Hannah Brackston: Residency Blog 1

The place: Hikkaduwa

My 10th day in Sri Lanka ended with spicy chickpeas wrapped in newspaper, a procession of flaming coconut torches, and thirty or so elephants rather uncomfortably dressed in elaborate textiles and twinkling blue fairy lights. We had joined thousands of people for the annual Kelani Duruthu Maha Perahera festival, unforgettably colourful and musical, elegant dancing and hundreds of performances with fire, ribbons, peacocks and spinning plates. This was followed by a hilarious three hour comedy sketch as we tried to navigate our way home, completely trapped by the parade and thousands of people and families.  It was an incredible introduction to Colombo which followed an exciting meeting with the team for the Colombo Biennale and an exploration of some of the venues with them, beginning to map out possible outdoor sites and gallery spaces that could suit our art work for the festival.

Now I have returned to the slightly more peaceful Hikkaduwa by climbing on and standing a little too cosily, just managing to balance on a busy commuter train. These first 10 days have brought an incredible overload of experiences, from kind and warm people, to the sweet young boys playing cricket practically in our garden, to the string of wild dogs lining our road, to eating 10’s of miniature bananas, battling with the mosquitos, visiting temples and budha’s, asking questions and answering smiles, holding difficult conversations about the Tsunami and drinking many delicious cups of tea. Not to mention sleeping to the rattle of monkeys on the roof.

Hikkaduwa where we are all staying is a small town on the beautiful sea, stretched out along a hectic strip of the Galle Road, saturated with shops and stalls, rusty red bicycles and eager but friendly tuc tucs. For its most part every commercial window and doorway is cluttered with garments and objects for sale, locally made and run by Sri Lankan families, but existing exclusively to service the 4 busy winter months of the tourists decent. There is a lot to adjust to and quite a loud and vibrant contrast between a modest local culture and this roads ample supply of contradiction to this, regardless we are inescapably tourists also. The last days however it has been inspiring to meet some folk that integrate with the local community and to begin to have conversations and find moments and mechanisms to form the start of friendships with some of the beautiful Sri Lankan people, which hopefully muddle this line between the two cultures existing here.

We are all in quite a special position because the artists are split between two houses but located ‘jungle side.’ This seems to refer to being the opposite side to most of the hotels, away from the ocean, over the railway track and 10 minutes down a wee and fascinating road under a great green canopy of banana leaves. Each home we pass if you catch someone’s eye you find a lovely smile and in between the glimpses through bushes and doorways a peek into daily village life. Three of us stay in a simple and brilliantly spacious house a fair way along this road, it is raised up a little where the land inclines and is surrounded by a hot green grassy garden. Working outside the front of the house which is a really bright and refreshing treat (most of the time) it feels as though we are on show to the whole street and equally we are spectators of it. The other side of our fence a family of stay dogs defend 4 newly born puppy’s and at 5pm the local boys prop up a broken bit of a palm tree to play jungle cricket, (we can field from our garden) while the kind shop lady opposite waves and greets us constantly. I have begun to find a rhythm to match these surroundings enjoying early mornings at sunrise and the abundance of sounds that accompany it.

Initial Ideas and reactions: Work

I had proposed and imagined to research one starting point here that would take me through to some kind of outcome that stitched this time here together. However finding myself in this incredible situation where removed from the juggling of daily life at home your sole focus is on the development of ideas, absorbing and questioning everything about this new and completely fascinating culture, it doesn’t feel that easy, or necessarily important to fix my focus on just one idea. In the opportunity to live completely submerged in the culture I find my head constantly buzzing with little ideas, details that I feel really inspired by and I get really excited by a whole multitude of things around me. According to this I am allowing my creative process here to follow many of these threads of interest and to play in simple ways with them that respond to my immediate reactions and thoughts about life in Hikkaduwa.

