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Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020
Exhibition Profile
Following the Story RÓISÍN FOLEY DISCUSSES THE DEVELOPMENT OF WILLIAM BOCK’S RECENT EXHIBITION, ‘LAND WALKS, LAND TALKS, LAND MARKS’.
William Bock with Suitcase Camera, 2016; photograph by Tomasz Madajczak, courtesy of the artist
GROWING UP IN West Cork as the son of German and Swedish parents, William Bock spent his childhood conscious of identity. He will always describe himself as a ‘blow in’ even though, after moving to London when he was 11, he spent a large part of his life in West Cork, at his family cottage near Union Hall. In the past couple of years, he has been spending more time there as his work demands, along with creating an artist’s residency space at the cottage. This early awareness of ‘otherness’, coupled with his everchanging connection to his rural place of birth, has informed the development of his work, ultimately culminating in his first solo exhibition, ‘Land Walks, Land Talks, Land Marks’, at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, which opened on 24 February. In 2016, William began his first residency at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen, the town closest to his childhood home. The residency was most fittingly named ‘Blow In’, exploring identity, memory and belonging through interactions with members of the Polish community in and around Skibbereen. William photographed a number of sitters in specific locations and used extended exposures, taken from a pinhole camera in a suitcase, as a means to create conversations around these themes. The result was a collection of blurred portraits, which eloquently demonstrated their connection to the conversations that occurred. Following on from these portraits, William organised The Ilen Feast, which saw the sharing of dishes between 40 different people from 12 different countries on the site of a former Famine soup kitchen. William had explored ideas of identity memory and belonging in previous work, through the use of portraiture. In The Last Bock in 2012, believing he was the last in his family line, William travelled to Germany, Sweden, Mexico and Israel to connect with and document the stories of distant relatives. He painted their portraits whilst they had conversations and he listened to their stories. The work led him to discover a cousin in Israel with “the biggest family portrait I
have ever seen”. The Last Bock culminated in a series of performances which were held at venues in London and Bristol using the portraits as props. The Last Bock revealed the more intimate details of a person who was exploring their identity through family history. An earlier work which began William’s practice of working in the natural environment and engaging more heavily in collaboration was Hole Story, initiated at William’s invitation for other artists to explore a rectory garden in Hackney. William and his partner had become guardians of the rectory and its garden for a period in 2014. After researching the site, he discovered that the garden had never been built on; it was virgin soil. What started as a collaborative exercise of simply digging a hole, manifested into a much bigger artistic enquiry. Hole Story began as an eight cubic metre hole in the garden but became an artist residency space, a pinhole camera and many other things, later travelling to the Swiss Alps as part of the Art Safiental Biennale of Land and Environmental Art. While on residency again at Uillinn in 2017, William, like most other rural dwellers, incorporated walking into his daily routine. He began to look more closely at the plants which occupy roadsides and ditches. Whilst reading formative texts from Donna Haraway, who speaks about interspecies kinship, and Anna Tsing, who speaks about viewing the world from a non-human centric position, he began to think more about the histories and lives of plants in Ireland that are described as non-native or invasive in some cases. Examples of such plants are the fuchsia, which is celebrated in West Cork, but hitched a ride from South America and Japanese knotweed, categorised as invasive and high risk on the national biodiversity website. Uncovering these plant histories started a new set of enquiries in William’s work. From 2017, William began to situate his practice more firmly in West Cork. Having been offered a solo exhibition at Uillinn, he sought to develop new work that would expand his previous focus on relaying particular stories through curi-
osity, engagement and collaboration. Former subjects had not only been the stories of people but also the stories of places and even the earth itself. In 2018, William took another short residency at Uillinn for two weeks, specifically to concentrate on formulating the exhibition. During this time, he began to draw comparisons between these non-native plants and the global diaspora. Land Walks formed the basis of this exhibition. It began as an idea to speak about human migration through the subjects of identity, memory and belonging. Walking in specific locations while talking about these plants was used as the starting point for discussion with participants, merging people, plants and place. The exhibition, ‘Land Walks, Land Talks, Land Marks’, evolved from Land Walks as a means to create a bigger portrait of the West Cork landscape that reflected on the human and non-human histories occupying certain locales and the relationships that exist (or that could be developed) between them. ‘Land Walks, Land Talks, Land Marks’ exists (at this present time) in three parts: a physical exhibition at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre; a newly launched online database of conversations which come from collaborative walks; and a series of public talks, events and screenings. The exhibition is currently under lock and key, whilst we wait out the global pandemic. The talks, events and screenings have been adapted for online participation, where possible, while the walks and talks are available to experience online. Róisín Foley is former director of Doswell Gallery, Rosscarbery, West Cork. She is a freelance curator and writer. William Bock is a visual artist living between West Cork and London, whose work explores human relationships to place. williambock.com
