Contemporary artist making live performance, sound, video and digital artworks, with people and places.
I work both individually and collaboratively as an artist, performer, teacher and creative producer, drawing on over 30 years of professional experience. My work engages with place, geography and popular culture exploring human perception and experience in relation to places and events (in amongst the details of life).
Collaboration with people from a diversity of places and communities - often with those who have little experience of being involved in contemporary arts projects - is embedded into the process of making work through conversation, devising and production.
Based in South West London and Somerset, I also work as part of biggerhouse, a collective of artists and filmmakers, and I am an affiliate member of PLaCE Research Centre at UWE in Bristol.
To see video works and moving image documentation of projects, go to this youtube site. For selected sound works, you can listen here through soundcloud.
For an example of digital place responsive work, visit this web-based artwork made in 2009 in response to the Neroche landscape on the Blackdown Hills, (uses Flash and sound): Transience.
Contact : sue [at] biggerhouse.co.uk
A collaboration with Joff Winterhart and Simon Roberts (Bucky) commissioned You & Your Work to bring together 10 people from the city of Bristol to make a band and a song that crosses generations and genres – one person from each decade!
The 100 Year Old Band performs at The Wellspring Healthy Living Centre in Barton Hill on Friday June 15th and Arnolfini on Saturday June 16th 2012.
26 and 7 bones – a contemporary arts project in West Dorset in collaboration with artist Sally Watkins. Working along the Jurassic seaboard, we are meeting and collaborating with people who use their hands (27 bones) and/or feet (26 bones) to work, navigate or investigate the Dorset coast.
Through walking, research, conversation, skill exchange and both a physical and metaphorical approach to engaging with the landscape, the project articulates the conjunctions and exchanges between the physical body and the landscape – the ‘and’ of the hand.
A public event with visual, sound and live work is on the 26th & 27th May at the Salt House, West Bay in Dorset, as part of Earth Festival 2012
A short video of the making of the Garden of Reason contemporary arts programme at Ham House, Richmond, April – September 2012. The commissioned video is being shown in the resource room at the exhibition, and as an online resource.
An artist’s residency at the National Trust’s Mottisfont Abbey from December to February 2012.
Working through conversation and digital media with some of the staff and volunteers, I invited people to collaborate with me to explore ‘an action or task that you do, that perhaps no-one else knows you do, and that without it, something essential would be missed.’
Go here, for the playlist of short videos created from the residency.
A notebook and research collection exploring meeting points between horticulture, contemporary art and place responsive practices. The writing and research accompanies my current (part time) study of the RHS Level 2 certificate in Horticulture, and attempts to draw together some of my long term fascinations.
‘A Song for the Decade’ – a project as part of ANTI contemporary art festival in Kuopio, Finland to celebrate the festival’s 10th birthday – in collaboration with Joff Winterhart, Simon Roberts (Bucky) and Finnish musician Dave Forestfield.
One band, one song, one week: creating a band made up of people crossing the decades – from 6 years to 88 and upwards, from accomplished musicians from the city to the people we met on the streets of Kuopio, writing and performing one song for the Antiversary.
For details of the project, go here. And for videos of the rehearsal and gig here. And to listen to the song, go here!
Video work exhibited as part of the ‘Night of Light’ for Somerset Art Works at Hestercombe Gardens, Taunton – September 2011
Working with students from Westfield Arts Technology College in Littlemoor, Weymouth, Dorset, to produce a series of short audio pieces for their student and community radio station AIR, with support from media artist and student Pedro Calero.
We collected the thoughts and wishes of St Andrews Primary School, Acorn Day Care Centre as well as people on the streets of Littlemoor, and created audio work on the theme of hopes, dreams and wishes for broadcast on AIR internet radio in July 2011. The project was commissioned by b-side as part of this year’s programme of work with young people in Weymouth and Portland.
Listen to the sound works here. Photo by Pete Millson.
New work commissioned by Brewhouse Theatre and Arts Centre in Taunton for the Inna Space micro festival, May 2011.
Raiding the props and costume store at the Brewhouse, I filled the backstage Dressing Rooms with costumes and objects accumulated over years of productions staged at the theatre. I invited visitors to dress up with me, to create extraordinary outfits of unexpected combinations.
Each costume collaboration ended with a photograph, and a momentary exposure to passersby, at the backstage door.