Lace

I was looking forward to concentrating my work here on the role and intricacies of local crafts, in particular I expected to engage a lot with the local tailoring community and the unique situation that exists working in a country like Sri Lanka where you can actually meet the people who make some of the garments we import and wear in the west. The disconnection between maker and consumer is universal but I am interested in the moments of visibility where a connection might be possible. I spent a couple of my first days here mapping and learning about the spread of local textile based activities.

The majority of the shops on our end of Galle road sell westernised summer dresses, trousers, hats, bikinis and board shorts most made from either imported Indian fabrics that offer the silky ornate trim that is popular of Eastern garments, or foreign swim wear cloth. Speaking with some of these local seamstresses in the tourist shops I understand that here there is something quite special existing purely through circumstance, in that these women work in the same place that they sell and therefore the foreign visitors on entry to the shops are met by potentially the same machine and lady that made the garment they are interested to buy. The stitching on old sewing machines, the pattern cutting and wee pile of scraps is entirely visible inside and we even have the opportunity to request something customized and made to measure, through this the local process of tailoring is very tangible. I began to feel that despite my own interest in sewing and it’s wider function socially and economically, in terms of interaction and visibility, there is a system of sorts that is already facilitating some sense of this interface between the local maker and the visitor. What therefore became more of a curiosity to me were the steps in the process that were not so visible; the production of the fabric itself.

To look at this I took myself to see some other local aspects to the textile industry. To see handloom weaving, batik and silk making, even rope makers; beautiful and patient people using extremely delicate processes, the outcomes they produce are stunning and there is something very special about seeing this. However for all the time it was possible to watch these craftmen at work, the trips to these shops or centres were monopolised understandably by far more time dedicated to a detailed tour of their showrooms. Perhaps it was unusual for a visitor to be more interested in how something is made, than buying the perfectly refined outcome.  Each of these visits made me more increasingly aware that not only were these venues tailored towards foreign visitors but these textiles were incredibly expensive for local people and high end products that would never find their way into the majority of local homes, they were luxury items for export. Furthermore the garments that Sri Lankan people wear are often stitched here, but the fabrics are imported cheaply from India, China and Japan. The official white school uniform cloth for example, worn by every child in Srilanka is not made in the country.

In trying to articulate this quite complex international network of buying and selling, importing goods, ideas, western designs etc, I stumbled across one tiny shop that stands out a little on the street as it is the only place that sells entirely white garments; the lace shop. The lady here had such a great smile and perhaps I was just at that point in my thought process, trying to articulate these incredibly labour intensive crafts such as hand loom weaving and their relationship to wealth and then to find this tiny machine for making this detailed and perfect lace by hand somehow seamed to encompass many of the things that fascinated me about crafts, economy and labour here.

Lace making in not an indigenous craft for Sri Lanka, nor is handmade lace worn or used that much here, in fact colonial rule during the Portuguese period brought this skill to the west coast of Sri Lanka and shared it with local fisherwomen, who produced impeccable lace that found its way to the royal and rich garments and interior decors or the western world.  The craft has remained today, passed on by mother to daughter but the number of practicing lace makers has of course decreased dramatically. Perhaps my curiosity also lingered here because unlike weaving or batik the shear miniature scale and speed of the lace makers left me feeling like there was still a mysterious edge to this process and a labour of incredible patience. My immediate reaction was to want to unpack that mystery, to imagine how this lace might look on a huge scale or as a game like maypole dancing where each person became a bobbin, ducking and diving between each other.

I felt very much that I wanted to learn and engage more with this subject before refining these early excitable ideas and also there were so many questions and subtleties to this whole industry that couldn’t be derived from one or two conversations. The lace maker agreed to teach me, I would come for an hour or so each day and sit inside the shop with her and learn to make lace…

Brushes

There is an absolute abundance of local products made from some part or another of a coconut tree and these are both displayed outside every local shop on the jungle roads and found in all of the Sri Lankan homes. The most common of the coconut items is the indoor floor brush, many families owning more than one and using it at least once a day.  The need to brush these concrete floors is evident; the jungle spends all it’s time trying to get inside. We have at least three varieties of ants discovering invisible crumbs and Sri Lankan people take incredible pride in their homes. Many times it is remarked to me ‘how clean is Sri Lanka?!’ The sweeping is a relentless cycle.

