Tag: art

‘grass’ residency at Live Art Ireland

From October 1st I will be spending three weeks on a residency at Milford House, the home of Live Art Ireland. The theme for this year’s artist residencies is ‘grass’ and my proposal is to reflect on and develop some new performance material from my relationship with the dairy industry.

Proposal: Having grown up on a dairy farm in West Limerick and now living in Devon, I am familiar with landscapes prioritising a version of grassland, seeking an almost monoculture of grass species, driven by additives to deliver bulk. Dairy cows are exploited to maximise milk production, for consumer products seen as essential. Culturally this industry has been promoted by the Irish State, been part of the story we tell of ourselves to others. Can I find a chink within this edifice to account for the other-than-human, acknowledging species contributing to this landscape system of production and consumption. I want to look at the network of small creameries and cooperatives that developed in the early 20th Century across rural Ireland, and use these as a starting place. I want to look at language and rhythms of this industry, to consider my place within it, and develop text and actions in response.

Some work in progress images and text are up on the Live Art Ireland website now: https://www.live-art.ie/2023/10/05/mark-leahy/

Writing panel at Synesthesia II symposium on 30th June

On Thursday 30th June at 1000hrs, I will facilitate an online panel discussion with four artist-writers (Emma Bolland, Sara Bowler, J. R. Carpenter, Josie Cockram) considering art, writing and their overlaps and intersections. The panelists will each present a short provocation and further discussion will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience. The event will be online on zoom. More details can be found here: https://synesthesia.online/Writing-Panel-Discussion

 

9×9 – a set of poems under constraint

As my response to the hyperlocal commission from Arts&CultureExeter I made a set of 9 square visual poems, using the first 9 square numbers, and found images in square format as the initial constraints. These are hosted on the Arts and Culture website, and will also be uploaded my social media.

Words were drawn from texts I encountered over the weeks of ‘lockdown’, and the images selected from my stack of collage materials. These were edited by erasure, translation, and recombination. The texts respond to their sources, but transpose associations to novel social and political behaviour. The impulse to respond creatively finds itself faced with arguments in favour of action, and a counter rationale for inaction. The poems emerged despite this. Contexts include the work of Louis Zukofsky, Hannah Weiner, OuLiPo, and Bernadette Mayer.

Uncommon Attunement, review of David Toop anthology

Rupert Loydell has just uploaded a new review of mine to the Stride blog. The review comments and reflects on my reading of David Toop’s Inflamed Invisible: Collected Writings on Art and Sound 1976 – 2018 recently published by Goldsmiths Press.

“This is a noisy capacious book, bringing together Toop’s writing, from reviews, occasional texts, magazine articles, liner notes, blog posts and exhibition texts across more than four decades. […]

Each one of this selection might be linked to distinct fields, of music, of poetry, of film making, but Toop draws sonic and aural threads from each and winds them together in this collection. ”

The accompanying links and Spotify playlist are really great, and reminded me of things I’d forgotten as well as introducing me to new work.

continuous stationary workshop day at The Met Office Innovation Lab

On Wednesday January 15th I spent the day with a number of artists and scientists looking at potential ways of working together with ‘big data’. The event was hosted by Impact Lab at the Met Office Innovation Centre in Exeter Science Park. The day was one of two organised by Milly Brown, of Plymouth College of Art, to bring artists in the region into contact and communication with scientists and researchers in partner oganisations. There were representatives from Impact Lab, from The Met Office, and from Plymouth Marine Laboratory. The day generated some very interesting conversations, and there feels to be the potential for collaborations and joint projects in the future.

The project has an instagram account @continuous_stationary and there are plans to produce a publication / report by the end of 2020.