Rosalind Fowler 

I arrived for my brief but very welcome Mothership residency just after the covid lockdown eased, amidst the contagious emotions and powerful energy surrounding the black lives matter protests. The past few months have been a strange time of intensity, stillness, joy, wonder, frustration and hope. Time to step back has for me, as for many, brought about the opportunity for reflection and reminders of what is important. Within the wider context it feels more urgent than ever to create work that feels meaningful, that aligns with the current momentum to work towards a better world, albeit in humble ways, that encourages shifts in perception, re-enchantment with the non-human and deeper listening between humans. To make work that addresses ecology and entanglement, interdependence and difference, through social action and through the transformative magic of art and film.

The intention of the residency was to seed new ideas for a costume or costumes to be worn for performance, social practice and collective film-making. Costume for liminal practice, to shift consciousness and enter into a state of play, dream and imagination, echoing ritual practices past and inventing new ones for the present, forming speculative futures in connecting to the non-human and each other.

I have been experimenting with new methods and approaches since the start of the lockdown, prompted in part by the restricted media available to me. Having come from a background in artist film-making, it is only in recent years, through various collaborations, impulses, and studies in sensory herbalism, that new threads have naturally emerged in the form of performance, sounds, movement, and collage. 

I have stepped back further and gone deeper, working with plants through slowing down and spending time in their presence, creating and imbibing plant medicines, and then through meditative processes, drawing and painting while tuning in to the sensations in my body, allowing images to emerge. Finding visual forms for such subtle processes has often surprised me. The forms are symbols and messengers, materials to be re-worked and used as inspirations for costume designs, movements and choreography, perhaps woven into green-screen film imagery, and more broadly to inspire and develop embodied methods of working together with and relating to the non-human.      

I arrived at the mothership with just paints and old magazines, to occupy a blissful glass-fronted wooden cabin on the edge of the woods for 8 days and continue this process. There is an expansive stretch of woodland leading off the property that during those times I wondered around and shared only with the trees and the plants, the deer and the fungi. My days were spent walking, getting lost, lying on the ground and listening to the rhythms of the forest, allowing visions, narratives and intuition to flow through me as I rested in the presence of plants. This mid-Summer moment felt so sweet following the city lockdown, combined with a certain charge with the solstice, eclipse and new moon all falling at the same time. 

I was called by the subtle potency of wood betony, a plant in flower all over the forest, similar in structure to nettle topped with an exquisite tower of tiny purple, orchid-like flowers. Their presence within dappled patches of sunlight filtered through the trees felt mystical, and I felt invited to drop down out of my head and into a grounded, playful state of being. The plants moved and I mimicked and improvised and sang. It was fun being without the humans for a while. The vast beech trees forming a cathedral at a central opening in the forest offered a different kind of energy – a benevolent protection, melting imaginary forms that had crystallised within, transforming matter into light and new life.

Sketches and writing back at the cabin reflected some of my experiences and sparked new ideas yet to be explored.

Creating a new world together means stepping out of the known, developing new languages for inter-relating and being open to shift and evolve, personally and collectively.  