The brushes themselves are beautiful objects, a wooden pole with a range of plastic and recycled tin components that hold the coconut fibres into the end, resembling a moustache. I decided to buy one from the local shop and carrying it home I was astonished by how much this made the local people smile. Tourists don’t buy sweeping brushes. But the reaction was such a warm one that I began to think of how actions like walking down the road with a broom are so simple and yet so effective as mechanisms for conversations. Interesting considering the Galle road is so packed with things that are trying to get your attention. I decided to buy a couple more brushes, slight variations but the same indoor natural fibre and whilst wondering how these might look in some form of kinetic sculpture I realised that perhaps since these objects, are quite so local and familiar to my neighbours it might come across to the street of spectators as pretty wasteful and strange to be cutting them up. I also had a really strong feeling for wanting to further my interaction with all these people who live around us in the jungle. Inspired by the quite simple set up of the local shops in the village, window ledges or sheds with items, I placed a sign indicating ‘Broom Swap’ and I made an ordered pile of brand new brooms in a visible place outside our house.

The first exchanges took place with people I had already met, immediate neighbours who found it all quite funny but who were more than happy to make the swap, for a couple of these it was a chance for me to step inside their house or sit for a cup of tea and learn a little of their lifestyle. I chose to use the interior brooms because the interior spaces of these homes are still something of a mystery most of these buildings are penned in by fairly substantial walls or fences. As a few more exchanges took place and word began to spread I began to think more again about these walls. One lunch time 3 women separately came to the big gate of our garden and despite our language barrier they understood this swap and began pushing their old brushes through the fence to me on the other side.

I met one lady who lives in a small and beautiful little house alone as a full time carer for a handicapped daughter; her home is completely cut off from the community by the strong tall walls that surround it. She told me, over a cup of tea how Sri Lanka used to be different and she felt better, only tiny fences or bushes between homes, everything was open and space and life was shared and social. In the 60’s under new leadership the government encouraged many people to go abroad, particularly the Middle East to find work and in the process people saw how we were living and building public and privatisation of space in the west. On return these influences were transferred and the built landscape began to change and the walls and property boundaries became more defined.

Word of the broom swap somehow spread through this neighbourhood like wild fire, a true testament to the close communication and travel of person to person news that still exists here. On one day I even ran completely out of brooms to exchange, I started to buy the brooms from the two closest little shops and when they ran out I noticed they made a new order, these tiny micro economies are fascinating and I felt essential that the swapping supported this. After 5 days I have 22 swapped brooms and have met many new and friendly faces who have shared a bit of time or an invitation into their home with me in the process.

The used brooms are wonderful weathered objects, totally reshaped by the repetitive action of daily brushing, somehow as a collection I no longer want to cut them up, they each have a great presence and identity. I am beginning to experiment with them like giant sticks, thinking about their properties for play and the relationship they might have to simple skeleton structures, the constant building and construction here or the lost presence of a basic garden fence.

Washed up objects

I have always loved collecting pebbles and shells along shorelines and the process of getting totally absorbed in scouring grains of sand, barefoot after barefoot. On one of my first days here in Hikkaduwa I visited the Tsunami Photo museum a few kilometres from the town, assembled in the remains of a ladies house, which had been completely destroyed and slowly rebuilt. There were two things that stayed with me a while after leaving, one being the scale and impact and sheer sadness of the destruction and the second being the approach to the definition of the space as a museum. It was precisely a museum in fact, but with a completely homemade, wonky, hand written style of assemblage that made all the terrible images and descriptive text even more powerful and far away from the expectations of western ordered and graphically designed displays. The exhibition contained not only photographs but letters, objects, fabrics and a glass case with an example of the debris and rubble left over on a tiny piece of land. Speaking to the lady who ran the museum, I also learnt of the changes brought about by this disaster, she explained how everything was put into prospective for a lot of local people, that material pursuits and the whole relationship with possessions and objects changes when you lose everything and yet remain in a place where this could potentially happen again. We also talked of how so many people left this local area and moved inland, they are still afraid and they cannot live by and look at the ocean.

