Tag: live

Screening: Three Games for Grass

Three Games for Grass: Hay Bale Circuiting, Grass Bucket Head Crawl and Bale Bouldering

Short videos screening as part of Alive & Kicking, Live Art Ireland, Saturday 9th December

While on the ‘grass’ residency in October 2023, I worked in the fields near Milford House, responding to the place, to the evidence of farming, to processes and materials used in the growth, harvesting, and storage of grass. Playing with buckets, fertilizer bags, hay and silage bales, I considered the grass as a crop, as fodder and as having economic value in the production of milk or beef. Close to the ground, walking through the fields each day, I was aware of plants as indicators of environmental damage, of ecological disruption, as impacted by human activity. The playing began to take shape as a set of new games or sports, drawing on the tradition of local sports in rural Ireland, from parish-level GAA to the Community Games to school sports days. There is also a sense of gamification expanding into all areas of life, the continued prioritising of growth models along with notions of progress, despite compelling evidence of climate crisis and environmental breakdown. The performer-player embodies an intersection of sport and agriculture, weaving his way among the abandoned hay bales, manoeuvring a bucket across a field, wrestling with plastic-wrapped silage bales. What is winning in these systems? How are conditions on the ground? Where is the benefit when the scores are totted up?

grass bucket head a

On the ‘grass’ residency at Live Art Ireland, Milford House, Tipperary. A still from a short test video, me with a bucket in the grass.

For the past week I have been trying out some moving, acting, sounding, and voicing. Working with props that connect to grass as part of the dairy industry, as a crop and as fodder and as having economic value within the production of milk. Also working with an awareness of plants as indicators of environmental damage, of ecological disruption, as impacted by human activity. I have used tasks as ways of developing movement, of generating sounds, of prompting actions, and of allowing focus to shift to doing in the moment. The grass rustles, the plastic sack crackles, the bucket clunks and rattles. Out in the front field at Milford House, I hear the busy road, I see various agricultural projects in the fields around me, I feel the grass wet, prickly, rough, soft, I smell the soil and in among the stems I see that activity of invertebrates, insects, spiders, worms carries on regardless of my daft action above them.

The video is up on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/872367421?share=copy

‘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/

screening of MarjonXRame Summer School film at Leadworks on April 18

There will be a screening of the documentation art film of the MarjonXRame Summer School at Leadworks in Plymouth on Tuesday 18th April 2023 at 1930hrs. The film has been edited by Siobhan Bauer from material recorded over the three days of the workshops at Maker and Rame in July 2022. I’m looking forward to being reminded of the heat and intensity of the days we spent camping, making, swimming, eating at Maker Heights. Entry to the event is free, but food bank donations are welcome.

Event: 1930hrs. Tuesday 18th April 2023. Leadworks, 170 Rendle Street, Plymouth, PL1 1TP.

‘capes, folds, drapes’ with William Luz at Minerva Cafe on March 2nd

On March 2nd at Minerva Cafe in Bretonside, Plymouth, artist William Luz and I will present some outcomes from conversations and work-in-progress. Our process of working together started from a conversation about drawing, gesture, mark-making and representation. Specific details came to the fore, and prompted a gathering of material around fabric and drapery in art, and around the image of the cape in particular in superhero comics. Further thoughts clustered around queer representation of the cape, around desire as focused on the wrapped, clothed or veiled body. Our distinct practices in drawing, performance, writing and making combine in this joint presentation of early outcomes of this investigation. There will be drawings, actions, reading, words, and a free mini-zine for the audience. The event is part of the First Thursday series organised by Queer District Collective.