1.07.20

www.rosalindfowler.co.uk

Zoe Li

The Mothership residency Possibly one of the best experiences I had between me and Jojo, my 13 year old daughter. The idea of having a residency together instead of a holiday was a conscious one - a special time where we can spend time together being creative and away from the normal environment. I’ll admit it, it did end up becoming a time to reflect of myself, as a mum and a creative practitioner. I ask myself, what is the boundary for creativity and normality in day to day life? Or is there a boundary there at all? Here is my proposal, with input from Jojo... ‘Curator and creative practitioner Zoe Li from Somerset, will be in her residency at The Mothership between 1st - 6th accompanied by her 13 year old daughter. Together they will explore the notion of sharing, through creating a diary that includes family recipes, drawings, short stories and reflections. On August 6th, she will be putting together a taster menu of home-made delights, and share with the audience their journey of discovery.’ We agreed this was a decision we made together, without overthinking about it. We were keen to see this as a collaboration and co-decision making process, which I very much like to be as a mother, opposite to a traditional ‘Mother’ stereotype. I mainly consider Jojo entering the teenage year, and my skills and experience in collaborative working as curator/art facilitator. I guess we are doing a little experiment here… hope it will be fun and meaningful… Our first impression was that we love the place! Everything there was great and more than what we expected, including the compost toilet. We made ourselves at home, spread all the stuff and couldn’t help rearranging things (Fengshui is important I guess…), making it our little home and workspace between us. We began discussing a work routine, and couldn’t wait to get our hands dirty… The next day, our friends Nancy and Mitsy arrived for a visit. We went for a walk, but we were really lost and ended up walking a mile away from the house! It became one of the fondest memories during the residency. For the residency, I can't help myself to do my duty as a mother with maternal nature and responsibly of nurturing, but also eager to find how is that related to my core concern and ethos around my practice as curator and facilitator. After a busy working life between several different jobs and projects in the last 10 years, I decided to work less and travel less, spending more time with my teen daughter. I knew soon she will prefer to do her own things instead of being with me. I also keen to share my heritage and culture with her. I was bought up in Hong Kong and food always a big part of my life, I always want to make sure Jojo who is mixed-race and born here, brought up to be proud of what she was made of. The residency will give us an experience that we won’t forget and it certainly did! I have always enjoyed my time with Jojo, who is talented (I would say so!). We set out to create a cookbook together with Jojo’s brilliant illustrations and my cooking and organising. We have no idea what the end result will turn out like, but we talk, eat and explore the surroundings, as well as drawing, painting, listening to music and watching a film together. She became my close collaborator by default, crossing the boundary between mother-daughter relationship and interest between culture and art. The eagerness to share them. brought us together in this project. However, an idea of ‘collaboration’ is never an easy one. We fell out on the third day…crying! The pressure of trying to ‘produce’ something, doing everything together and in addition not to engaging in social media, it was simply too much for both of us to handle. We then spent the next day in Bridport and joined by our friend Lucy and her daughter. It did the trick the saved the day! The rest of the residency was wonderful, we settled in our new routine with a different sense of time. We made friends with our neighbours, visiting the allotment and sharing food. We did more drawing, writing, cooking and sharing them on Instagram (a new thing for me). Although, it doesn’t matter if we have not done what we set out to do, at least we tried.

Here is the short story from Jojo about instant noodles that I often cooked her for breakfast (if I have time!). It tells you a lot about us!

Aug 5, 2019 Baby Noodle (Jojo apologises for it being incomplete) I couldn’t believe the smell that hit me, a mix of the usual aroma that escapes the local Chinese takeaway just across the street, and something familiar, but also a complete stranger to me. This was something special. I lied in my bed a little longer, savouring the smell until a familiar voice shouted my name. ‘Jojo! Wake up already. It’s nearly 12!’ Looking over at my clock, I noticed that it was actually 10.15 am, either way it was getting late and even though I could stay in bed for another day or two, I was getting hungry and that smell wasn’t helping. ‘Hey, Mum, what were you making earlier?’ I asked. Eager to find out what that smell was. On the last day, we were busy to clear up ready for the changeover and preparation for the final event. The event was a great way to end our journey, with artist Sharon Bennett presenting her work at the start of her residency, followed by sharing the food that Jojo and I made and loved, including making dumplings (Chinese cabbage & tofu filling) with all the guests and sharing the kimchi (Korean femented cabagge) and onigiri (Japanese rice ball) we made. We showed what we’ve done during the residency - a cookbook! It was surprising to us, knowing what we’ve done in a week. We made new friends and learnt a lot from each other. Although we were both looking forward to going home, as we felt we took away great memories and experiences between us. At the same time, we both knew we will miss the place and time together. Thanks to Anna for giving us this opportunity; and friends and family for sharing this experience with us.