I left the museum which is right at the ocean’s edge and I also changed for some moments the way I was viewing it, I was somehow completely compelled to wonder a bit up the shore here, staring out at this mass of water, trying to imagine what had happened and to articulate the incredible and unstoppable power it contains. At some point the clean and perfect beach was broken by a rock barrier, part of the coastal engineering, on my side of this there were suddenly lots of ripples and clusters of debris washed up in various tidelines, the assortment and fragments were sort of beautiful and ironic and as I couldn’t help myself from picking some out, I realised how much they played sculpturally with each other, the fine structure of piece of broken coral that mirrors in size, shape and colour the bleached plastic dislocated dolls arm. The natural and the man-made, blending into one another, where some objects were literally impossible to categorise, totally unified and at the mercy of the waves and the sea. I almost left my gathered collection on the beach, the connection between these pieces and the larger broken materials left behind by the tsunami at first felt insensitive and inappropriate, however I knew that it wasn’t the destruction of these objects in a negative sense of the term that interested me, rather the beauty in the simplicity of the shapes and colours that these became. These were also from a much more recent time period and talked to me more directly of environmental impact and consumerism and waste.

I went several times out to this section of the beach to gather a handful by handful of these unusual washed up bits, I had no plan for them but this process of gathering became really reflective on this completely empty beach. I guessed that this wave barrier meant that this particular tide line was rounding up a combination of the local litter that dogs and weather moved away from the curbs as well as the inevitable scraps of rubbish from Hikkaduwas beach tourism. In my continued pursuit to understand the relationship and impacts of tourism on this town I found it fascinating that in this very concentrated place evidence of the culture and consumption of both Eastern and Western lifestyles was lying out together here peacefully in the sun in a place completely ignored and unused.

I began to plan to carry cut away bottles and bags for my collections it was becoming almost methodical and I was increasingly aware that my activity shared something in common with the rubbish collectors and range of inventors and resourceful individuals in Sri Lanka that gather, reuse, recycle or recreate objects out of discarded stuff. The only difference which I enjoyed was that I was perhaps at the end of this cycle of gathering and re-making, collecting objects that no longer had any capacity for a future use.

Back at the house it was impossible to resist playing with the finds and ordering and arranging them in different ways. Colour was absolutely key to this because the subtle shift in shades seamed to span precisely the colours of the ocean and in little group’s assortment by tone made the collection really intriguing visually. I decided that I might also like to play with the definition of a museum as an attempt to find an interesting space or mechanism to make this collection public. I was interested in how this whole process of collection and display could become a performance or a mobile process replicated in different places.

Hannah Brackston

Hannah Brackston is a visual artist with a socially engaged practice currently rooted in Glasgow, Scotland. Growing up between Leeds and rural Oxfordshire, she then spent a year working with community educational/development projects in Southern India. Hannah graduated from Environmental Art at The Glasgow School of Art in 2011, receiving the David Harding Public Art Prize and exhibiting at the R.S.A. New Contemporaries Show. Key works include Desire Lines (2011), a permanent artwork in the form of a gateway for Bellahouston Park and Nith Scoping (2012) a research led project that explored the relationship between people and their River Nith, for the program Inbetween:Dumfries. Recently Hannah completed residencies in Cuxhaven Germany, Unit 7 artist’s studios in Glasgow and has an upcoming residency Glasgow Sculpture studios. These are supported by awards from Arts Trust Scotland and The R.S.A.  Hannah is one of the founding members of the Open Jar Artist Collective and is building on collaborations with icecream architecture. Currently Hannah works from a studio in Govan, her art invites participation and promotes conversation. Every project is developed in considered relation to research and context, people and environment.

