Artist in Residence at Birnam Arts

birnamarts2 Late last year we released a call to the arts community with an invitation to apply for our first studio-access Artist-in-Residence opportunity. Artists proposed a variety of inspiring, creative and thoughtful projects. They described how access to the Visual Arts and Performance Studios would enable them to dedicate time and space to their artistic practice & development. We were overwhelmed with the response which has evidenced the need to develop this project into a regular opportunity within Birnam Arts and rural Perthshire.
We were delighted to award the opportunity to artist and researcher Rowan Lear.
Ahead of her summer exhibition, here is a preview of what she has been up to in the studio…
birnamarts1 Over the past month, I’ve been watching all these shoots emerge – snowdrops poking up through the snow, catkins emerging furry on willow. I’ve also observed various techniques of ‘cutting back’. The council’s grounds maintenance team set to work on the Beatrix Potter garden, hacking, slimming and tidying up the holly, elder and other unwieldy shrubs. The volunteers at the community orchard boldly tackled new growth on the fruit trees, pruning them into more cohesive and productive shapes. And by the railway line, where I cycle daily, the ash and sycamore have been hewn and their stumps poisoned to prevent their regrowth. Spring is a time of flourishing but also wounding.
birnamarts3 My residency began by exploring fruit tree propagation as practiced by my father in his nursery at Blackhaugh Community Farm. At its simplest, grafting involves making a cut, placing a twig of a different tree into the wound, and binding them together securely. From one variety, springs another. In the nursery with my father, I shot some film footage and made field recordings, in preparation for a moving image work.
Back in the studio, I’ve been thinking and reading about the intelligence and freedom of vegetal life, and the life webs of fungi, bacteria and insects that compose our naturecultures. And how we learn through the body: how skills, genetic information and ways of thinking are passed down, or passed across. In a makeshift darkroom, I’ve been printing fibre-based photographs of some of the things I’ve observed, as well as working with and joining different kinds of clay. All this is in pursuit of a curiosity about how things come to differ, to change. What has a branch to do with a tree?
The philosopher Michel Serres, inspired by the living earth, writes: “The branches never stop shooting up; the branches of the year, of the season, of time, those that bifurcate, those of unexpected history, fragile, slender, bristling, trembling in the wind”. While the ongoing ecological crisis is a mortal threat to human life, our companion trees offer a little hope. Despite our efforts, vegetal life is a model of enduring and persisting, a world wounded but flourishing.
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Rowan will return to Birnam Arts this summer to deliver an artist talk, workshop and exhibition of work. Keep your eyes peeled for announcements of this and other opportunities in the future by signing up to our newsletter, following us on Instagram and Facebook, or by heading over to the soon to be re-launched www.birnamarts.com