Sophie Hope - Umm. Mmmm. Ahhhh… Huh? Exploring the sounds, speech, utterances and un-articulated moments in project meetings.

“It is my argument that to understand the full range of the voice, as an event (and discourse) entangling itself around bodies, desires, politics, identities, and nations, it is important to recognise the mouth in all its performative verve, effective influence, and complicated drama.” (Brandon LaBelle, Lexicon of the Mouth – Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary, 2014, p.4).

“The play between vocal emission and acoustic perception necessarily involves the internal organs. It implicates a correspondence with the fleshy cavity that alludes to the deep body, the most bodily part of the body. The impalpability of sonorous vibrations, which is as colourless as the air, comes out of a wet mouth and arises from the red of the flesh.” (Adriana Cavarero, For More Than One Voice, Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression, 2005, p.4)

Let’s open our mouths and look inside. How are words, sounds, utterances formed through this fleshy wet orifice? Which pre-articulated thoughts get caught at the back of your throat? What preparation does your tongue do while you listen and prepare your response? Where in your body did that laugh originate? Is the mouth a space where listening and speaking meet and mingle? How do secretions, dialects, silences, jargon all swill around and influence our sonorous encounters in a project meeting with other artists, funders, collaborators, participants, community groups, activists, curators? Which words and phrases do we end up repeating, so much so they loose meaning? Our mouths breath in and out complex political landscapes. Let’s reflect together on how this busy orifice influences the way we communicate, interpret and interact.

A burp under the breath in the middle of sentence.

A tongue clicking the roof of a mouth making a quiet tutting sound.

An uncontrollable yawn rises and contorts a face.

He tries to pick a stubborn bit of lunch from a molar with the end of his tongue.

An excitable pre-announcement lick of the lips.

A sentence attempted a number times to try and get the words in the right order.

Their every sentence begins with an apology.

An interruption from someone who thinks they’ve got this.

A nervous repetitive swallow to bide the time before finding the right time to contribute.

Damn. I whisper. They’ve moved the conversation on.

Parted lips as if about to interject. Close again.

The pressure to be articulate makes my mouth go dry. It needs lubricating before the next item on the agenda.

I repeat the acronym slowly, each letter rolls around my tongue to see if it feels familiar. Surely I must know what it stands for, everyone else does it seems.

I spend a lot of time in meetings. I find them fascinating places, like stages for us to play out certain versions of ourselves, reflecting our assumptions of other people’s expectations. The mouth is an opening through which temperature controlled air and corporate language is breathed in and out. We learn through this space, make mistakes, take things back, speak before we think. Through our mouths we reach out to others.

What is the story of the mouth before it arrived and opened here today? The air is thick here with past words being inhaled by us newcomers.

Words are recycled, on spin cycle creating cleaned up jargon ready for the washing line.

Mouths are performing certain forms of behaviour – behaving, efficiency savings.

What about the non-human voices in the room? Have we forgotten to listen to them? [“Is not every object a potential body with a voice?”  (LaBelle, p.6)]

Which ways of speaking are privileged? Which accents are taken more seriously? Do certain words and the way we say them carry more weight than others?

In socially engaged art practices we have to talk to each other, don’t we? My listening to your voice can result in ‘story theft’ – the taking of other people’s stories for my own self gain. Recording, capturing, reworking. A form of cultural embezzlement (Bourdieu) can take place. ‘Giving voice’ implies some people don’t have a voice and others have one to give. Everyone has a voice, it’s just that they aren’t listened to. Or their voices are not articulated in the way power understands. How can we keep hold of the reality of inarticulate mess and a cacophony of voices, messages and agendas that play out in meetings? Which voices are absent? Which voices are heard in / through the archive? How can voices (beyond/behind/to the side of speech) reveal something more about the in-between practices, the stuff that is not made public? The mouth and all that swashes around in there could provide the behind the scenes of speech.