Lindsay Sekulowicz Residency Blog

bus

The last bus turned away from the coast, leaving behind the bright white light. The windows became greener and greener and plastic flowers swung above the windscreen as it flew along the turning roads. After several hours it stopped at the bottom of a long steep track and I got off and walked up slowly, past wary eyed dogs sleeping in patches of shade on the path.

I was shown to a dormitory building near to the reserve’s office, and Mr Chitra Sekara arrived shortly after. We didn’t have a big introduction – he just nodded and gestured towards the forest. I put my bags down, put on my boots and we left immediately.

We walked through the dense green almost in silence, with Chitra stopping continually to point out plants, usually calling them by their Latin names as well as Sinhalese. He picked up leaves to put in my book, which became quickly covered in notes and markers so I could find the locations of the plants again. We saw many lizards and a large scorpion, and crushed and smelled the leaves of Cinnamon Zelanicum and Aristolochia Indica – a vine containing aristolochic acid, critical to the survival of some Birdwing butterflies.  At some point he turned abruptly and we headed back, and I remembered how quickly the light falls in the forest.

Later, I walked round the edges of the forest close to the dormitory, and sat to draw Osbeckia octandra, a purple-flowered shrub used in the treatment of liver disorders. I stayed there to work for a while but at some point, looked down to see that the tops of my trousers and the ground surrounding me was soaked through with sticky dark blood. I realised that leeches must have gotten inside, and ran back to the dormitory and find the salt that my friends had packed into a paper triangle from the breakfast table that morning.

return

late

The dogs here have their own realities. All day they sleep in their shady hiding places, and only in the hours before sunset do they start to appear. As the light faded I washed my clothes clean and they emerged on all sides and took their places on the path towards the forest – stretched out, heads up, relaxed, considering. They leapt up at intervals and begin to fight, all joining in and then settling down again.

Everyone left to bathe before sunset, washing in the river that runs through the forest. The water was clean and we drank from it too. A brother and sister were swimming and washing and as I walked by they saw me and started a diving competition. Flipflops were left on the river bank and on the rocks a collection of belongings: A plate with five small piles of red spice, a plastic bag filled with banana skins, a pair of white trainers with Velcro, a white bucket with a bar of soap beside it on a dip in the rock. I heard a kitten behind a wall and as I peered over to see it a man pointed into the trees and I saw a small black bird with a red beak crying instead.

The sky between the trees turned pink then black like shutters closing. After dark dogs ran laps around and around, panting heavily, sniffing the ground and growling. I fell asleep under a pink mosquito net and they fought through the night.

dark

Each time I entered the forest with Chitra, I found that the mental markers I had constructed were almost entirely useless. The landscape I am familiar with is based on rocks and hills and solitary trees and the density of the forest made it impossible to find such points. Instead I looked at the sky and tried to memorise the patterns that the leaves made against areas of lightness.

First, Elytraria acaulis – small, dark, bluish leaves growing close to the ground. Then we walked further inside the forest, moving slowly and placing our feet carefully, and found Anoectochilus setaceus – an endemic ground orchid with finely veined velvety red leaves, traditionally used to treat snakebites. Chitra placed a protective border of leaves around each plant we found before we left.

Into another valley we were surrounded with Mandura, the pitcher plant Nepenthes distillatoria. It flowered above us – tall stalks of greenish pale flowers, with the huge pitchers beneath, tangling all the way to the ground in various stages of growth and decay. The ground was covered with leeches that make their way up my boots with each step. We both said its name like a mantra as we walked, “mandura, mandura, mandura”.

The light had already dropped on the way out, and as I walked I felt a little curl against my foot. I half turned back and just see a flash of an outline – a tiny snake with its blunt little head raised up. I stopped Chitra and he tutted and pulled me back. Hypnale Hypnale, hump nosed pit viper, it’s colouring was so perfect, that even as I looked directly at it, it seemed to disappear into the path. With its head still reared, Chitra hooked a stick under it, body twisting, and threw it far into the trees and we heard the sound of its body fall in the leaves.

The animals preparing for sunset marked our route out; hornbills and purple faced leaf monkeys and an intensely loud sound of cicadas, like motorbike engines revving in the trees. We saw the marks of a wild boar on the path.

