Gaia Project - URBAN/ECOLOGY - Recently Updated Pages

Gaia Project

James@Gaia-Project — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:55:44 CDT

What is Gaia Project?

Founded in 2008 by visual artist and independent curator James Brady, Gaia Project is a new independent artist-led, cross-disciplinary environmental arts organisation that embodies a creative response to the challenges that climate change presents in the 21st century. Drawing inspiration from the Deep Ecology movement we are committed to promoting a wider cultural awareness and understanding of the holistic inter-relationship between the visual arts, human activity and the natural environment. What makes Gaia Project unique is that (unlike a number of UK based environmental arts organisations) our scope to take action is not international but rather much more ‘grass roots’ and closely focussed, on that of the British Isles – our homeland.

Through the co-ordination of site-specific cross-disciplinary visual arts projects, Gaia Project works exclusively with artists who live and work in the United Kingdom and who share an active concern for climate change, ecology and sustainability through their practice. We believe that artists can play a valuable social and cultural role in investigating, interpreting, and communicating the phenomenon of climate change. They have the collective ability to stimulate social shifts in thinking, attitude and behaviour about our ‘everyday life’ which are now crucial to exploring the possibilities of developing more sustainable lifestyles (through a less carbon-reliant economy) and mitigating the future effects of climate change.

With an ongoing programme of critical activity Gaia Project seeks to position itself at the forefront of the current interfaced movement of visual arts within the climate change debate. This will be achieved by acknowledging the necessity for working with other disciplines in order to deliver cohesive, informed and publicly accessible projects. Wherever possible the artworks and ideas developed through our collaborative practice need to be founded in scientific research.

By linking artists with professionals in other non-arts fields (such as the earth sciences), and working closely with local government, local communities, cultural and environmental NGOs; Gaia Project’s core objective (through its varied activities) is to develop and facilitate a wide social engagement and debate in this complex issue of climate change. Through cross-disciplinary collaboration and cultural exchange networking we are committed to opening-up new creative platforms and critical interfaces, through which the broader social and cultural challenges of climate change can be explored on a national scale.

Gaia Project essentially aims to function in three interrelated ways:
1) Experimenting and investigating with new models of curatorial practice beyond conventional exhibition models, with a focus upon temporary outdoor site-specific projects.
2) Creative consultancy and cross-field networking facilitator for UK based environmental/ecological artists.
3) Producing and commissioning new artworks, public events, exhibitions, and symposia.

A message from our Curator

Climate Change is not just an environmental issue...
it is a social issue
it is a cultural issue
it is a security issue
it is an economic issue
it is a human issue...

If, as human beings we are to face the challenges that climate change brings, then we must strive to live more sustainable lives. We must educate our communities and develop the means and the attitudes, and the strategies and positive solutions to live more sustainably. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to make 'the change' a reality.

The ‘green’ (permaculture) movement is bigger than most of us may think. It is a counter-culture growing in strength day-by-day, uniting people with the same sensibilities and the same dreams. Gaia Project seeks to function as a positive and creative facet to this global movement.

As individuals, as families, as communities – locally, nationally and globally, we must take measures to become informed, and to inform others about living more harmoniously and sensitively with the environments in which we live. Humans have upset ‘the balance’ of this planet and this must be re-addressed before we become our own ignorant victims – some would say worthy victims of a living, breathing planet that will dispose of us for its own self-preservation.

Gaia Project’s moral objective is to make a small contribution to raising such awareness – promoting learning opportunities and uniting people. We endeavour to achieve this by using the visual arts as a vehicle to communicate – to make alchemy out of the creative and poetic forms of human expression.

You have heard the stories and seen the pictures: peak oil to economic recession – droughts to floods – species extinction to melting ice caps – slave labour to big business – biofuels to deforestation – carbon market to black market. These are just a few symptoms of the global condition in the 21st century and phenomenon in a much bigger picture – a picture that looks uglier by the day.

So, do we just sit back in ignorance and watch? Go figure…

James Brady
Gaia Project - Director/Curator

Welcome!

James@Gaia-Project — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:49:46 CST

------ You can navigate your way through this web-blog using the menu on the left hand side of the page

“Cultural activities are crucial to convey to society some of the complex scientific findings that are hard to illustrate.”

– Patrick Hofstetter, 2008 (Climate Policy Officer, WWF Switzerland)

Gaia Project is very proud to announce the launch of URBAN/ECOLOGY, its new cross-disciplinary environmental arts project exclusively in Liverpool – in association with Liverpool Biennial Independents 08 and the Environment Agency.

Site-specific outdoor public performances and interventions will take place at various locations across Liverpool 20th September – 23rd November 2008.

Artworks and public events will be ongoing in our Gaia Cabinet studio/exhibition space located at 17 The Colonnades, Albert Dock 26th October – 23rd November 2008.