Someone is speaking. But what is their mouth doing?

Someone isn’t speaking. But what is their mouth doing?

[Thanks to: Jenny Richards, Sarah Browne, Henry Hope, Alice Hope, Barry Sykes, Henry Mulhall, Selina Robertson, Viv Blanchard, Adriana Cavarero, Brandon LaBelle, Claudia Firth, Lucia Farinati – I’ve been breathing in your words, sounds and ideas and they’ve been percolating and circulating…]

Further links, references and inspirations to come…

https://sophiehope.org.uk/blog/notes-towards-a-proposal-for-a-cultural-democracy-histories-research-centre/

image: film still from Borris’ painting buses anecdote

image: Henry chewed on my presentation notes, as I was talking (1 July 2019)

Lucy Steggals

Deer Moon

In the absence of a corkscrew I have just opened the last bottle of wine bought for the burning with a black screw and a pair of acid yellow pliers.

They are the same pliers I use to extract scalpel blades from the holder when they are blunt. Deer Moon the moment is now. I have changed my screen saver to the only image I have of you looking at me. I have abandoned the blood pen and I am writing to you on a digital white blank page. When I was nearer you, I made a small cuttlefish ship from all the white things I found. For sails it had a feather and a head phone port from an iPhone.

I think I am going to open the grey book that I never got to the middle of. I am going to begin at the end. Holding it closed is the perfect egg-shaped stone my Mum found on the beach that is clothed in yellowing layers. They tell you not to sit on the rocks there now because those faces are dangerous, they crumble and kill.

 17th

I buried some of the ash at the base of the oak tree and put the rest down the compost loo to dispel odors. I never did see an albino deer but after I left when I got to where I was going, I saw for the first time a jet-black squirrel.

 16th

I am digging a shallow grave with a round silver spoon borrowed from the Mothership. It’s a sunny spot, up high. However hard I bend and twist I can’t see the man, only soft white chalk curves. I am too close to him. At the base of the hill in the Abbey I balanced a feather on the palest solitary blushed rose and breathed in deeply. I know people come here to conceive bit I am sure today that’s not relevant.

On the way here we went to a place where miniature people were scurrying about wounding trees and building beautiful bridges that go nowhere. A man with gold tooth offered us half a chocolate digestive and stopped us reversing into a ditch. My feet are black with ash and face is warm from the suns gaze. I am happy in this corner between the wall and the window watching the acorn rain. In the graveyard a bush swallowed me. I held tightly to a spindly twig, gently so as not to break it.

The table in front of me has almost nothing man made on it apart from a camera a phone and an armless Kewpie with seaweed for arms. Cuttle fish ships sail across it.

No more dead dust. I am stroking my body with oiled stones from the sea. We walked barefoot on the beach and spun seaweed. Sometime soon I will fill a bath with it and just float. I am laden with pebbles and drift wood but I am going to hold what happened here lightly like a cloud of tiny spiders. If you look hard enough at the rock face the sky looks more solid than the land.

 15th

Yesterday people came with stories of other people. The parents who moved house without telling their children and fitted the new house out exactly like the old one. The man who had a motorcycle accident and reclaimed himself using his old shirts as an anchor. A collective tale of unwanted dolls from faraway places in plastic tube coffins. Together we got lost and sank onto a bog. We ate a thousand small fish, perfect in death, that had jumped out of the sea with curry, cake and a Turkish type of delight from Greece. After dinner we burnt the pleated moon under a full harvest moon, roasted a single marshmallow and breathed in frankincense and myrrh. 

 14th

Today I passed through the glass and deliberately had my coffee, a blood grapefruit not more than three meters from where I had it yesterday. I am facing the oak tree dead on. If I lean one way I can see the solitary swing, lean the other and through the leaves are three others. Two forwards and backwards and a perch with rings.

