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| Sue Palmer |
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Contemporary artist making live performance, sound, video and digital artworks, through collaborative work with people in relation to context and contemporary culture. Conversation, exchange, collaboration. Art as enquiry, place responsive, temporary communities. And what is produced might be a video, soundwork, text, a game, presentation, performance, a live event, a band, a collection. Initiating and producing individual and collaborative projects with other artists, I draw on 30 years of professional experience as an artist and across HE lecturing, teaching, project management, consultancy and public engagement. I'm part of biggerhouse, a collective of artists and filmmakers, and Associate Member of the PLaCE Research Centre at University of the West of England, Bristol. My blog Inquiline explores meeting points between plants, creatures and contemporary art practices. Editors' note: Sue contributed to our Flowers Onstage series, and wrote an essay for the Directory on LIFT'S Eat London.
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Productions and Projects
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26 and 7 Bones – the ‘and’ of the hand
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2012
26 and 7 bones was an arts project on the Jurassic seabord of West Dorset in collaboration with artist Sally Watkins and 16 people who use their hands (27 bones) and/or feet (26 bones) to work, navigate or investigate the Dorset coast, including a freediver, embroiderer, coastguard worker, sculptor, blacksmith and foot surgeon.
Through research, conversation, skill exchange and both a physical and metaphorical approach to engaging with the landscape, the project articulated the conjunctions and exchanges between the physical body and the landscape – the ‘and’ of the hand.
A public event with visual, sound and creative presentations by the artists and project participants at the Salt House, West Bay, Dorset was part of Earth Festival 2012 and was in partnership with PVA Labculture.
The project’s many threads folded into a ’26 and 7 score’ played on a music box: a distillation of the contributions made by our 16 participants, integrating human activity with the timelines of the Jurassic Coast, through a series of mathematical processes undertaken by Sally. Full documentation is on the project blog: 26and7bones.wordpress.com . photo: Sue Palmer
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26 and 7 Bones - the 'and' of the hand
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It Is For The Tiger
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2005 - 2009
A performance talk about tigers and humans.
Triggered by a dialogue with the World Wildlife Fund regarding ‘adoption’, I became curious about our relationship with rescuing wildlife at this unique point of environmental change, about the symbology and mythology surrounding the bewilderingly powerful tiger, this 'charismatic megafauna'. 'When I was a kid I lived on a farm not far from Longleat Safari Park in Somerset. And whenever a calf died, my Dad would put it in the back of the Landrover and drive it over to Longleat to feed to the lions and tigers'.
This devised performance looks closely at our relations with tigers, the wild, our desire to rescue and ‘adopt’, our anthropomorphic corporate behaviour, our love.'An attempt to cope with the possible extinction of the tiger.
Put a tiger in your tank, in your potency pill.
Adopt one, get a certificate.
I love the tiger and the tiger would still eat me, yes.
And it would eat David Attenborough, too'.
Performed at 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, Tobacco Factory at the Bristol Mayfest and Buckland Dinham near Frome. The project archive is here.
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It Is For the Tiger
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The Price of Clouds
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2001
A site-specific work-in-residence at Brantwood, Coniston, Cumbria, the home of John Ruskin. An 18 minute ‘performed’ guided tour of the Dining Room for the general public visiting the museum.
Editors' note: Sue describes the performance in her contribution to our Flowers Onstage series, having brought a 'Pulmonaria 'Glacier'' (Lungwort) from Brantwood to her garden. An excerpt:
'Visitors coming to Brantwood were offered the chance (free of charge) to come to a ‘special guided tour’ of the Dining Room, overlooking the lake. I began as an ordinary tour guide would, speaking about the objects and features, but over the 20 minutes, I evoked some of the extraordinary events that had occurred in that room, using three ‘elements’: salt, money and flowers.
Ruskin had published a book in two volumes in the late 1800s about plants and flowers called Proserpina...
‘The flower exists for its own sake. The production of the fruit is an added honour to it - is a granted consolation to us for its death. But the flower is the end of the seed - not the seed of the flower.’
I scattered flowers – collected and dried from both Brantwood and my own garden - around the edge of the dining table...Flowers normally contained and organised in vases now strewn over the table.
I invited the ‘audience’ to consider this: Charles Darwin had dined there in 1879. He was 70, Ruskin was 60. The discussion was probably rich, with Darwin speaking about the recurring struggle for existence, the mechanical process that had little or no reliance upon soul or will. And Ruskin passionate about his beliefs that nature did not exist by competition alone, that co-operation and ‘soul’ played crucial parts.
Next to the flower petals, I placed a circle of one pound coins: money laid down for Ruskin’s criticisms of capitalist ideology, of mechanisation and loss of craft. His highly influential writing on ‘value’ was laid out in his book Unto This Last. Gandhi had read this on a train journey in South Africa; it inspired him to direct action, to the Salt March and the collapse of colonial India. So into the centre of the table, I poured salt. Normally contained as a condiment, now salt was spilling over, the grains scattered on the money and in with the flowers.
At the end of my ‘tour’, I offered a ‘souvenir’ of the dining room to each member of the audience - a small bag containing either salt, a pound coin or some dried flowers. Not only did this reverse the usual order of purchasing a memento of the house, but it provoked a complex choice for each visitor: each one had value, significance, a use even, and each object was imbued with meaning. Most visitors I remember, chose the flowers'.
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The Price of Clouds
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More About
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The full list of Sue's art work, projects, video, teaching, community collaboration is here.
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