Our primary objective is to promote the Gaia Project ‘art-ecology-community’ philosophy to the wider public and to put this on Liverpool’s cultural agenda in 2008. We will endeavour to achieve this by working with a group of artists who will collectively exist as the URBAN/ECOLOGY project team.

The priority for the artists will be to publicly communicate the importance and relevance of – the current ‘environmental’ debate – the inextricable links that ecological systems have to our daily lives – and subsequently to explore how climate change is affecting the environments in which we live in a local and national context.

Our team have been invited to engage with particular locations throughout the city and/or with environmental issues specific to Liverpool and Merseyside. The artists are free to practice within their own theoretical agenda and according to their own working forms. However diverse the approaches and results of the artists’ interventions are, they are all be united by the common premise of working creatively with ecological systems and wider environmental issues in the urban context of Liverpool.

The ecological systems of Liverpool are made most visible and accessible to us through the wildlife in parks, rivers and other green spaces for example. Evidence of this thriving ecology is also visible in places of dereliction and urban decay – Brownfield spaces that exist on the very margins of public use and accessibility. Many of our artists will explore these places to reveal the fact that our great city is built upon a living, breathing earth!

How we interact with this urban ecology and how we use these spaces is infrequently an issue addressed in the arts from a historical, social and environmental perspective. Gaia Project aims to address this and make an active contribution to raising a public awareness of it.

With many thanks to our funder

Also with thanks to our sponsors

Gaia Artists (the team!)

James@Gaia-Project — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:54:08 CST

ArtYarn

Tree Cosies (2008)

ArtYarn is an on going project, which is dedicated to the act of ‘tagging’ an urban environment through the media of knitting and crochet with yarns and found fibres. Also known as ‘yarn bombing’, traditional handicraft techniques and contemporary social interventions are brought together as visually expressive art forms in the urban environment.

Stitching with a range of colours and textures and placing knitted panels and objects within a landscape of urban structures creates an extraordinary contrast against the architectural environment of a city. The idea of tagging with knitted items is taken from other existing street art forms such as stencilling and spray-can graffiti.

ArtYarn aims to repackage and re-emerge the idea of tagging as a contemporary art form replacing man made with man made handicraft. ArtYarn are Rachael Elwell, Sarah Hardacre and Louise Woodcock from Salford, Lancashire who are all practicing fine artists.

Web: www.artyarn.blogspot.com
www.artyarngaiaproject.blogspot.com

Email: artyarn@hotmail.com

James Brady

Castell y Gwynt: home of Urizen (video still, Snowdonia National Park, 2008)

visual artist | curator | producer | environmentalist

I hold an unashamedly idealist attitude to the natural environment and at the core of all my work lies a comfortingly futile search for some kind of spiritual or divine order in it. Through the mediums of digital video and site-specific earthwork sculpture I attempt to explore what is commonly regarded as the dichotomy between the 'natural' (organic) and the 'man-made' (artificial).

The concept of ‘landscape’ is a human invention and the (art) history of landscape representation and its significance in forming personal and collective identity is a persistent fascination of mine. By using the new media of digital video I seek to re-work the canonical imagery commonly associated with the tradition of Romantic landscape painting of the 18th and 19th centuries. Although these works have their roots in this art historical tradition they are intended to operate consciously and critically within the contemporary culture of the new Environmental movement. These landscape video works occupy a challenging and unusual, ever-shifting position somewhere between video, photography and painting. In these video works we encounter a specific simulacrum of landscape in real-time.

A fundamental aspect to my practice is the act of walking which allows me to explore landscapes and physically engage with their environments. I make low-impact, site-specific earthworks with organic materials I encounter en-route. These are manifest as objects – topographic markers – or drawings – to be discovered and openly interpreted by others. These earthworks are ephemeral – some may exist for days or even weeks – some for only a few minutes. The whole environment controls the finished state of my work come rain, wind, or snow. I merely make small interventions into a bigger ecological system far beyond my control.

Web: www.gaia-project.wetpaint.com
Email: james_gaia_project@yahoo.co.uk

Rob Bailey

Untitled (Rogue Studios, Manchester, UK. September 2008)

Bailey’s work is strongly illustrative and graphic. Following a recent residency at Rogue Studios in Manchester, he has experimented and expanded his practice into 3-dimensional forms – exploring ideas around objects and sculptural form, and continuing his investigation into the use of colour. Many of the forms and motifs he uses derive from both the urban and natural environment.

Rob Bailey (b. 1982, based Manchester, UK) graduated in BA (Hons) Illustration with Animation in 2005, from Manchester Metropolitan University. Recent exhibitions include: Hello World, a solo show at Common, Manchester, 2008; Stick, Stamp, Fly, Gasworks, London, 2007; finalist in Best of Manchester Awards, Urbis, Manchester, 2007; Exposures, Cornerhouse, Manchester, 2006; and more recently, Rogue Project Space in Manchester, a 10-week residency July – September 2008. Forthcoming exhibitions and projects include a co-produced short film commissioned by North West Vision, and a group exhibition at Cornerhouse, Manchester in late 2008, exploring drawing and animation.