Outside the dormitory after dark I sat with my headtorch and read with the insects and bats swooping at me. Mongooses slept in the roof. The dogs ran, the monkeys were asleep and the sky was filled with green fireflies.

Mandura

Finally, with some persuasion, I was allowed to go into the forest by myself. But not further than the second Weniwel tree. I found a small stream next to a big mahogany tree that was always filled with the leaf monkeys, and drew the damp earth covered with Acranthera ceylanica and fallen leaves. The day passed with only the monkeys and birds. When the cicadas began I knew it was nearly time to leave.

 For several days there were rainstorms in the afternoon, which often stopped work. Once a monkey warned me first, by pissing on me and very nearly on my drawing. When I looked up it was staring down at me. At that moment the sky broke open with a rainstorm and I slid down the paths out of the forest, passing Sunil on a motorbike going up the main path back into the forest to gather leeches – the yellow skinned ones for medicine.

In the early evenings I sat with sugary Nescafe and watched the birds. They appeared during the pauses in the rain, metallic blue flashes against the grey sky and dark trees. Black and yellow beaks, red beaks, a bird of paradise with a long black and white tail – I had no knowledge of the species so everything was reduced to movement and colours. Once the director of the reserve came with his family, and we played badminton at sunset as it rained down until we couldn’t see the shuttlecock in the air anymore.

purple

After dark at night, we went back into the forest again. Chitra, Sunil, myself and another forester who wanted to find snakes. The shadows of the trees were lit only by fireflies and we moved very quietly using red light head torches. Chitra stopped us, pointing to small set of red spots shining back from the trees. As we walked, the trees revealed many more small shadows. Sometimes we shone our torches on full beam and saw huge round eyes illuminated. It was the endemic slender loris (Loris tardigradus), tiny and exquisitely beautiful, clinging to the trees and turning their heads to stare at us. A small owl sat close to us for a long time – the rare endemic Serendib Scops owl, Otus thilohoffmanni.

On the leaves of the trees sleeping kangaroo lizards, Otocryptis wiegmanni, hung suspended. They held on tightly with their hands, with their white bellies exposed and legs and tails gently swinging below. I kept shining my torch in the ditches to look for frogs and insects. We found another snake, pale orange and shining, too fast to catch but we watched it climb far into the trees above our heads, then walked slowly out, with our torches off then because our eyes had adjusted to the light.

slender loris expedition

Lindsay Sekulowicz

Lindsay Sekulowicz is an artist based between London and Scotland.

She completed her Ba (Hons) at the Glasgow School of Art in the department of Environmental Art and attained a postgraduate diploma at the Prince’s Drawing School in London.

In her practice, Sekulowicz focuses on historical collections and biological studies. The consideration for material and form is fundamental to all of the works. Primarily, she works through drawing, painting and sculptural installations, utilising often basic and instinctive techniques, with time, study and looking being important factors in the making process.

In the past, Sekulowicz has worked with entomologists from the Museum of Natural History of Florence, Museo ‘LA SPECOLA’, travelling with them on two expeditions to jungles in Malaysia and Ecuador.

In 2012 she completed a residency at the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum at the University of Dundee, where her research was focused on neuroscientific studies of space and memory.

Most recently, she has been working with botanist from the University of Addis Ababa and Kew Gardens, compiling a series of drawings of Ethiopian medicinal plants.

Tom Pritchard Residency Blog

Two and a half days here and 3 and a half since leaving Glasgow I am settling to the task at hand. This residency poses a number of possibilities that are somewhat outside of ‘normal’ residency practice:

The place: a hot, sunny, beach side tourist mecca so while the tourist element does little for me, the idea of working facing an ocean in shorts evidently does.

The climate: a hot, sunny 12 hour sunshine kind of day where working between 11am and 4pm is of the static under a fan kind.

The Biennale: In the middle of my time here will be the Colombo Art Biennale, a great opportunity but gives a sense of target to many working here.

