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Dear all, Apologies for any cross-posting. This is a gentle reminder of an upcoming workshop and artists talk: Groundwork with Laura Cooper, Sapphire Goss and Tracing the Pathway Saturday 27th May 2017 Milton Keynes Arts Centre tracingthepathway.com/groundwork Between 19th and 27th May 2017, Laura Cooper will be in residence as part of Tracing the Pathway’s project Groundwork at Milton Keynes Arts Centre. During this period Laura will be exploring the non-human inhabitants of Milton Keynes, stepping aside from the anthropic design focus, to seek and celebrate the other life forms that shape and permeate this new city. She will begin her residency working with birds to consider how prey and predator animals respond to the division of parkland and commercial space, and then with horses, who think in curves, to imaginatively consider how they might inhabit MK’s famous grid structure. To mark the end of Laura’s residency period, Laura and Tracing the Pathway will co-host a workshop and artists talk, which may be of interest to those of you with concerns around ecological awareness, urban design and the anthropocene, as well as, site-specific performance and socially-engaged art. 11am-4pm Softening the Grid Workshop The measure and meter of Milton Keynes’ unique layout will offer artists and creatively curious individuals an interesting physical parameter for exploration in this active workshop. Throughout the workshop, participants will investigate how the grid envelops and holds its inhabitants—human and non-human— both physically and psychologically. Guided by a series of encounters, intersections, entanglements that counter and yet celebrate what the grid contains, participants will take part in actions and processes that ‘soften the grid’. Together we will explore how to perfomatively re-imagine the town by inhabiting the grid through the guise of other species. By embodying the senses of other beings, the workshop hopes to stimulate consideration of the way the structure of the grid, and it’s dizzying roundabouts, affects ones sense of rhythm, space and containment and therefore provide a way for all residents and visitors alike to relate to the space afresh. Tickets £8 available: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/softening-the-grid-tickets-33891017947?utm_term=eventname_text 6.30-8.30pm Open Studio and Artists Talk This open-studio celebration will combine an artist’s talk from Laura Cooper on her residency time for Groundwork, with a work-in-progress sharing from Sapphire Goss, as well as, nibbles and cocktails and an open discussion on how one is constrained and affected by the space one inhabits. It will also be an opportunity to encounter some of Laura’s emerging ideas for a new artwork for and about Milton Keynes. This event is free and open to all. ---------------------------- Throughout the residency period, Laura Cooper will work alongside video artist Sapphire Goss, who has been in residency for Groundwork since 5th May, alongside Tracing the Pathway and Hayley Newman (in residency 5th-13th May). Sapphire has been exploring the city’s architectural nuances and the life that penetrates the spaces in-between its structural forms and biological patterns. Hayley has been exploring Milton Keynes’ cycle routes, “the Redways” as alternative social spaces and potential low carbon transport networks. You are invited to connect with Laura, Sapphire and Tracing the Pathway throughout the residency period, as they will use Milton Keynes Arts Centre’s gallery space as a studio. Exhibition hours are 10-4 Mon-Sat. For further information, or to connect with the project please email Ash or Cara: [log in to unmask] Tracing the Pathway Tracing the Pathway is an artist-led collective that explore the relationships between body, site and encounter. As artists, curators, and researchers, they produce site or situation-specific interdisciplinary artworks. Their work develops microcosmic worlds as catalysts for exploration and exchange. Their processes are soft, processual and organic, developing a practice that is always open-ended and subject to change. Laura Cooper Laura Cooper is a British artist living and working between the UK and New York City, US. Her work explores how people relate to place and each other. Her work is performative in nature and results in installations combining live performance, video, objects and drawings. Solo exhibitions and projects include Silence of the Valkyries—online at PRAKSIS Oslo, Nomadic Glow at Centro ADM Mexico City Soft Revolutions at Space In Between Gallery London. She was awarded the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance for her project at LAM 360° the 3rd Land Art Mongolia Biennale, in Mongolia 2014. From 2014-16 she co-directed the artist run project space Global Committee in Brooklyn NY. She received her MFA in Fine Art Media at The Slade School of Fine Art London [2012] and BFA from Glasgow School of Art [2006]. Sapphire Goss Sapphire Goss is a video artist who creates collaged landscapes from elements of traditional footage, archive or video snapshots. Textures and surface, movement and shape, and unusual patterns with light and colour create abstract compositions, a moving collage. She uses experimental analogue techniques such as printing each frame and reanimating to create works that have a physically tangible, textural quality. She has created a variety of films for exhibition, live events and for commercial commissions. With a background studying documentary and visual anthropology she uses observation, interviews and process to investigate ideas of place, culture and memory. As she grew up in Milton Keynes she is keen to use personal memories, family history and local knowledge to explore the area as a palimpsest of different narratives, from the utopianism of its construction to the fragments of lives that are lived within. Groundwork Groundwork is multifaceted. It is grassroots, organic and responsive: curating unique artworks; supporting the professional development of local artists; and providing a platform for internationally renowned artists to make deep, long-lasting and meaningful connections with the town. Groundwork is unique to Milton Keynes for its focus on performance, site-specific and interdisciplinary work. It is also the only long-term, artist-led, self-organised project of its kind within the area which celebrates and debates the cultural heritage and identity of the town. As such Groundwork forefronts the original ethos of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation to champion artists as playing a vital role in community building. The project has been developed by artist collective Tracing the Pathway in partnership with Milton Keynes Arts Centre, with support by funding from Milton Keynes Community Foundation and Arts Council England. tracingthepathway.com/groundwork<http://tracingthepathway.com/groundwork> FRIENDLY REMINDER: if you click REPLY to this email, you will be sending a message to over 300 subscribers. Please do so only if you wish to respond to everyone. To join, leave or suspend list postings, visit http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/wan