Anne Earnshaw

In Memory of Mum (Lake Windermere, Cumbria, April 2008)

I intend my photography to be thought provoking and I hope it encourages people to think carefully about the natural beauty of their environment. I endeavour to bring people’s attention to the everyday in the landscape and emphasise characteristics that we often overlook and take for granted. I record what I see in nature in any one moment which is then preserved for future generations. I want my photographs to stir emotions in people and therefore to encourage them to want to visit and see the landscapes I photograph. I hope to make people more aware of the beauty and fragility of the places I photograph and to help to protect these areas.

My interest and research into the American photographer Ansel Adams has encouraged me to look more closely at the landscape which has led me to question how my photography can be used in the future and contribute to better environmental awareness. Ansel Adams photographed the same subject over a period of time, he noticed changes to the landscape and the environment and he then became politically active in the protection of the environment. His photographs have been significant in the way in which they have been used to promote the environmental movement; they have influenced the work of other artists as well as politicians to think about their environment and the human intervention in it. People have seen the landscape through Adams’ eyes and camera. I would like my photographs to do the same.

Web: www.anneearnshaw.co.uk
Email: anne.earnshaw@hotmail.com

Ben Gwillam

Static Composition (Artists Unlimited, Bielefeld, Germany, 2008 - photo by Benedict Brandhofer)

Ben Gwilliam is a sound artist and improvising musician currently based in the UK. He describes his practice as drawing attention to those sounds between things, be it objects, spaces or recordings. It is these sounds and their contexts that reveal visual and musical processes of listening and looking.

It is from this curiosity about sound-making/recording/finding and how abstract/descriptive that sounds can be, that he makes parallels and similarities unpicking the relationship between those uncovered sounds and moments of primary experience.

Since 2003, his music has been developing an improvisational relationship with open reel magnetic tape and prepared sound recordings, exploring decay, silence and harmonics in solo and collaborative arrangements. In more recent times, the inherent sounds of blank tape began as a source to remove and layer upon with the performance, making a dense and some times sparse sounding music.

In 2004 he was awarded an AHRB Postgraduate Award, and has since completed his MA in Contemporary Fine Art with distinction. He was nominated for the 2007 Jerwood Artist Prize. He has worked and shown internationally in Exhibitions, Residencies and Festivals including ‘art@radio’, 2002 USA, Artoll Labor, 2002 DE, ‘Hothouse’ 2003 Liverpool, ‘The Fear‘ residency, 2003 Hull Time Based Arts, UK, ‘ineditos 2004’, Madrid & Barcelona, ‘stance’, 2005 market gallery, Glasgow, and ‘Unsilently’, 2005 CAC, North Adams, USA, ‘Sonic Arts Expo 2006’, Manchester, UK, ‘Klang-Labor 06’, DE.

Web: www.thosesoundsbetween.co.uk
Email: info@thosesoundsbetween.co.uk

David Haley FRSA

Sometimes Making Art Can Be Difficult (ESA Arts Conference, Luneburg, Germany, 2007 - photo by Marek Kruszewski)

Haley’s art focuses on whole systems ecology and critical futures thinking, to question the narratives of global warming, the global economy and the Sixth Extinction of species. The dance of creation and destruction, also demands that new opportunities and meanings for the other side of collapse must be found. These he pursues through arts projects, academic pursuits, education and various advisory positions. As a Research Fellow in MIRIAD at Manchester Metropolitan University, Haley directs the A&E [art&ecology] research unit and leads the award winning MA Art As Environment programme.

Recent projects in the UK, China, Taiwan, Germany and the USA include The Writing On The Wall, performed poetic artworks on global warming; River Life 3000: Like There’s No Tomorrow, sculptural installation; Rivers from the Future, a critique of the aesthetics and ethics that value the ‘new suburbia’ over freshwater; A Walk On The Wild Side, eco-urban art-walks and films that consider Manchester as a living organism; and Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground Gaining Wisdom, with Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison to determine how we might ‘withdraw with grace’ as the sea level rises.

Web: www.greenmuseum.org/c/enterchange/artists/haley
www.artdes.mmu.ac.uk/profile/dhaley
Email: d.haley@mmu.ac.uk

Sarah Hardacre

Songthrush: How to Study Birds (2007)

Sarah Hardacre’s work explores the construction of knowledge and the institutional shaping of history and the natural world. Her particular interests lie in the appearance of a ‘Natural History’ and the evolution of the museum. Works emerge somewhere between sculpture and installation and often appear again, reflected in vanitas like photographic landscapes.

Appropriating the forms of arbitrary collecting and the transmutational techniques of taxidermy, each piece of work presents a rupture, a momentary disturbance; questioning the clichés of chronicle and examining the gap between rational reasoning and irrational influence.

