writer – artist – teacher
The recording of the zoom live performance of the text and image work ‘toward an emblem’ is now online at the CAMP website. The slide-film with reading was presented as part of the CAMP Huddle event on 8th December. My performance runs to 25:39 on the timeline. It is followed by a short Q&A with the online audience, and then there is a presentation by artist Sarah Trotter. Follow the link to the CAMP website HERE and scroll down to watch the video.
At 6.30pm (GMT) I will present ‘toward an emblem‘, a slidefilm with live reading, as part of the Huddle series organised by CAMP. I have been interested in the concept of the emblem for a number of years, and wanted to find a way to share some of this in both textual and visual form through a performance on zoom. The Huddle project feels a good opportunity to share this work in progress, and allow space for some dialogue or discussion.
The emblem draws my attention because of its malleability, its function as a communicative device, but one that is unstable, variable, mobile. Bringing together materials or elements from diverse contexts and from conflicting sources, the emblem as assemblage sits awkwardly within categories and classification. Juxtaposing collages that strain taxonomy and poke at order with texts that bring together theory, ornament and repetition the presentation will test what can be said in the present with a worn out or junked vocabulary.
The zoom link for the event can be accessed via the CAMP website: https://www.camp-membership.org/huddle/ A recording will be posted here after the event.
I have had a piece of work selected for a new publication of work by artists in Devon and Cornwall. ‘dublin emblem 7’ was chosen for Front Page Back Page Centrefold, a curated magazine produced by Flock South West in cooperation with CAMP as a fringe event for the British Art Show 9 in Plymouth.
My piece combines a collage produced while staying in Dublin in 2021 with text exploring some ideas around emblemata, meaning, narrative and assemblage.
The magazine is available in all BAS9 venues, or online from https://www.flocksouthwest.org/shop.
Aled Simons and Mark Leahy, ‘Scavenged Home’, (2021), digital animation with audio, 2’ 30”
Sticking bits of things together for now: we began with a conversation, talked about collecting, stickers, taxonomy, and about making work, and the things that get in the way of making work – we also talked about Artex covered ceilings and finding a “studio” or somewhere to make stuff; subsequent exchanges included some mail-art collages sent from Dublin to Swansea, and discussion of grottoes, skins, Stonehenge, Welshness (sort of) and Irishness (a bit) and somewhere in there a sense of the legacy of colonialism … these things have fed into a short animation that curls together hermit crabs, National Trust properties, appropriation and occupation, language, accidental layering and a relationship of belonging and memory;
Over recent months I have been part of the Exchange project, which has involved 60 artists from 6 artist-led groups across England. 10 members of CAMP (Contemporary Art Membership Plymouth) were each paired with a partner from another organisation, and I have been working with Aled Simons of g39 in Cardiff. The project comes to a close on 30th July with The Summit – a sharing of some outcomes and a conversation about the sharing / collaboration / exchange process.
On 24th and 26th August 2020, I will run a two-part online workshop as part of the PITCH programme of events for CAMP (Contemporary Art Membership Plymouth) .
What Time is Art? is an investigation of time in (y)our art practice. Over two 2-hour sessions we will discuss ideas of time in relation to art practice(s). The sessions will address how a story of making is told, how telling it locates it in time, and how the told story endures or is lost.
Booking is via the CAMP website.