Joshua BILTON

18 people will be selected through an open call to participate in the workshops and be part of the public group presentation in London this autumn. In three groups of six, they will be working with one of Alejandra Carles-Tolra, Hal Silver and Hemera Collective over three sessions. These three workshop groups will run in parallel to develop their output over the afternoons of 18 May, 8 June and 15 June 2019, with the talks being on the mornings of the same days.

Hal Silver invites participants to three workshop sessions exploring various strategies for developing a collaborative practice. Hal Silver is interested in how collaborative process can breakdown the habits of the individual practice and open up a freedom to experiment.

Drawing heavily on the sonic meditations of Pauline Oliveros and the act of mythologising, workshops will create experiential events exploring group cohesion, collective identity, and the role of the individual to the group in a playful environment. In the first session we will seek contact with an ancient landscape through a witchcraft game exploring improvisation and creative storytelling, drawing meaning from a fictionalised past into a contested present in an on-going attempt to answer our defining question: who/where/what is Hal?

The workshops will be experimental in nature and the focus of each session will be on collective forms of making, improvisation and group dynamics. This could take the form of games, song, meditations, role-play, and movement. Much of the activities will take place in total darkness or within the low blue light of a head-torch.

These process-led activities will be gathered into a final exhibition display at Lewisham Art House, the form of which will be established throughout the workshop sessions.

Join Kettle’s Yard to transform Tate Exchange into an evolving cosmic installation and experiment with projections, reflective sculptures and mark-making.

Drop-in and create light-reflecting sculptures, colourful collages and slides to project and overlay in the space to make new patterns, relationships and constellations. The installation will be evolving throughout the day as new artworks are created and contributed. The final installation will return and be displayed at Kettle’s Yard on Saturday 13 July.

Everyone is welcome.

Light Years takes inspiration from artworks and the architecture at Kettle’s Yard and Tate. Activities have been co-devised by Josh Bilton and Kettle’s Yard partners Cambridge Community Arts, inviting visitors to imagine they are adding to an expanding constellation, exploring the movement of light, planetary alignment and astrological forms.

Video documentation of the final Masquerade performance at the end of the workshop.

Artist Joshua Bilton and sound engineer & designer Rob Taliesin-Owen, spent time with the Cambridge African Network exploring traditional masquerades, mythology and dance. The recordings made throughout the workshop discuss ancestral histories, spirit worlds and the importance of passing on oral histories from generation to generation.

This was shared in a special broadcast and exhibition as part of Hannah Kemp-Welch’s Open House Artist in Residence at Kettle’s Yard. The broadcast was on Open House Radio on 13 February 2019 with Cambridge 105 Radio, a community radio station based in the city. Hyperlocal Radio brings together both the sound and visual pieces created through work with community collaborators and Kettle’s Yard Artist Facilitators. Each have customised a portable Pye Radio which also contains a sound work created with participants.

Hyperlocal Radio was displayed in March-April 2019 at Kettle's Yard and off-site with additional cases found at the Meadows Community Centre and Arbury Community Centre in North Cambridge.

In 2018 I was commissioned by the Canal & River Trust as part of a residency to run a series of workshops at the Enfield Island Village Community Centre that engaged local residents with the Lee Navigation and local area. The project title was Hinterlands, which I found interesting in relation to displacement and the site itself which is built on the grounds of the Royal Arms Factory. The factory was the birth place of mass-production in Europe and produced weapons for the Crimean War, Anglo-Zulu war, Anglo-Dutch wars, World War One, World War Two and many others. Within the village sits the Royal Enfield Arms Factory Clock that kept the workers movements in time. The factory clock has been running since the end of the American Revolutionary war in 1783.

For the 2 day workshop we spent time constructing puppets that could be camouflaged within the local flora along the Lee Navigation. The second workshop day participants shared stories and constructed spoken poems inspired by conversations with one another and their experience of the area. The puppet was in this respect a form of starting a conversation as well as my attempt to simulate with a new place where I was an outsider and finally to allow those that took part to channel their stories through an alter ego.

The workshop outcomes were brought together in 9 oral pieces that can be found under social sounds in the header index of this website. They are an amalgamation of sounds and conversations with residents of Enfield Island Village and discuss local history, displacement, home and routes. The oral pieces are part of walk that takes you from the Enfield Island Village Community Centre to Gunpowder Park. Fragments can be dowloaded and listened too in relation to sites along the way such as the clock tower, the Lee Navigation and Gunpowder park.

Workshop Proposal

For the two workshop sessions I would like to invite people to share stories and to construct collective puppet characters to perform these through.  I’m interested in how the construction of the mask is an opportunity to share something of oneself but also to imagine an elsewhere, to be distant from oneself.  I’m also interested in the therapeutic and intuitive nature of drawing and paper mache that are both activities that are accessible and allow the individual to shape as they think.  The workshop will also emphasize collective drawing and writing, bringing members of the community together.     