Sarah Hardacre graduated BA (hons) Visual Art at the University of Salford, with first class honours, in June 2008, and continues her artistic practice at Islington Mill studios in Salford and The Hotspur Press in Manchester. In addition to her independent practice Sarah is a member of ArtYarn, a Salford based textile art collective and a contributor to the Bureau for Culture Management project in Berlin, Germany.

Web: www.myspace.com/salfordskyline
Email: salfordskyline@gmail.com

Rebecca McKnight

Th'Arctic

Rebecca McKnight is Artist in Residence at the University of Salford and creates artwork through process-driven projects. Rebecca's current project, Th'Arctic, involves Rebecca training for and completing a 35-day, 300-mile expedition between the two highest communities in the Canadian Arctic. Rebecca is developing a body of artwork for exhibition based on the experience and has a blog where people can track her progress see www.rebecca-mcknight.co.uk.

For the URBAN/ECOLOGY project Rebecca will be exploring and sharing Liverpool's 'hidden' urban ecology through another process-driven project, which will begin with Rebecca choosing spaces and places in Liverpool that relate to one of the four elements: Earth - Water - Air and Fire.

Rebecca will investigate the places through physical and emotional immersion, exploration, surveillance and create stories, poems, drawings and installations in the spaces that will be developed into a comic based publication or series of paintings to share the spaces with the public. By exploring and sharing the hidden ecology within these urban spaces/places Rebecca aims to shed light and intrigue on places that are sometimes thought of as dark and dull.

Web: www.rebecca-mcknight.co.uk
www.eight-creatives.co.uk/Artists/rebeccamcknight.html
Email: reb.mcknight@gmail.com

Jacqueline McCormick

Settle (film still, 2007)

International Dance Artist Jacqueline McCormick has been teaching, performing and making dances for over twenty years. Her work has been greatly influenced by her research into improvisation, especially Contact Improvisation. She has directed and performed in her company DanceAbout, works that take a dancing journey through the outback of the self. Jacqueline has an M.A in Dance from Mills College , California and was Associate Professor of Dance at Connecticut College (2000-2004) and Western Oregon University , USA (1985-1996.) Jacqueline is presently the Dance Director for Cheshire Dance, UK .

As a dance artist she engages with the body; combining the flexibility and fluidity of dance with organic, efficient and sensory based movement. Her work interlocks traces of memory with touch and texture. Along with Contact Improvisation Jacqueline’s curiosities lie in dance forms that emphasise ‘process,’ bringing the dance artist to engage the whole body-mind, the feeling, sensing, learning and expressive being. Her training includes Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement, and Release Technique. All of Jacqueline’s work is informed by her extensive knowledge of the kinesiology of the body.

Most recently she has been exploring dance and film, in 'Settle', a sensorial journey in search of stillness, through forest, river and underwater, Jacqueline investigated the beautiful Breitenbush river and Old Growth Forest in Detroit, Oregon. Jacqueline’s earlier work 'Selfless' was shot in the dry wash of Joshua Tree National Park. Both works are movement responses to the natural environments, providing a way for audiences to re-engage with the land through these physicalised discoveries.

Web: www.cheshiredance.org
Email: Jacqueline@cheshiredance.org

Janette Porter

Norton Priory (3rd July 2007)

Janette Porter works as an artist, as a project researcher and offers artistic direction on arts and environmental projects, she trades as ENVART which was established in 2004. Funds are gained through successful bids to the public and private sector to secure work. She has an MA in Art as Environment (1997), from Manchester Metropolitan University, and a Degree of Batchelor of Arts (Combined Subjects) with Honours, from The University of Liverpool (1992).

Porter has 14 years of experience working as an artist and engaging with communities in both urban and rural contexts. Porter works in a broad range of rural and city-scapes, as well as with a diverse breadth of community groups. The tools, and outcomes, of her work take many forms, for example: the plough, the wild flower, the river course, the celebration cake, however it is the movement and process of the art-works that is often most interesting to her audience. The ongoing group process is an important element of this style of work. It is the revealed communal perception, and appreciation, that she seeks to share with others. This art process weaves collected ideas into the fabric of the communities; the work relies on collaboration, as often there are many stages and complexity to the concepts worked on.

Preservation of cultural diversity is an important working principle; this supports the re-interpretation of folklore rituals and traditions. Porter shows an empathic concern with reconnecting people to nature and to the heritage of their locality. Porter’s constant work throughout often provides insight into people place interaction and dis-interaction. Creative expression is the tool she uses to unlock often invisible entities which are revealed through quiet contemplative workshop sessions.

Web: www.lateexchange.com
Email: janetteporteruk@gmail.com

Tim Pugh

Cylch Llys Helig (Great Orme, North Wales, 2005)

I am involved in the creation of ephemeral artworks that have been made from a wide variety of locally found, site specific materials and sited in contrasting sympathetic locations such as woodland and beaches. A number of ideas and themes behind the continued evolution of the work are derived from aspects related to issues and concerns in the natural environment; some of the works are created in response to observations of natural phenomena and change such as the processes of erosion and growth.