 The single swing is hung from the sturdiest branch, it spins in a chaotic unbalanced, skin chaffing way. I have been looking at it for days. All four rely on the oak tree, I think we are going to be friends for a long time. It like me is not perfect it is scarred and gnarled in parts. I wonder if this is a mast year the year a tree produces more acorns than the deer and squirrels can eat? I have finished and hung my pleated ring in the window. Through that which is seen I filmed myself swinging.

 Later I felt you standing there in the clearing did you come to say goodbye. 

 13th

Hovering in the window are two hole and one-half blank pages.  One is a doorway that reflects the sky back to me. I have started pleating the paper from 1996 ‘I swear to take a man I love to the William Morris room’ heading backwards to 1993 ‘I am a pimple on the clear complexion of the earth’ It feels less like destroying more like mending. Together they went to Dorchester to by wax thread and needles. We met by the sea and ate overpriced fish. The dog was sick under the chair. The ink is dry and I have lost my thread let’s start again.

 I have paper now also scissors and a stone. paper wraps stone, stone blunts scissors, scissors cut paper do you need all there or just two of the same? You have not appeared. I am going to thread the wax string into the sail needle and see what happens.  

 12th

Frank, Dickon, Nick, Simon one and two, Benji, Luke, Ben, Rob…Fold, Fold, Fold… ‘I hate me’

I have dismantled 1994- I think I might turn it all into a giant clown’s ruff, for Lucky. 

They predicted I would marry but would have many other men in the kitchen making breakfast. I would be hippyish, would hate my kids and make them wear clothes from Oxfam. I would cut out butterflies and hang them from the ceiling, wear weird cloths and leave all the windows open. I am scared the blank pages will steal my words. To late I have cut the cord shall I rearrange, edit extract or just eat it?

 There is a pile for travel, Nepal, Cherbourg; one for small notes from the school board; a permit for treks of enchantment; a reference to a burnt eyelid; letters from Belgium,; my first pill packet; a paperclip; old photographs; cards from dead people; tattoos to be applied at the same time by friends across the channel and poems and quotes from Chaplin and Rossetti.

 A small dent has appeared on my third finger sort of like an old bee sting with a worn-out center. I am writing this a studio where other people’s archives are hiding, trapped in liminal space.  I am afraid of blankness. It hovers, lurks waits to punch, suffocates.  It’s a full moon on Saturday. Burning rituals have happened here before.  Ash can feed fallow ground. Can it be a fond farewell?

The lady with the grey dog wouldn’t burn here diaries. She keeps them for memory and to give to her daughter to read so she understands her… but she only has sons. My brother stopped by for tea today.

 A red admiral butterfly flew in earlier. She said it might be her mother. The moon and the Deer are here to help me.

 11th

I am afraid of you blank page because of the old ones. Left-handed people should not use fountain pens. The sky is hammering on the corrugated plastic roof it wants to be heard. I am sitting in a corner outside is a perfect clearing with a single swing. This morning I felt something I turned and caught a flash of the rear end of a deer. There were more, two are dappled with multiple moons.  I arrived with a box of supplies packed by my mum inside it she had put an old embroidery hoop and an image of a small girl holding a hula hope int a spinning glass frame. It’s on the table if you spin it catches the evening sun and turns the room into a carousel. I also bought the Dorset diaries 15-18 1993-1996 from the side all you see is the edge. Diaries are not tidy things, stuff slips out. ‘We don’t grow up we just layer’. I am going to fold the page back make the first of many creases. Why do we keep them? unhealed trauma someone said recently. I think I just saw an albino deer, a sign of divinity, transformation and soul purification. I stare out the window longing for it to return. I am both doe and fawn being chased by a blank white page. My hand is bloodied now there is no turning back. I can slay with a pen. Stay on the deer tracks. If there is a point on a circle you can get to it two ways.  At home in a glass dome I have a broken pulled glass fawn with an old clay pipe for a leg. Almost I stand it up holding my breath as I replace the lid so it doesn’t fall. Another thing on the table here is a terracotta faceless woman hunched over in a headscarf and shawl. I made her at the same time as the diaries. She is the sister of another figure bent almost double. I don’t know if she still exists? If so she is in the blue mountains near indigo valley. She has travelled further than me. It’s dusk the deer have returned. I have switched out the lights and am laying, waiting. I no longer fear blank pages because I am already wrapped. I have cut my eyes on thorns and fallen down banks in bad shoes. I turned my coat to amour but now it is returning to fur. I am still wary of predators but am looking across at a wide-open space near running water with a swing where deer’s come often to graze.

