84 GESTURES OF CARE
Performances Thursday 22nd June 23, St George’s Hospital.
Duration 8 minutes 30 seconds.
The Sun will rise today at 04:43 and appear at its highest elevation at 13:02 to mark the summer solstice. From 13:02, three dancers will perform 84 Gestures Of Care in The Walk On The Wild Side Garden. Each gesture will respond to 84 polaroids made by patients and staff at St George’s Hospital and Queen Mary’s Hospital, where artist Josh Bilton has been running workshops during his year-long residency, exploring how an aspect of care, illness, healing, loss and touch, can be taken into a non-verbal hand gesture.
Choreography and performance devised by Daisy May Kemp and Josh Bilton with movement by Orla Collier, Hannah Mason and Soledad de la Hoz.
Video documentation by charlotte Ginsborg, edited by Josh Bilton.
67 LAMENTS
16 mm, projection (looped) 2023
Duration 04:23
67 Laments is made in collaboration with the bird ringer and conservationist Brendan Shields during my residency at Hogchester Arts in West Dorset. At the time of filming, 67 birds were listed as endangered on the red list, in contrast to 36 listed in 1995 in the first report. Filming Brendan’s hands closely, the work documents a moment of prolonged contact between the human hand and different bird species during the ringing process. The piece reflects on the repeated movement of opening and closing the hand. As birds appear and disappear, the work offers space to consider the role the human hand plays in protecting, repairing, damaging and destroying what is close to it.
When editing I kept coming back to the loop, to this looping action of Brendan holding and letting go of the bird at the end of the ringing process.
When it loops and the bird appears again I’m reminded of magic shows where the magician makes something disappear and then reappear. After seeing many magic shows when I was young, I learnt to trust the magician to always bring that thing back. As I got older I learnt that some things disappear and don’t reappear, they go and stay gone.
SEED POD
Seed Pod is a social sculpture and publication devised by artist Joshua Bilton in collaboration with children from Ferry Lane School in Tottenham. Its purpose is to create a space for communities to creatively engage with nature, ritual, ecology and animism.
Seed Pod is inspired by the stories of 23 year 4 children. Over a period of two years, through workshops, and walks along the canal, the children have grown stories of transformation into plants, trees, water, birds and seeds. Storytelling has become their way of reflecting on the very universal themes of nurture, protection, loss and love; and water has been adopted as a threshold space between real and imaginary worlds. In these worlds separated by a thin surface of water, the children have grown their words, wishes and offerings and cast them into the water in the shape of a small ceramic seed.
The Seed Pod social sculpture and publication is part of the Hinterlands arts programme being delivered between 2019 and 2022. Conceived by Canal & River Trust and led by Creative Producer Clare Moloney, Hinterlands is an arts programme designed to engage people in a creative exploration of the Lee Navigation in Enfield and Tottenham. Through artist collaborations with local primary schools, theatre performances and a heritage app/digital artwork designed by young people, Hinterlands aims to reactivate the canal as a vibrant community art space and promote greater community cohesion and wellbeing.
OBJECTS FOR MEDITATION
Objects for meditation to be held in the palm of the hand.
Clay objects and found stones from eroding coastlines, wrapped in thread, dimensions variable, 2020
I started collecting these stones on a series of walks around the UK coastline during my residency at the Wellcome Collection. I brought them to workshops and used them as a means of conversation and meditation on loss, grief and healing. Using multiple threads of cotton on a central spool, participants explored the process of encasing, covering and veiling the stones.
As a continued research interested, the act of veiling e.g the covering of the face when we cry, closing of the eyes or lowering or turning away of the head, confront the difficulty in expressing loss. I am particularly interested in the history of veiling in ancient Greek culture and how this practice illustrates that the gesture of covering is an expression or symbol of loss in itself e.g the abstract language of loss relies on an object to hold the void.
These workshops, objects and research were then later used in a performance lecture at the Wellcome Collection that included birdsongs performed as laments by cellist and composer Gregor Riddell and movement as lament by Sim Gray and Frieda Luk. Participants were also be invited to take part in a meditation on weight and make an offering that formed part of the artwork.
Stones collected from coastal walks at Beachy Head, East Sussex; Charmouth along the Jurassic Coast, Dorset; Happisburgh, Norfolk; Easton Bavents, Norfolk; West Runton, Norfolk; Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex; Hunstanton, Norfolk; Fairlight Glen, East Sussex; St Agnes, north coast of Cornwall.