Increasingly my work has also been influenced by subtle interventions of mans past influence on the land such as archaeological and historical/geographical issues specific to an area. At times, I feel my woodland and beach debris installations are an attempt to discover an alternative natural 'code' or previously hidden language whilst sketching out detailed design drawings help to clarify how these arrangements can take shape.

I am influenced by a wide range of sources of inspiration, such as natural flora and Geology and how past Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures and other civilisations have interpreted the natural world. I aspire to collections of plants, fossils and stones, focusing on individual colour and textured surfaces. Ordnance survey maps and weather charts are used as back up informative sources in order to recreate personalised maps made from natural materials or sketched out in charcoal on rocks and trees. I also relate to artists that have interpreted the landscape inked through to map and historical sources, such as Robert Smithson and Richard Long.

Web: www.timpugh.co.uk

Scott Thurston

Momentum (Shearsman publishers, 2008)

Scott Thurston began writing in the poetry scene situated around Gilbert Adair’s Sub-Voicive Poetry reading series and Bob Cobbing’s New River Project workshops in London in the late eighties. He gained a Ph.D. in Linguistically Innovative Poetry and Poetics in 2001 and currently lectures in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Salford where he runs an MA in Innovative and Experimental Creative Writing.

Scott’s creative practice as a writer attempts to steer a course between an awareness of the material nature of language whilst acknowledging its capacity to communicate directly or indirectly. He works in an improvisational fashion, writing short poems which respond to experience and memory in spontaneous ways. These poems build up into sequences which become records of processes of thinking and development over time. Scott is fascinated by how thought and language move, and the capacity of the poem to track and trace this subtle energy.

Thurston’s books most recent books include: Momentum (Shearsman, 2008), Hold (Shearsman, 2006) and Turns (with Robert Sheppard) (Ship of Fools/Radiator, 2003). He is currently working on a long poem entitled Internal Rhyme.

Web: see Scott’s pages at The Archive of the Now www.archiveofthenow.com/
Email: S.Thurston@salford.ac.uk

Tenneson & Dale

Green Paper (2008)

Our ongoing artwork, ORDER ORDER, explores the link between the Houses of Parliament (the epitome of order); the Minimalist movement (the ordered, pure art) and the various forms of public information signage (the physical manifestation of order). We test combinations of the components which constitute the Institutional Framework (outlined within The Table of Elements).

The works are Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative.
The works are red, yellow and blue.
The works are prohibition, hazard and mandatory.
The works are geranium, primrose and blue.

We make works specifically designed for institutional spaces with public access.
Each piece is dictated by regional governmental statistics.

The works are determined by their environment.
The environment is the institution.
The institution is the framework.
The framework is bureaucratic.
The bureaucracy inspires the works.
The bureaucracy places the order.
The bureaucracy orders the work.
We do not impose the order, the order is imposed on us.

Web: www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=11444
Email: tennesonanddale@yahoo.co.uk

Elizabeth Willow

Nest

My work is often about longing to be somewhere else. I am inspired by stories, real or imagined (if one can make such distinctions, that is), and how they influence us, how they affect our dreams and desires and understanding of the world. I use found materials, both natural and unnatural (again, if there is such a clear distinction), and I am drawn to lost, shed, abandoned and broken things, objects which have their own stories.

What I make will have different forms, shaped by ideas and materials; and the creative process, particularly collecting, is often as, if not more, important and meaningful to me than the outcome. Sometimes I make sculpture, sometimes installations or performances.

My work is often about contradiction. A particular contradiction which has a great influence is that of living in the city and yearning for wild places, for the woods and the sea. I am aware of a need to somehow have both, to try and find a way to keep a strong connection with the natural world despite working and dwelling in a man-made environment.

Web: www.curvegallery.co.uk
Email: violetelizabeth@poetic.com

Janette Porter

James@Gaia-Project — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:24:04 CST

Field Shed/Urban/Ecology

Process is a key element of Janette’s ecological artwork. She is reconstructing elements of her practice as performative art using Gaia Cabinet as a companion studio, in parallel with her allotment Field Shed studio in Liverpool. Janette invites us to observe her practice at both studio spaces.

This is a work to visit weekly culminating in a final piece entitled Ash Works. Driftwood is collected from the Mersey, stored and dried. Chippings are made from the collected wood and they are burnt with no other elements. The dried and cooled embers are stored until such time when a fine rain will wash through them, leaving a trace of the journey behind on the paper it rested upon.

Earth- driftwood collected, dried and stored

Fire- burnt the driftwood to ash

Water- the rain that fell onto the ash

Ashworks, a memory of a journey of earth, fire and water

2008

Driftwood collected, Merseyside 1996

Fire and rain, Merseyside 2008

'...Process was how I intended for Ashworks to expose itself, slowly and perfomativley, viewed not only by the passer by at gallery or feild shed but in this instance through the eye of a camera. I invited a film maker to observe my work, watching and waiting for events to happen which would be documented. The elements of Earth, Fire and Water where worked with respectfully and patiently, whilst Ashworks waited to evolve.' - Janette Porter (December 2008)

Ben Gwilliam

James@Gaia-Project — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:59:02 CST

Horizon

As a reduction of found sounds, perception plays a role that is involved with both time and space. The collected and used sound-objects, often perceived as noisy components of the modern world are reheard for the inherent musical qualities.