The material: I have come here, primarily, to write. So, joyously, I am. But this element of my practice is still new enough that it is and will take some negotiation as I dedicate these weeks to it.

IMG_2394

My proposal to come here was so: I am interested in exploring how working with the Sinhala language might introduce elements of abstraction and sound-emphasis to my writing. This may come out in song, physical exploration but most of all I hope it will be largely in writing, as I think this will pose the strongest challenge to me creatively. Today I bought and English-Sinhala-Tamil dictionary and listened into numerous conversations on the bus and as friendly chaps chatting to me as I walked fielded phone calls in their native tongue.

However, arriving here, I also want to write through listening to the space, understanding how I can write with the ‘heat’ of performance throughout the day, carry the fire. Find a practice. Aim at poetry. Land wherever the experience takes us. I have begun this by devouring Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down The Bones as a way to ground myself into the idea of practice. If you haven’t read it, you really probably should as it’s very good!

IMG_2401

And so I have been beginning to fill notebooks (I find it hard to settle to one at a time) and writing in different places. I am recording a lot of the sound in the environments where I’m writing, maybe there will be something emerge out of that in time as source material for the work…who knows, it’s all very open for me right now.

And for the Biennale I will be performing a couple of improvised solos at the opening nights as part of the ongoing As Yet Untitled series which began in 2011. this one, Making History will be part response to the space as I find it (full of art works so hardly bare of inspiration!) and part exploration of ideas of death as a part of positive history, the necessity for it and the rituals we place around it. There might be some local performers joining me too, which would be nice. Anyway, I am tracking my time through sunsets so here are the three thus far and a little scribble from yesterday…

IMG_2411

A lone dog stalks the beach,
Sniffing, wearily, near sizzling bodies,
Burned brown by the tropical sun and
He thinks Stupid Bastards.

He thinks I am hungry,
I am ragged, I am hurt,
I know this because he limps and
As he does his head jolts.

The action misses the 
Sharp intake of breath it deserves,
But maybe he’s braver than us or
Just accustomed to the pain.

His tail hangs of itself,
no great flag to his self-esteem,
It is behind him like his past and
Appears gladly forgotten.

Stalking the beach I wonder
What is he looking for?
Scraps discarded, a chunk of passed
Life presented by the future willing sea?

Or perhaps he’s on holiday too, 
Enjoying the peaceful repetition
Of the water spilling but never quite
Reaching us until we’re ready.

There are many nearby on the road,
But here he is unique among all of us,
He stands out. He limps and
Disappears before the sun sets

Jo Hodges & Robbie Coleman

Our current practice focuses on explorations of the human relationship to environment and examinations of the complexities of place within an ecological and philosophical framework of global challenges and their local consequences.

Jointly, our work is multi-disciplinary and of a temporary nature combining forms such as performance, projected imagery, temporary installation and sound. We often create work by reimagining and reinventing existing processes.

Our practice is context and not media specific, being led by a research-based response to the physical, human and cultural environs. We are interested in developing new strategies for creating work in the public space and in exploring new ways of engaging audiences.

Robbie is a visual artist and designer. He has created and collaborated on local, national and international arts projects in a variety of media including live art, sculpture, installation and film.

Jo has a background in Human Ecology community development and social justice,

She has a diverse multi disciplinary practice, creating both permanent and temporary public works, site-specific interventions, time based pieces, exhibitions and performance. She has worked with The Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, The National Museum of Scotland and The National Portrait Gallery in London.

Mark Vernon Audio Diary – November

Sound artist Mark Vernon has been busy adding new sounds from Sri Lanka to his Audio Diary of his residency at Sura Medura. Among the sounds Mark has gathered are the sounds of the Southlands College Marching Band rehearsing, the sounds of a Kandy dance lesson and Mark’s fellow Artists in Residence, Sita Pieraccini, harmonising with a boat engine!