  Deer Moon meeting you was a gentle joy and I miss you.

I must order more red ink.

Much love

Lucy

Sharon Bennett, Dan, Nora aged 5 and Cordelia aged 2.

This was our second time at the Mothership and we were very much looking forward to our stay. We were invited to arrive the night before our official residency began so that we could participate in the previous artist’s sharing and so that Sharon could give a talk about her practice. It was great to meet Zoe and her daughter Jojo and hear, see and taste all about their residency together. We also were able to meet lots of local artists and friends of Anna’s. It was inspiring to meet this community of artists and see how supportive they are of each other. That evening really set us up for our week ahead.

For this trip we decided to travel lighter and arrived with much less art equipment than we brought on our first visit. Instead we wanted to connect with the beautiful surroundings and use found materials to inspire us. We did bring some air dried clay, some string for Sharon to crochet with and some paints for the children.

Sharon got excited after learning about rope and net making on a trip to Bridport museum on our first day. Inspired, she went across the street to the hardware store and bought up their supply of jute garden twine. For the rest of the week, she crocheted a net using the twine. This rope making sparked a curiosity that has lasted beyond our trip and has turned into an investigation as part of her practice.

Whilst digging around outside, Dan discovered that the earth on site is very heavy with clay. Using homemade tools and found materials, he was already using the air dried clay to make pots on his own and with the children and began to experiment with the found clay as well. This exploration of materials has also put him on a new trajectory in terms of practice.

Being at the Mothership and exploring creativity both as a family and as individuals galvanises our commitment to continue to live the life and seek opportunities that fulfil and nurture us. The Mothership residency has become an important part of our Summer, forcing us to stop, take stock, reconnect with each other and with nature and most of all with making and creativity. Sometimes, despite our best efforts those things fall off as going back to work and busy family life takes over. We look forward to our next trip to get us back on track.

‘Anthropo+Screen by-products, episode i’.

‘Anthropo+Screen by-products, episode i’

‘Let the conditions reveal the priorities’

KUDERA + MPEARSONATER is a collaboration between international artists based in Liverpool: fashion designer Alena Kudera (CZ) and me, a multi-disciplinary performance maker and dance researcher, Mary Pearson (USA). 

In June 2019, I came to the Mothership for a residency as part of our new project ‘Anthropo+Screen by-products, episode i’. I stayed in a tent in the yard, and my 2 dance research collaborators from California, Anya Cloud and Karen Schaffman, shared the Mothership studio.

Central to the project is a collection of garments made from single use plastics and materials destined for the landfill. The costumes add a rich palette of sensory feedback to the body, which inspires how we move. When working in costumes outdoors, we add to that the sensory feedback from the landscape. On the stunning Jurassic Coast, this meant strong coastal winds, pebbles under our feet, steep rock cliffs and pounding waves.

The phrase that kept coming up during our week of research was, ‘Let the conditions reveal the priorities’. Meaning that our research was shaped and guided by the particulars of the unique residency situation: sharing a 1-room cabin in the countryside, 2 collaborators whose bodies were lagging in a different time zone, me needing to drive a rental car each day to get to our working sites, just after I’d been in a frightening car accident. 