In the first session we will decorate large pieces of canvas collectively using oil pastels and build masks using paper mache.  People can drop in and decorate canvas and masks using a combination of flora rubbings and drawing. 

In the second session we will share stories about roots, local history and the area building up an archive of words that we will work into poems and narrative pieces.  These will then be read aloud and performed through our puppets.  The session will begin with an introduction, followed by working individually on a free association writing exercise.  Working in pairs I would like people to then share stories, a particular memory (happy to discuss how this is structured).  From this we will gather an archive of words that can then be worked into a short poem and read at the end of the session. 

The Walled Garden was the second of 3 Art in Barham Park projects held over 6 sessions between September & October 2015. 

Working with young people the project encouraged collaboration between participants through making a film piece that followed our search for the lost mansion that used to stand within the park.

Inside the mansion was a wealth of objects collected over many years by George Titus Barham.  Before his death he had agreed to donate the mansion and the collection to Wembley council.   

After his death, years passed without much being done to protect the mansion and gradually it became derelict, worn and eventually demolished.  Some of the collection was saved but many of the objects were lost or sold on.

After the disappearance of the mansion people began to speak of various characters seen briefly standing or walking within the garden walls. These descriptions were always vague and encompassed woodland creatures, a man on a white horse riding through the garden, and lastly what one person described as the Hulk. 

Some believed that these sightings were George Titus Barham whereas others felt that the objects from his collection had become living forms, searching for an architecture that would position their body.

Using this as a foundation every Wednesday afternoon myself, Jaanzaib Yarub, Zahra Rasekh and Neeral Bhatt, would meet in the Barham park studio and discuss characters, make masks and costumes, talk with local people in the park, read extracts from books we liked and build objects from clay.  We would then take what we had created into the park and perform in front of the camera.  At first these were slightly random, a shot of the Hulk, a sound recording of the violin, a clay workshop in the middle of the park inviting passers-by to make objects, but gradually each performance began to shape an overarching narrative that pieced together our search for lost mansion and the collection it housed.

Commissioned by ACAVA Arts

For this workshop I facilitated 6 x 2 hour walking and photography sessions that resulted in a final exhibition at the Samuel Lewis community centre. Here’s some of the collaborative traces we made along the way.

Session framework: For this workshop we will take on the role of the psychogeographer researching the social, historical and mythological layers of the cityscape and then embarking on a walk led by the intuition of the group. Each week we will choose certain themes to guide our walks. Each participant will be given a sketchbook that they can fill with research, their own stories and ones they gather through encounters during each walk. This can be taken home and worked on between each session. The photographs, stories, research, routes and pathways will then be brought together into a table top map like installation exploring the social history of the area.

'Night & Day' was held by Hal Silver at The Photography's Gallery on 9 Oct 2014. The popular party game of Mafia is used in a participatory workshop to explore group dynamics and behavioural patterns.

Hal Silver in the Strobes of Berrier, S.A.G.S., The Woodmill, London, 2011

The video was the result of a week long residency looking for Hal Silver. This took the form of shared meals, walks and collective experiments. The video records a collective ceremony on the last night summoning Hal.

Developed through Hal’s continual mythologising and direct engagement with the act of ritualising the landscape, Transmuter’s Echo explores the proximity between an expression and its source. Sound and image here are prised apart, each becoming gradually abstracted from their origin to allow a new space for encounter. Our initial process and intent was to attempt to locate Hal in the social space of the collective and geographic space of the land. In the exhibition the viewer could both be drawn into and separated from the various levels of proximity to that process.

Broadcast on Soundfjord as part of Cast & Figment, a curated radio programme by Matthew MacKisack.

Images from a live performance at Aid & Abet in Cambridge.

Learn to make big collaborative puppets using paper-màché

Join in a 2 hour workshop of painting, puppet-making, narrative writing, and performance led by artist Josh Bilton.  Play creatively with disguise and camouflage through creating a giant puppet that can be operated collaboratively in the courtyard at ACAVA.  

For the two workshop sessions I would like to invite people to share stories and to construct collective puppet characters to perform these through.  I’m interested in how the construction of the mask is an opportunity to share something of oneself but also to imagine an elsewhere, to be distant from oneself.  I’m also interested in the therapeutic and intuitive nature of drawing and paper mache that are both activities that are accessible and allow the individual to shape as they think.  The workshop will also emphasize collective drawing and writing, bringing members of the community together.     

Life Size Puppet Making: 3 x 2 hour.

This workshop was commissioned by Flourish, a free family art school during holidays for North Kensington families directly and indirectly affected by Grenfell Tower fire. The workshop responds to the theme of journey exploring life size puppets and sharing stories to perform with our puppets.

Workshops take place at Maxilla Studios (the former Children’s Centre under the Westway 4 Maxilla Walk W10) and are free for all the family.

Join Kettle’s Yard to transform the Ede room into an evolving cosmic installation and experiment with projections, reflective sculptures and mark-making.