You can enjoy each individual recording below, or you can listen to the whole audio diary on Mark’s Soundcloud page. The sounds Mark collects will be used as the basis for an sound work that captures Mark’s experiences in and impressions of Sri Lanka.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120719856″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
The guide describes some of the 18 sicknesses represented by the museum’s collection of medicine masks. Ambalangoda Mask Museum.
Pictured: temporary madness

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120720378″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
In the workshop of the Ambalangoda Mask Museum the craftsmen use hammers and chisels to carve traditional masks from balsa wood.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120727390″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
Whizzing past in a tuktuk this children’s theatre production in a packed community centre caught my ear. The proceedings, with both Sinhala and English announcements were broadcast into the street over an outdoor P.A. system. Child actors dressed in a variety of animal costumes enacted dance moves that were characteristic of each creature. We were invited in to see the production but I preferred the sound coming over the P.A.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120728516″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
Komani, a survivor of the devastating 2004 Tsunami that hit the Sri Lankan coast describes the sound of the impact.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120729383″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
An unidentified creature, a frog or possibly a bird, stands out from the nightly chorus of frogs. Distant club music from the regular Friday ‘Vibration’ night drifts through the night air. Wewalgoda Road, Hikkaduwa.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120732452″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
A man laboriously turns the handle of a wooden buffing machine to polish moonstones. Galle Fort.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120731741″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
The girls of Southlands College in Fort Galle repeatedly rehearse the same song marching back and forth through the open courtyard of the school. There are regular breaks to sort out tuning and timing issues.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120733564″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
Sitting at her stool Seerani uses traditional techniques to hand make lace. The wooden bobbins clatter together as she weaves the threads at lightning speed. Galle Fort.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120734274″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
In one of the daily monsoons torrential rain bounces off the pavements, overflows gutters and pours down the streets. Fort Galle, Sri Lanka.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120735674″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
After the rain has stopped drips from the guttering patter on a corrugated tin roof. The regular splashes form a puddle beneath. The percussive rhythm of the drips has a musical quality.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120736649″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
The thrumming engine of an idling train is interspersed with crackling electricity. Recorded on the platform of Galle rail station.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/122082457″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
Fruit and vegetable sellers shout out their prices to passing customers at the weekly market in Hikkaduwa. As you approach the noise sounds almost like a football crowd.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/122083144″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
At Eagle house local children are given lessons in the art of Kandy dancing. The teacher counts and beats out the rhythm on the drum. In this clip the children sing and use finger cymbols to accompany the main rhythm.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/122083674″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
On a cruise of the Koggala Lagoon Sita accompanies the sound of the boat engine as we arrive at the Cinammon island.

Sura Medura Winter Residency Artists for 2013 / 2014 Announced

UZ Arts are delighted to announce that the artists for the winter residencies have been selected.

The six artists who will be taking part in the international residency programme from October 2013 to January 2014 are:

Hannah Brackston
Jo Hodges and Robbie Coleman
Sita Pieraccini
Tom Pritchard
Lindsay Sekulowicz
Mark Vernon

Each of the artists will undertake a 6 week residency at the Sura Medura International Artist Residency Centre in Hikkaduwa. The centre was established in 2011 by UZ Arts and offers opportunities for all artists from all disciplines to create work that is enhanced by being developed in Sri Lanka.  The work developed and produced by artists during their residency will be exhibited at the Briggait in February 2014.

The Sura Medura residency programme is part of Creative Futures, a Creative Scotland talent development programme which aims to promote the professional development, capabilities, connectivity and ambitions of Scotland’s creative practitioners and organisations.

www.creativescotland.com
www.creativefutureshq.com

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Kit Mead – The Other Kwai – Merchant City Festival 2013

Kit Mead, our recent artist in residence at Sura Medura, will be showing his film  “The Other Kwai” at this year’s Merchant City Festival in Glasgow on the 26th July. It will be shown in South Block in the Merchant City in association with Glasgow Film Theatre and their Pop Up events programmers. More information about event can be found here.

You can also follow Kit’s progress in Sri Lanka making his film by reading his blog posts in the News section of the Sura Medura website.

Photo from the set of The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957
Photo from the set of The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957