Rebecca McKnight

James@Gaia-Project — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:31:40 CST

Rebecca is exploring and sharing Liverpool’s ‘hidden’ urban ecology through a process-driven project, which begins with her choosing spaces and places in Liverpool that relate to one of the four elements: Earth, Water, Air and Fire.

She is investigating the places through physical and emotional immersion/exploration/surveillance and creating stories, poems, drawings, and installations in the spaces that can be developed into a comic based publication or series paintings to share the stories with the public. By exploring and sharing the hidden ecology within these urban spaces using creativity, she aims to shed light and intrigue on neglected places that are sometimes regarded of as dull and uninspiring.

Rebecca is using the URBAN/ECOLOGY project as an opportunity to conduct preliminary site specific research - developing her ideas and exploration of the 'hidden' city. Her final piece of work will take the form of an immersive mixed media sculptural installation which will come to fruition in spring 2009.

Rebecca's complete series of photographic images for the project can be viewed on her Flickr webpage here...

James Brady

James@Gaia-Project — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:32:41 CST

Drift (negative / positive)

Drift is a series of site-specific, organic, performative earthworks (outdoors and indoors); it is made entirely of fallen leaves from deciduous native and non-native trees. Ever-shifting in its form, this work will be realised in the three main public parks across the city, and also in the Gaia Cabinet project space. The objective of this artwork is to raise an increased consciousness and understanding of trees as crucial elements in the ecological system of the city (particularly the wildlife they sustain).

Stanley Park Sefton Park Birkenhead Park

Drift: negative is created and performed in the parks. These are ephemeral drawings / paths / routes / shadows / meetings. Collected material.

Drift: positive is created and performed in Gaia Cabinet. This is a 'displacement' - an intervention into a natural system / interactive / nostalgic / evocative.

In its basic form Drift emphasises the materiality (physical qualities) of trees. Drift is a celebration of the regenerative and self-sustaining systems of nature, which in the urban context also suggests a metaphorical parallel with that of Liverpool: a city that has undergone centuries of change and years of regeneration socially, economically and in its built environment. However through this dialectic of ‘city and nature’ the inevitable question will always arise; exactly how sustainable can a city actually be?

Conceptually and aesthetically this artwork (art)-historically alludes to specific works by Robert Smithson, Richard Long, Walter de Maria, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Drift embraces the grammar of minimalism.

The third and final part of Drift takes place on the final day of the URBAN/ECOLOGY project. The leaves are removed from the Gaia Cabinet and put back into a different part of the ecological system from which they were taken. A performative and symbolic act. A ritual. A personal rite. This collected organic material is given to the River Mersey....

Gaia Cabinet

James@Gaia-Project — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:09:48 CST

---- Please take a look at our artist's pages (left). All of these artworks have been commissioned by Gaia Project exclusively for URBAN/ECOLOGY.

17 The Colonnades

Albert Dock

Liverpool

Merseyside

L3 4AA

26th October – 23rd November

We are open: Wednesday – Sunday (closed Monday and Tuesday)

Gaia Cabinet welcomes you! Please come along and visit us to see the artworks, share your ideas and opinions, chat to the artists, and relax in our ‘green’ reading area sponsored by Green Books.

Gaia Cabinet is the exclusive home of Gaia Project during the Liverpool Biennial. The form and content of the Gaia Cabinet will always change according to what each artist creates over the duration of the URBAN/ECOLOGY project. It is an alternative display space that has a dual function as:

An informal working studio area for the artists
A public place for interaction, learning and the exchange of information

During November we will be hosting a special programme of activities and events. All of these are free – no booking required.

Please check our Gaia Events page for further information and updates. We hope that you will find Gaia Cabinet an interesting and thought-provoking place to visit.

The Gaia Cabinet has only been made possible due to the generosity of the Albert Dock Company - many thanks to them!

Gaia Cabinet - installation views

Jacqueline McCormick

James@Gaia-Project — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:23:00 CST

(Rockery Dance Performance)

Jacqueline enlivened the green space of Birkenhead Park, reminding us through the physical, of the organic textures, shapes and hidden stories belonging to the park. Movement was generated from her body, investigating the park’s physical space and creating spontaneous improvisations.

Gaia Events & Interventions

James@Gaia-Project — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:19:11 CST

Our previous events in Liverpool...

David Haley

Liverpool Becoming: The Writing On The Wall

Gaia Cabinet
Saturday 25th October 6 - 9pm

Liverpool Becoming: The Writing On The Wall, is a temporary poetic/performance/artwork and will be the fifth in the series of such works created by ecological artist, David Haley in Germany, Taiwan and the UK. The artwork is an extended ‘haiku’ style poem, of nine lines rendered directly onto a wall in charcoal and then read out loud by the artist. The writing will last as long as the elements permit.