Drop-in and create light-reflecting sculptures, colourful collages and slides and hand-sewn constellations to project and overlay in the space to make new patterns, relationships and constellations. The installation will be evolving throughout the day as new artworks are created and contributed.

Light Years takes inspiration from artworks and the architecture at Kettle’s Yard and Tate. Activities have been co-devised by Josh Bilton and Kettle’s Yard partners Cambridge Community Arts, inviting visitors to imagine they are adding to an expanding constellation, exploring the movement of light, planetary alignment and astrological forms.

30th November 2018, 6-9pm

Our next Late at Kettle’s Yard event is inspired by the exhibition Richard Pousette-Dart: Beginnings, A Young Abstract Expressionist in New York.

Join us for an evening of live jazz, curators talks exploring art and music, photography workshops, art activities and more.

Artists Josh Bilton has been working with Circuit on a photography inspired workshop in our downstairs Clore Learning Studio.

Using collage techniques on a micro scale participants are offered the opportunity to make their own negatives through using a pool of printed acetate images from the Kettle’s Yard collection and related imagery. Throughout the evening participants can reimagine the collection and contribute to a continuously evolving image archive of new associations and meanings.

In this one-day workshop participants explored experimental techniques in photography such as liquid light, photograms and making their own 35mm collaged negatives from acetate and projecting these using a slide projector.  Each process challenges the idea of the photograph as something that is taken, considering a more hands-on approach with material, paint, cutting and collaging. 

I was invited by Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge to devise 5 workshop sessions that engaged students with the house collection and exhibition displays at Kettle’s Yard. Themed around migration, journeys and sharing stories about homelands and new lands, the students worked on bringing these together in a number of collective structures. This included a spiral of stones inspired by Jim Ede’s Spiral of Stones at Kettle’s Yard, sails with messages describing journeys to new lands and small origami boats carrying messages and maps back to their homeland of Cambridge.

ACTIVATE's two year Arts Project is being offered to 30 students across years 7 and 8 at Coleridge Community College.

ACTIVATE offers young people the opportunity to learn new creative skills, discover arts and culture venues across Cambridge and gain an Arts Award qualification as well as gaining confidence, exploring other opportunities open to them and developing their roles as young community leaders.

This workshop was commissioned by Flourish, a free family art school during holidays for North Kensington families directly and indirectly affected by Grenfell Tower fire. The workshop responds to the theme of Bloom in celebration of spring bird migrations.

During the two hour drop in workshop participants were invited to construct their own bird mask and costume from fabric and to write a short story describing what they look like.

colour, shape, big, small, their environment, bright, exotic, city, woodland, warm, cold, and finally what song or sound they might make.

All elements were then gathered together into a collective bird dance and reading of the written pieces.

"CAFF is a project by Crystal Bennes for the 2013 Sluice Art Fair on 19 & 20 October.  Inspired by Gordon Matta-Clark's 1970s NYC artist-run restaurant, FOOD, four artists have been invited to create an artist-run café during the two days of the Fair during Frieze week in October.

Situated in one of the Fair's gallery pitches, artists Freddy Tuppen, Berta de la Rosa, Joshua Bilton and Chloe Rachel McClellan have opted to turn the kitchen inside-out and make visible the act of preparing dishes which will later be served - also by the artists - three times per day. In this way, the preparation of the food becomes as much a performance as the communal mealtimes.

Joshua Bilton & Freddy Tuppen are interested in using the structure of the meal to see how this can be used as a platform to activate discussion and interaction between its participants.  Bowls and cups that are responsive to the heat of the food will be complimented by the changing colour of a thermochromic tablecloth.  These simple elements, like the bodies that occupy the benches, interest them in there potential to hold and transfer energy.

For this project, commissioned by Kettle's Yard I collaborated with the The Cambridge Cyrenians Allotment Project that works with local homeless people and runs on a therapeutic horticulture model across five full-sized allotment plots in the city.

It provides specific horticulture training, supported work experience and a safe social environment for some of the most disadvantaged people in the city.

The Nature Diaries were included in The Open House Gathering and Feast that emerged out of a 7-month residency by artist Harold Offeh. Working with different communities across North Cambridge Offeh's project sought to map residents engagement with their domestic space, objects, architecture and local neighbourhoods. The event aims to provide a platform for a collection, a collection of people, objects, skills and conviviality.

As a part of this event I asked the Cyrenians allotment groups if they were interested in keeping a nature diary for a three-week period. Contributions included what they grow on the allotment and extended to reflections on the relationship between growing and wellbeing, harvesting, preserving, recipes, poetry, drawings and paintings, stories, wildlife or notes on a day in the allotment, leaf clippings stuck in, flower rubbings, pressed flowers, photographs (their own and collected). At the end of the three weeks I collected these booklets.  The project was such as success with some individuals that they have continued to keep a diary, which I will continue to archive here if they wish to share it.