Matrix Print Symposium at The MAC, Belfast

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 curiosity, 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

Radio Free Kilnaboy

ANNE MULLEE SPEAKS TO ARTIST TOM FLANAGAN ABOUT HIS PROJECT ‘FOLK RADIO’ IN COUNTY CLARE.

‘FOLK RADIO’ TOOK place at X-PO, Kilnaboy, County Clare in February, as an analogue radio station broadcasting for two weeks on 87.9FM. Led by artist Tom Flanagan, the work was commissioned through Clare County Council’s Gaining Ground Public Art Programme 2017–2020. Project curator, Anne Mullee, talks to Flanagan about the process of making ‘artist-led’ radio.

Anne Mullee: In your collaborative practice (with Megs Morley) you’ve previously examined the idea of embedded or embodied landscape. In comparison to your past projects, what was the approach for ‘Folk Radio’? Tom Flanagan: I wasn’t thinking about this project in the same way as I approach my other collaborative work, which often involves sustained periods of intensive research, development and production around a set of ideas or concepts and can have very little community engagement. I think socially-engaged work requires a very different approach; it has to have a certain fluidity and can’t be predetermined in the same way. It’s interesting that you mention our previous work and the embodied relationship with landscape and drawn associations. ‘Folk Radio’ made me consider my last socially-engaged commission with Megs Morley, called Aughty (2011), which had a similar duration and took an observational approach. We used film as a process of research and engagement, exploring the Sliabh Aughty region in East Galway and East Clare over eighteen months. That work was influenced both by the relationships formed through the duration of the project and our growing understanding of the place. There’s a lot of similarity to this process that I engaged with for ‘Folk Radio’. Community-based public art projects are always a challenge, and you have to be open for a project to develop and evolve along with the relationships between the people and place over time. I was very lucky in the sense that there is very strong creative group already engaged with X-PO. As an artist, I think it’s one of the great privileges to be welcomed into these communities and be given access to their world. So, I think that while I had developed a concept for the project, it was its organic expansion and input from participants that really dictated the outcomes.

AM: You describe the project as ‘artist-led radio’. How do you see that sited in relation to sound art, radio art or even ‘art on the radio’? TF: In terms of the radio station being ‘artist-led’, I considered my role here to broaden the concept of what radio is, or what it can be, and how it can be utilised in a different way. That approach is reflective of the X-PO project itself, as a space that poses questions around traditional ideas of community and place. Terms such as experimental radio or radio art didn’t quite feel right because I didn’t want to be prescriptive as to what was going to happen. It had to be responsive and come from that community. I wanted participants to have an open mind to the possibilities and methods they could take. I created a framework and thinking around radio and its relationship to the landscape, and within that, it was up to each individual what form or approach they wanted to explore. But the core driver was the facilitation of the X-PO community to develop and explore the creative potential of broadcast radio as a means of expanding the unique cultural space that the X-PO occupies in the landscape of the Burren.

AM: The works are really diverse, perhaps reflecting the population of the area, which comprises people of many different nationalities, with a range of interests, specialties and experiences of life. TF: One of the amazing things about radio is that it’s a uniquely democratic medium – it is omnipresent and open to all. I think what really excited me about the potential of this project was the idea that ‘Folk Radio’ could occupy an alternative listening space for cultural engagement. We had a

Folk Radio Open Day: Claiming the Sonic Spectrum - panel discussion with Katie Moylan, Deirdre O’Mahony, Tom Flanagan, Tony Kirby, Sven Anderson and Natalia Beylis; photograph © Mike Hannon

X-PO volunteers Eve Campbell and William Hederman at the Folk Radio Studio, November 2018; photograph © Tom Flanagan

multitude of responses and approaches – ranging from some very experimental material, produced by artists like Tanya Harris and students from Burren College of Art, to a more traditional programming format, including live music, interviews, conversations, documentaries and so on. In some cases, we ended up with durational audio works, like the work by William Hederman, who spent over six months gathering field recordings of the sounds of the GAA pitch next to his backyard, creating a mesmerising soundscape piece. In the end there were over 85 participants in the project, whether they were directly producing programmes or engaged in other aspects.

AM: And your approach to ‘Folk Radio’ was reflective of that? TF: Absolutely. One important aspect of the project for me was making visible the activities of the X-PO. So, throughout the year I documented and broadcast every event, field trip, talk, music session and workshop I possibly could, as well as initiating focused projects exploring the various groups that use the space, such as the mapping and singing groups. Working with artist and X-PO founder, Deirdre O’Mahony, we also explored the four archive projects housed there, taking them out of the building and into people’s homes through radio. I would like to think that following on from ‘Folk Radio’, albeit an artist-led and unconventional radio project, that if a community radio station happens at the X-PO, it’s going to take some influence from the experiment that preceded it. We’ve opened the door of possibilities and there’s no better community to explore that potential.

AM: How do you feel the project has informed your own practice? TF: It’s really opened up a new vessel for my creative practice. It’s a medium I’m going continue to work with. Though I’ve taught radio production for many years, I’d never brought it into my art practice. But experiencing the possibility of the medium to empower communities through this project has stimulated a lot of thinking and conversation about the feasibility of creating further alternative forms of community expression in Ireland. So, it is absolutely a medium that has become a central aspect to my practice, and one I look forward to developing and expanding in the near future.

Anne Mullee is a curator, writer and researcher based in Dublin. annemullee.com

Tom Flanagan is an artist and educator based in County Galway. The complete ‘Folk Radio’ programme is available online. folkradio.ie