Shifting of attention between technology and nature created an especially striking contrast. Each day in the car, the post-accident trauma highlighted how demanding driving can be on the nervous system, as well as getting our sense of orientation from digital devices. Our work outdoors demanded a very different type of attention, slowing down time, and sensing how our bodies were moved by the materials that surrounded us. Time spent in the car amplified the alienation we feel anyways in relation to the land, and meeting our basic survival needs.

There were many surpsrising and poignant moments during our week, but I’ll name two. I’d booked a beautiful village hall for some studio work, and that day we got a call we’d confused and missed our time slot. We had finished filming on one of the beaches with pebbles the size of blueberries. We were packed and just as we were ready to leave, we began rolling in the pebbles. Anya’s focus shifted to the micro-scale. She was looking at the different individual rocks, and began collecting, some with spots, or stripes, blues and purples, yellows and oranges, greens. I scanned the beach, realising the vastness of possibility, and began singing, (as I do) “You might die, collecting rocks. You might die, collecting rocks! Don’t say I didn’t warn you...” We collected for nearly 2 hours; when our different aesthetic preferences revealed themselves, we began co-curating our collections. I would find a rock that became central to someone else’s collection, someone would donate an essential piece to mine. We set the task of reducing our collections to only 5 rocks, then 3. It was a brutal but necessary editing process. Days later, we discovered that exercise in choicemaking to be useful preparation for our research process. 

The other surprising moment was our last day, when we decided we’d had enough of the car and wanted to cross the land surrounding the Mothership on foot. We crossed fields with sheep, horses, cows, calves, a fox. It was a relief to measure the land with our bodies, and an an especially huge relief to reach the pub for dinner after several hours of walking!

Litter Picking as Art by Alison Whitmore:  Residency 28 Sept 19 to 5 Oct 19

Based in Nottinghamshire, my art practice investigates ideas of value, through the use of found objects.  In late September 2019 I travelled down to the Mothership, deep in the Dorset countryside, for a week-long residency.  This live/work studio space overlooking a small river, with woods on the opposite bank, is run by Anna Best, and is located approximately 1 mile outside the village of Powerstock.  This space, without internet access, is ideal for quiet reflection, experimentation and focusing on artwork.  

The week was spent walking in the countryside and on the coast, collecting litter and cataloguing it. In doing this I explore the idea of litter picking as an art form, whilst simultaneously collecting materials for my assemblage work.  Over the course of 4 days out litter picking I collected 1095 pieces, including 136 plastic bottle caps and 112 pieces of marine/fishing rope. In addition, 361 of the items collected had been in the environment so long that they were no longer identifiable.  

As yet this information remains in notebook and digital form, and on a documentary level I find this shocking and upsetting.  It is clear, that in the areas where more people gather or pass through there is a far bigger problem with litter in the environment than more remote areas of the countryside.  Collected plastics will form part of forthcoming sculptural, assemblage and installation work.  

My time at the Mothership was enormously valuable in my experimentation with ideas around the critical mass of human detritus: that which is lost, discarded and worn.  

'Crab & Bee at the Mothership'

Crab & Bee came to the Mothership in early June. They wanted to take some time to reflect, after a productive but very busy winter making work for the Plymouth Labyrinth project (https://plymouthlabyrinth.wordpress.com). More recently, they had made a site performance walk for delegates at the ‘Celebrating Island Culture and Heritage’ symposium at St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly. Shortly after this, they had spent a week on an urban slipway and beach, writing and installing a site specific myth for the residents of Teats Hill, in Plymouth. After all this activity, Crab & Bee needed quiet time to think about all that had happened: how all the stories, streams, creatures, characters, back lanes, tunnels and genius loci they had encountered connected together. Not just through walking, but through convivial activity, making and myth-making. They wanted to bring all these ideas together in a book called Web Walking. 