Some scientists argue that global warming has passed the ‘tipping point’ and that climate change may be a form of evolutionary perturbation. Addressing the possibility of collapse, this artwork considers the opportunities for becoming anew through ‘ecological resilience’.

Jacqueline McCormick

Performance

Birkenhead Park (The Rockery)
Thursday 23rd October 12 - 1pm

Dance Artist Jacqueline McCormick will be enlivening the green space of Birkenhead Park, reminding us through the physical, of the textures, shape and hidden stories belonging to the space. The movement is generated from the body, investigating the physical space and creating spontaneous improvisations.

Scott Thurston & Elizabeth Willow

Truthing the Ground

Sefton Park (Eros Fountain)
Sunday 26th October, 11 - 12am

Truthing the Ground is a perambulatory poem performed by Scott Thurston with visual accompaniment by Elizabeth Willow. The poem is a response to the history and prehistory of Sefton Park as an urban ecosystem and uses eight specially-chosen sites to meditate on a variety of themes including James Lovelock’s recent account of his predictions for the global climate in his book The Revenge of Gaia (2006).

The title Truthing the Ground refers to the technique of verifying environmental data gained by aerial photography by walking over the ground in question. It is hoped that the experience of the poem will acquaint us with both old and new truths about the ground on which it takes place, whilst obliging us to confront some difficult truths about its future. Drawing on diverse sources from Robert Smithson to Aeschylus, George Herbert to Deleuze and Guattari, the poem ‘uses the park to think with’ as the park in turn undergoes a period of renovation unprecedented in its 126-year-old history.

We will meet at the Eros Fountain at 11am in the centre of Sefton Park. The performance will take approximately one hour and involve about half an hour’s gentle walking on the main thoroughfares of the park. The performance will be fully accessible by wheelchair. Please come prepared for the Autumn weather – the show will go on, rain, sleet or snow!

ArtYarn

Knitting Circle

Gaia Cabinet
Sunday 2nd November, 12 - 4pm

The idea of the knitting circle is to create a skills sharing forum, bringing together people who are already skilled in knitting and crochet with people who want to learn. Come and join in! All ages and abilities welcome, men and women wishing to learn to knit and crochet, share you skills and learn more about our knitting plastic bags recycling project.

James Brady

DRIFT (autumnal interventions)

Stanley Park
Sunday 2nd November, 12 - 2pm

Sefton Park
Sunday 9th November, 2 - 4pm

Birkenhead Park
Sunday 16th November, 12 - 2pm

Come along for a 'leafy' adventure and explore three of Liverpool's finest historical public parks. James will be working amongst the trees! Can you find him?!

Three days. Three earthworks. Three encounters.

ArtYarn
www.artyarngaiaproject.blogspot.com

Recycled Plastic Bag Bombing

Liverpool City Centre
Thursday 13th November (pm)

ArtYarn are performing a series of interventions in Liverpool city centre, ‘tagging’ street furniture with pieces of knitting made from recycled plastic carrier bags. They have embarked on a series of one day visits to the streets of Liverpool to collect discarded plastic carrier bags from public spaces and inner city wasteland areas. Each bag found and retrieved from a site has been documented and mapped to draw awareness of littering of this particular material on the streets of Liverpool.

The found bags have been cleaned and shredded to form a recycled yarn for which new art works will be made by hand knitting. By referring back to the mapping document created on retrieval of the found plastic carrier bags, ArtYarn will replace the bags, now in a knitted art form, into the environments they were found which have the highest volume of plastic bag littering and waste.

Rebecca McKnight

Artist Talk

Gaia Cabinet
Wednesday 19th November, 6.30 - 8pm

Rebecca will be exploring and sharing Liverpool's 'hidden' urban ecology through a process-driven project, which will begin with Rebecca choosing spaces and places in Liverpool that relate to one of the four elements: Earth, Water, Air and Fire.

In this informal artist talk Rebecca will be discussing her explorations of Liverpool and showing visual documentation of the processes she used to create her final artworks. There will be opportunity for guests to ask questions/have discussions and also view the art works within the exhibition. Refreshments will be provided.

Scott Thurston & Elizabeth Willow

James@Gaia-Project — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:16:12 CST

Truthing The Ground

Truthing The Ground is a perambulatory poem performed by Scott Thurston with visual accompaniment by Elizabeth Willow. The poem is a response to the history and prehistory of Sefton Park as an urban ecosystem and uses eight specially-chosen sites to meditate on a variety of themes including James Lovelock’s recent account of his predictions for the global climate in his book The Revenge of Gaia.