Two short videos as documentation: ‘Try this on …’ a collection of portraits of the costume encounters here, and for a video with some dancing too, go here.
Video work about human hands and animal contact (4’14 loop). Exhibited as part of the Taunton Brewhouse Theatre and Arts Centre ‘England, my England’ Festival, April – May 2011.
Running Katie Etheridge’s ‘Faceback’ for a week during Battersea Arts Centre’s ‘One-on-one’ Festival April 2011.
Faceback is an antidote to online social networking that plays with ideas of
community, face to face contact, and control over our own images. Faceback sets in train a series of random one-on-one encounters over the course of an evening.
Somerset Art Works commission – March 2011
An intergenerational creative project continuing on from an earlier project all about art and place-making, working in collaboration with artist Simon Lee Dicker. We invited the project participants (aged under 25 and over 50) on a free coach trip to see the Wonders of Weston and to use the day out together to reflect on the potential of Langport’s public space. Inspired by the work of artist Tim Etchells in Weston we collectively created texts for the glass windows and doors of Langport in Somerset. Read more on the project blog here. And here for my short video document about the project: ‘we went on a coach trip together’.
Commissioned by PVA MediaLab, Dorset
Lead artist for 5 day place-responsive digital arts workshop in Bridport with young people (14-19yrs), teaching and making animation, still and moving image work (with filmakers Joff Winterhart and Stephen Clarke). Through public engagement with residents and passersby in Bucky Doo Square, a site-specific video projection work was produced in collaboration with Stephen and project participants, for the windows of the Bridport Arts Centre: launched February 5th 2011. Check BAC for the showing schedule. Go here and look for the Outside In playlist for project documentation.
A PVA MediaLab and B-Side Festival commission.
Working in collaboration with drawing artist Joff Winterhart on the No 1 Bus between Weymouth and Portland during the B-side multimedia festival, Dorset, September 2010. Talking, drawing and songwriting with passengers and drivers during the festival: giving original drawings to public and keeping the carbon copies. The ‘No 1 single’ was written especially for the bus inspired by our meetings and conversations (written and recorded in collaboration with musician Simon Roberts), and ‘released’ during B-side, with 50 limited edition CDs distributed and free download available.
Documentation includes “The No 1 Bus Drawing Book”, a collection of Joff’s drawings and Sue’s writing, and a series of photographs of the ‘handovers’ with the passengers and drivers. An edited version of ‘The No 1 Bus Drawing Book’ was published in a limited edition of 40 in May 2011 by LabCulture. Click here to see an 8 minute video short of the project and making process.
Commissioned by Somerset Art Works to collaborate with public artist Simon Lee Dicker to explore the art of place making in Langport, Somerset.
We engaged with public spaces in Langport through the themes of play and gardening, consulted with residents and community organisations and made creative interventions in Langport as part of Somerset Art Weeks Open Studios Event 71, October 2010).
The research and consultation is also for a prospective project in Langport Town Garden in 2011.
Working with Biggerhouse Productions, Tom Stubbs, Joff Winterhart and Simon Roberts making the NHS commissioned ‘Caring for Teeth’ DVD. We worked in four care homes in Somerset with elderly people and care workers, conversing about life stories and singing about teeth.
For extract of the film, go here.
Guest contributor to the Ashden Directory, which focuses on green issues and the performing arts, writing a series of three pieces for their Flowers On Stage summer blog. Go to the site to read other contributions about flowers on stage.
One – The Daffodil - about Mary Southcott’s performance ‘Let’s get some weather in here’.
Two – The Lungwort – about Ruskin, flowers and a site performance in the Brantwood dining room
Three – Snake’s head fritillaries – about making site performance on the Dartington estate.
Teaching contemporary devised collaborative theatre, both studio and site-based practice at the internationally renowned Dartington College of Arts in Devon (relocated to Falmouth and merged with UCF July 2010).
- Lecturer across BA Undergraduate Programme: contemporary performance and theatre making, composition, collaborative and contextually driven practices, solo performance, physical theatre, site-specific and interdisciplinary practice. I mentored and assessed third year graduating practical work, tutored students writing research papers and on contextual enquiry projects. I gave lectures and presentations, pastoral care and learning support and taught portfolio/journal making and documentation.
