roberta Smith , and In the Shadow of the Shard. Also co-presenter and producer of the radio show and podcast Ventures and Adventures in Topography on Resonance fm. He was psychogeographer-in-residence for Waltham Forest London Borough of Culture 2019, and was commissioned to create a project for Brent Biennial in Brent 2020 London Borough of Culture.
Exhibition essay
Exhibition Dates
25 March 2022 – 25 June 2022
GroundWork Gallery
17 Purfleet Street
King’s Lynn
PE30 1ER
https://www.groundworkgallery.com/