** If you would like to read the complete transcription of Truthing The Ground please contact author Scott Thurston directly on S.Thurston@salford.ac.uk

ArtYarn

James@Gaia-Project — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:24:18 CST

Recycled Plastic Bag Bombing

www.artyarngaiaproject.blogspot.com

ArtYarn are performing a series of interventions in Liverpool city centre, ‘tagging’ street furniture with pieces of knitting made from recycled plastic carrier bags. They have embarked on a series of one day visits to the streets of Liverpool to collect discarded plastic carrier bags from public spaces and inner city wasteland areas. Each bag found and retrieved from a site has been documented and mapped to draw awareness of littering of this particular material on the streets of Liverpool.

The found bags have been cleaned and shredded to form a recycled yarn for which new art works will be made by hand knitting. By referring back to the mapping document created on retrieval of the found plastic carrier bags, ArtYarn will replace the bags, now in a knitted art form, into the environments they were found which have the highest volume of plastic bag littering and waste.

David Haley

James@Gaia-Project — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:43:30 CST

Liverpool Becoming: The Writing On The Wall #5

This artwork is a temporary poetic/performance/artwork (created in Gaia Cabinet) and is the fifth in The Writing On The Wall series .This work is dedicated to the memory and legacy of Professor Tony Bradshaw (1926-2008), a true scientist and creative ecologist.

With notable exceptions, the climate change discourse is largely science led. Some scientists (Meadows et al 1995, Lovelock 2005, Diamond 2005), argue that global warming has passed the ‘tipping point’ and society should prepare for collapse, as a form of ‘ecological resilience’ (Walker 2006). Addressing these issues, this ecological artwork alludes to Darwin (1859), Rembrandt (1635) and the Books of Daniel and Ecclesiastes, to consider the end of the Holocene epoch, society’s ineptitude and evolutionary perturbation caused by climate change. The form of this poetic/visual/performative artwork offered means of communication normally unavailable to science.

The Pool of Life: The Writing On The Wall #6

This artwork is a temporary poetic/performance/artwork and is the sixth in the series of such works by ecological artist and Senior Research Fellow, David Haley. It was commissioned by Gaia Project for their Urban Ecology programme of art, contributing to the Independents, Liverpool Biennial 08. The wall was kindly made available by Landlife, National Wildflower Centre, Court Hey Park, Liverpool.

The artwork has been rendered in charcoal directly onto the wall surface and is written in form of an extended ‘haiku’ style poem, of twenty lines. The process of writing represents a simple performative act and the itself writing will last as long as the elements permit. This work resonates with Liverpool Becoming: The Writing On The Wall #5 at Gaia Cabinet.

Anne Earnshaw

James@Gaia-Project — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:39:53 CST

Within

Anne has responded instinctively to the area around the Albert Dock by capturing the ephemeral movement and shifting reflections of the water using a Cannon 400D camera. Her images, although abstract, are completely natural and no digital manipulation has been employed. Through these provocative images she aims to stir our emotions and curiosity, and encourage our awareness of the sublime beauty in the natural environment.

Tenneson & Dale

James@Gaia-Project — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:03:11 CST

Green Paper

Green Paper is part of the ongoing series of artworks entitled ORDER ORDER. It shows the expenditure of the campaigns of the four main political parties in Liverpool (Conservative, Green, Labour and Liberal Democrat) during the 2005 General Election. This statistical information of bureaucratic expenditure is represented through an investigation of the varying political concepts of ‘green paper’.

This investigation is undertaken by: literally using green recycled paper, referencing the proposed ‘green papers’ of parliament and the term ‘green paper’ in relation to notes of money. The purpose of the piece is for the viewer to reflect upon the materials of institutional authority and consider the notion of ‘green’ within the most apt business operations existent: the business operations within the Houses of Parliament.

Tim Pugh

James@Gaia-Project — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:54:24 CST

This preliminary artwork deals with issues related to past changes to the geographical and coastal boundaries within the Mersey area. The raw slate material combined with the geographical context of this artwork unites the geological and environmental history of North Wales/Deeside with Merseyside.

These drawings/collages comprise a ‘coastline map’ that illustrates the former extended coastline and other lost features such as the ancient Mersey Lake and the Dee/Mersey coastline in the Roman period showing areas of built-up sediment and the presence of old river courses.

The ideas for the artworks involve selecting specific geographical areas that shows the past radically different coastline compared to the present day eroded and shrunken boundaries. Thus as well as documenting the evolution of a coastline, the artwork further functions as a warning that we could witness increased flooding, severe storms and the potential loss of land, seaside towns and cities to the encroaching sea.

Rob Bailey

James@Gaia-Project — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:35:04 CST

Beetles under my feet, they come out when they eat

Rob has collected flyers, magazines and leaflets from around Liverpool, they had all been carefully designed to be noticed by lots of people.

He sifted through the flyers, magazines and leaflets, carefully choosing pages with colours, shapes and patterns that would be noticed by lots of people.

He cut the selected, flyers, magazines and leaflets into insect shapes, carefully folded them and placed them in places where they would not be noticed by many people.