- Module Coordinator for First Year devised theatre and site-based performance from 2004-10 (managing both independently and alongside permanent staff): course planning, management, organisation and administration of timetables and teaching schedules, hosting visiting lecturers, liaising with college administration, organisation and structuring of teaching materials and production workshops, creating and managing Learning Space content, marking and assessment and preparing work for external examination.
- Representative for Associate Theatre Lecturers and PTHP staff at Theatre Team meetings. Participant and presenter at Department ‘Away Days’ for course review, planning and assessment (2006-2009). Course writer for First Year site-based theatre programme for post-relocation to Falmouth.
Dartington’s approach to working with context and place was highly influential to many of the graduating artists and makers and to the international field of contemporary site performance practice. I worked alongside Phil Smith and Simon Persighetti (Wrights and Sites), Sally Watkins, Katie Etheridge and David Williams.
To mark the end of the college at Dartington, I collaborated with graduating theatre student Maritea Daehlin to build gingerbread models of the college studios and buildings. The event took place at Festival 2010 (as part of the curated programme ‘Shaking Hands With Ghosts’) and after a short performance piece, we invited people to ‘eat dartington’. Watch the video of the event here.
For David William’s document of the event and the performance text go to his blog here.
A Connectivity and Legibility Study for Taunton DeaneCommissioned by Taunton Deane Borough Council to look at way-finding in relation to routes along the River Tone and through Taunton town centre., and to create a coordinated approach to public art commissioning in the town through community and partnership consultation.
Working in collaboration with Diana Hatton (Public Art Advisor) and as mentor to placement artist Natalie Parsley, a diversity of people participated through interviews, conversation and image making projects. I collaborated with residents, shop keepers and organisations to make maps, photo and text works and videos as creative responses and interventions.
The project concluded with a symposium in March 2010 with councillors and representatives from the RDA, CABE, strategic town planners, the TDBC Public Art Panel and public organisations from Taunton which commended the research and the creative recommendation document written and produced by the RRR team.
Visit Natalie Parsley’s blog on the project here. To download the recommendation document and for more information, go to Somerset Culture website here and scroll down to end of Routes River Rail project.
Working with elderly people and young people in two communities in rural Devon – Milton Abbot and Princetown – making sound programmes drawing on the lived experience, thoughts and ideas of the residents and participants, and creating opportunities for inter-generational exchange and conversation.
Using packs of question cards alongside drawing and animation, the project brought together a diversity of people – elderly residents, teenagers and children – to dialogue, discuss, make and draw around the subject of mental health, well being and community.
In Princetown, short films and animations have been made as part of the project through collaborating with animator and drawing artist Joff Winterhart. Go to the Soundings digital portraits and animations playlist here
Two sound programmes resulting from the conversations in Milton Abbot and Princetown were produced for broadcast radio. Listen to “What we are made of” – the Princetown programme here.
The Princetown programme is currently part of the Forest Fringe Touring Sound Library. For more information about Soundings go to the Soundings page at Aunehead Arts
Soundings was part of the Reach Devon, run by Aunehead Arts and Villages In Action. The Reach initiative, a pilot programme running across the South West funded by the NHS and Arts Council England to explore new ways of working at the meeting point between art and health, won a Royal Society for Public Health Award in 2010.
Invited onto the steering committee for Made 2009 by Take Art, to bring new ideas into the biennial event for performance makers in Somerset. I introduced two new events to the platform: a Practice event showing new experimental work from across the UK, through collaboration with Dominic Somers and TheatreWorks, and a symposium to discuss new ways of making and producing performance work in Somerset, with speakers Emma Stenning, Executive Director of Bristol Old Vic and Sjoerd Wagenaar from PeerGroup in the Netherlands.
a digital artwork made in response to the Neroche landscapeThis web based artwork was commissioned as part of the Somerset Artworks / Neroche Scheme project ‘Revealing the Landscape’ on the Blackdown Hills on the Somerset-Devon border. The work explores migratory and transitory paths made by humans and non-humans across the Neroche landscape.
Working over the 11 months between January and November 2008, through walking and driving, encounter and conversation, I collected a diversity of materials and ideas which have been mapped into an interactive site: short videos, texts and images embedded into a click-and-drag map. The website was programmed in Flash by web designers Magellan Projects.
