See (through): practice conversations

See (through): practice conversations

Three online events in March invite you to explore jointly sites, methods and themes of For Cover, my practice-as-research based body of work:

1: moving-with (a making workshop)

Monday 14/3 6.30-8.30pm UK

2: participating (in) archiving (a conversation with Susan Farrelly and John Umney)

Wednesday 16/3 6.30-8.30pm

3: contextual distance (a making workshop)

Monday 21/3 6.30-8.30pm UK

As practice-as-research For Cover articulates across four covers, four blankets, at the forest edge (and just beyond it) in drawing and contact: haptic and tactile media such as frottage and cyanotype trace wind, rain, sound and care in site-specific installations. It circulates already as an expandable PDF to zine library/archive: A/Folder: an instructive glossary, and a series of objects, b-hold: circulatory objects to touch. see (through): practice conversations is the third aspect of exploring its publicness.

In two making workshops invite you to join me and explore some of the methods and tools of my enquiry: drawing machines, mobiles, and viewing devices to engage senses across the visual and the tactile.

1: Moving-with is interested in how our embodied movements, feet, bodies, hands, produce tactile objects and enquiries.

3: Contextual distance enquires into where is the site, work and audience between the visual and the haptic.

Inviting individual explorations ahead of the sessions, the zoom-based workshops seek to utilise the digital space our meeting to navigate across contact, distance and closeness between desk and camera.

2: participation (in) archiving invites two fellow artists, Susan Farrelly and John Umney, to join me to open our ongoing practice conversations across archiving and participation –who where when and what of our practice; their temporalities and spaces; their discipline and subversions.

For the making workshops, there is a little preparation ahead of them (and limited spaces of a single zoom screen). You don't need to bring any making skills, merely an inquisitive mind, and a few simple tools (paper, drawing implements in monochrome or colour).

Sign up via Eventbrite for further details.

The events will take place via zoom with links provided ahead of the events.

About the artists

Gesa Helms is an artist, researcher and educator. see (through) (along with A/Folder: an instructive glossary and b-hold: circulatory objects to touch) is part of her engagement and exhibition in the closing stages of her BA (Hons) Creative Arts degree with OCA/UCA. She lives between Glasgow, UK, and rural Northwest Germany. Her artistic work is often site-specific and walking-based in an expanded field of drawing. She is fond of questions and sometimes writes these out too. She holds a PhD in Human Geography (Glasgow, UK). https://close-open.net; https://tinyurl.com/forcover; IG @draw___lena.

Susan Farrelly is an artist and educator with a strong interest in collaborative interactions and place, identity, embodiment and the senses. She completed her degree in Sculpture (1996) NCAD, Dublin and recently MA in Fine Art Practice (2021) with OCA online. She works with a variety of materials, her most recent work has been site specific and relational, and has invited public participation. Susan teaches painting, observation skills and creative reflection. She runs painting, drawing and mixed media workshops from her studio Abbey Art Studios, Ireland. Email: susanfarrellyart@gmail.com Website: www.abbeyartstudios.com

John Umney is a photographer and fine artist who works with narrative, archive images, moving and contemporary imagery. He has a BA in Photography from the OCA, a Masters in Fine Art from Oxford Brookes and is currently a PhD student with Birmingham City University. His recent moving image work interrogates his social construct as a “Racially White Stale Male” which he plans to research further through the PhD. He has also recently been constructing clay pots. #whitenoisearchive on IG.