Transience maps some of the migrations and movements of seeds, birds, earth, butterflies, people, weather, satellites, water, cars and moths. (Have the sound up on your computer before you follow the link)
www.nerochescheme.org/transience
A blog documenting the collecting process is here:www.suenerocheartwork.blogspot.com
All the videos from the work can be viewed here
Research paper presented:
‘Transience: oh bird, curious road, rush veneer’ at Living Landscapes, an international AHRC funded conference on performance, landscape and environment in Aberystwyth June 2009.
A performance talk about tigers and humans.
I love the tiger, and it would still eat me, yes.
This solo video-performance work looks closely at our relations with tigers, the ‘wild’, our desire to rescue and adopt, anthropomorphic corporate behaviour, our love. Thoughtfulness, humour and desire collaborate to imagine the tiger more alive than extinct, more fur-nomenal than digital.
Performed at (2005-08): Made In Somerset (Artists Showcase), Dartington College of Arts, Georgia State University Atlanta, Exeter Phoenix, Fareham Library Dads n Lads Group, The Phoenix Project in Glastonbury, Anti-Static Festival at the Brewhouse Taunton, Desire Lines Arts and Ecology Conference at DCA, Devon, Arts Depot London, Bristol Mayfest 2008 and Buckland Dinham near Frome.
Go to the project archive here. To watch video excepts from the performance talk go to the video playlist here.
experimental video and animation workA series of short videos, texts and animations around horses and women, girls and ponies and my 1960s toy farm. The work is inspired by and uses movie trailer soundtracks and gymkhanas.
Watch The Ponies & Gymkhana & My Jumping
Atlanta, Georgia USA: April 2006Invited by visual artist Pam Longobardi to the Arts Faculty for presentations of performance both documented and live, discussion and sessions with students.
The residency was the beginning of a collaboration with Pam, resulting in the video installation “Murmuration – Aplexus/Starling” exhibited at the Air Quality and Climate Summit, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Atlanta, GA May 3-4 2006.
Director and facilitator of the arts lab residential weekend for performers and practitioners in Somerset and South West, produced by Take Art and funded by ACE, which encouraged experimentation in making and producing work, creative dialogue and an exchange of methodologies and practice.
Arts Council England funded performance project touring South West England, (March – July 2004) including Dartington College of Arts Gallery (work in progress), Cheltenham Festival of Science, Exeter Phoenix, Quest Mind Body Spirit Festival (Devon) and The Phoenix Project (Somerset).
The project engaged performance, video, intensive research and conversation with audiences to explore psychic phenomena and the power of thought. Through the work, we undertook research and experimention into ‘psi’ with the internationally recognised parapsychologist Dr Serena Roney Dougal, and clairvoyant/artist Carolyn Findlay.
‘psi: mid space’ was made in collaboration with performance artists Vic Llewellyn, Lisa Griffiths and filmmaker Stephen Clarke. The archived project website holds much of the research gathered on psi and the ganzfeld, links to significant sources, quicktime movie clips and photo library.
Research papers presented:
‘On psi and performance’ at the International Conference of the Society of Psychical Research September 2004, Winchester UK.
“psi: mid space: the ganzfeld as source for performance” at Altered States: transformations of perception, place and performance, a transdisciplinary conference, The Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, July 2005
“psi:mid space” paper published in The Liquid Reader, The Plantery Collegium, Plymouth University 2005
A combined arts residency all about hair, in GJs Hair Salon, Shepton Mallet, Somerset: a devised site specific performance in collaboration with Vic Llewellyn performed over 10 day residency. The subject of hair was intensively researched, from interviews with trichologists and biologists, to hairdressers and sufferers of hair traumas, producing a highly acclaimed event and documentation. Audio documentary netcast from the Hair Raising website on hair trauma. Installations, story books and magazines architected into the salon.
Invited as key contributor to South West Arts YOTA assessment symposium. Project featured in the publication ’365 Year of the Artist in the South West’ and in New Theatre Quarterly (Cambridge University Press – May 2002). Project archived here.
Bristol University in collaboration with Welfare State International (John Fox and Sue Gill). Course emphasis: place-responsive performance and installation combining critical theory with practice as research. Intensive study of ‘ecologies’ of theatre, research processes, documentation and archiving, contemporary performance practice, public and community art practice:
- Research project producing a random access real space/cyberspace documentation on PLATFORM – an interdisciplinary company (arts/ecology/ democracy) making place-specific work in London.
- Resident artist/maker for The Season of Shadows at WSI in Cumbria collaborating with WSI artists and Cambodian Shadow Puppeteer
- A site-specific work in residence at Brantwood, former home of John Ruskin at Coniston, Cumbria; an 18 minute ‘performed’ guided tour of the Dining Room for the general public visiting the museum, resulting from intensive research and study of Ruskin’s life and work – July 2001.
http://www.ashdenizen.blogspot.com/2010/07/flowers-on-stage-lungwort_12.html
Founded with Stephen Clarke, Biggerhouse created new and original work for live events, video and the web, creating one of the first internet radio stations in the UK.
Glastonbury Net Radio: one of the first Internet Radio Stations in the UK using Real Player netcasting 15 original programmes from the site: documentaries, discussion, drama, new writing, with a specific commitment to the arts and social change. Over 100,000 listeners since Feb 99.
Productions included:
Afterlife: a 30 minute programme documenting radical thinking about life after death
Theatre, Politics and Social Change – Augusto Boal: a programme documenting the Artangel produced ‘Art of Legislation’ in London
Tracing the Map: a 45 minute audio documentary in 4 parts about the changing face of Glastonbury High Street from 1900 to 2000.
Listen to Tracing The Map here
or via Sound Cloud site here
researched, wrote, and performed solo and collaborative work:
Magdalene toured SW England to colleges, arts centres and festivals, including International Meeting of Solo Performance in Switzerland hosted by Teatro delle radici (92-95)
Visions of Hildegard – National tour, including a summer horse-drawn tour, as as a masked actor and shadow puppeteer with Horse and Bamboo Theatre of Rossendale, Lancs 1996
The Legend of the Creaking Floorboard – 7 month international tour with Horse and Bamboo Theatre working as a maker, lead masked actor, bunraku puppeteer and workshop leader 1997
The Quay Thing – a four month season of site-specific performance in Exeter with Wrights and Sites as a performer and collaborator 1998.
Numerous devising theatre residencies and sessions in educational contexts: Secondary schools, Primary Schools and Colleges (A level and BTEC) across South West England (87-96).
Residencies included:
- Directing final production of graduating theatre students in production of Garcia’s One Hundred Years of Solitude at SCAT in Somerset.
- Director and workshop leader of A Monkey’s Tale, a youth theatre production at Belmont Arts Centre in Telford.
- Co-Director of a series of 3 residencies with BTEC students at Strode College, Street.
- Visiting Lecturer to MA in Cultural Performance at Bristol University (2001/2)
One of South West England’s leading companies project funded by Arts Council South West. Gog specialised in new devised performance work for regional and national touring, and international cultural exchange. Core member: performing, directing, teaching, administrating, managing and producing.
International theatre exchange programme with Rustaveli Young Company of Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia 1989-90. Tour of ‘Birdman’ to Republic of Georgia 1989, and return tour by Rustaveli to UK with ‘The Stepmother’ 1990. British Council supported.
Somerset Soviet Youth Theatre Exchange 1989-90: Co-director and producer of first independent youth theatre exchange between UK and Russia. 23 young people aged 14-18 brought together to form a new Somerset Youth Theatre, then linked with the Bridge Youth Theatre from St Petersburg. The Russian and English groups devised a play together for public performances at the Hotel Leningrad 1989. The Russian young people hosted in Somerset for a 2 week collaborative residency to devise a piece based on The Golem with public performances in Taunton and Glastonbury.
Performance Work 1982-87: Series of devised T.I.E and regional touring productions to schools, community arts centres and theatres, including: ‘Gi’us A Light’ (1983), ‘Ambitions’ by Phil Smith (1984), ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’ (1984-85), ‘Into Africa’ (1986), ‘A Comin’ Home’ (1987).
My research is currently integrated and embedded into my arts practice: site based work, devised performance, digital video and animation, dialogical and interdisciplinary practices, audio and sound work. Consciousness, the structure and workings of the mind, the field of psi, meditation practices, transpersonal psychology, animal and animal mind.
Hair Raising project:
Fiona Wilkie, “Mapping The Terrain: A Survey of Site-Specific Performance in Britain” New Theatre Quarterly 70 (8:2), May 2002
& in Bob Butler, “365 – Year of The Artist in the South West” Bridport: Agre Books 2001
“psi:mid space: the ganzfeld as source for performance” published in The Liquid Reader, The Plantery Collegium, Plymouth University (2005)