They arrived in unseasonably cold weather, so it was very good to be able to light the huge wood burner, and even better to find that it was very quick and easy to light, did not belch smoke back into the room and warmed the whole place very quickly. Then, as they do, Crab & Bee went out walking.

The Mothership is set in acres of pale, yellowy green meadowland. The grass was long and very wet and full of wild flowers. After months of walking the peripheries of a city for Plymouth Labyrinth, Crab & Bee were initially disorientated by a place that was so easy on the eye, for they had become used to the gritty fiction of the edgelands. However, it was not long until they came up against a different kind of friction; an unspoken conspiracy to bamboozle walkers. There were bullocks in many fields; Crab & Bee were rather cowardly on several occasions... until they realised that they would never go anywhere if they did not get a grip of themselves. They walked on paths that were not on the map, and could not find paths and landmarks that were. One path tried to lure them off a steep ravine, and others had their signs obliterated, their ways-through stitched together, strung with wire.  They saw deer everywhere, fallow deer, a white hart, and once a tiny fawn hiding in the long  grass. One day, they they walked down an ancient winding, watery lane that sang a two-part harmony to them as it babbled along. Along that winding lane, they experienced a shift of scale: trees grew immense and Crab & Bee turned into tiny ants tunnelling inside, rather than on top of the earth. 

Towards the end of their stay, Crab & Bee went along way, to Eggardon Hill an enigmatic  presence always visible during their wanders. After being run off the road by a ghostly white sports car, they saw a skylark ascend into a cloud. The wind buffeted them as they walked the ridge to the Bell Stone to encounter teenage phantasms smoking fags and swigging cider. On the way home they found two tumuli in a field: a bump with a ring around it, and another bump: Sun and Moon.

After each expedition, the Mothership was always cozy to come back to. One day, it rained and rained and Crab & Bee stayed in. Never before had this happened. They did a lot of writing, some drawing, cooked great dinners and took naps. Anna came for a visit, set her moth traps, and they chatted and drank beer and cider until the small hours. 

On the last night, people came to visit. Anna made a glinting green tea for everyone, Crab & Bee told some winding walking stories, gave out curly poems, swung the bones and talked about Web Walking. Crab & Bee relaxed. They got a lot of work done. They would like to return one day.

'Smoking Mirror' https://crabandbee.tumblr.com

Notes from the Mothership Jo Ball

My first stay at the Mothership was early in January 2017. My son Ben came with me, he was 20 months old. Starting to talk, run, draw and be able to communicate more clearly. Two memories of that trip have stayed strong. 

The long walk we took through the woods up the hill behind the studio with Ben on my back, in the sling. Through the deep, crunchy frost that lay over the gorse and grass. The clearest of blue skies and pale winter sunlight. 

The other is of Ben recognising the call of an owl for the first time. Hearing the twit-twoo we had been reading from books from an actual live owl outside in the country darkness. 

We went again in April 2017, this time with my partner Matt. I don't remember much of this trip, my memory since having children has become pretty patchy through lack of sleep and just the sheer volume of things that fill your brain.  Finding time to make art once you’re an an adult is hard, especially if it’s not making you an income and you’re working alongside it to pay the bills. Once kids arrive it became even harder. At times it feels impossible to find the time to have any kind of ‘me-time’ let alone time to actually make something or even to think ‘art-thoughts’. Moments are snatched during naps, tv watching, the small window between their bedtime and before you fall into bed. I’m writing this now with my youngest sleeping on me, still breast-feeding whilst I type. 

But don’t get me wrong, I love having them around. The wonder you rediscover in the world is so precious it make the loss of one’s own time almost irrelevant, it’s somehow not really a like-for-like comparison. But it can be hard and I do miss having my own time.

The last time we went was Easter 2019. Now a family of four, Polly was 18 months old, Ben just turned 4. The copse was swimming with bluebells. A warm Easter weekend had sprung them all out at the same time and the woods were in peak glow. We had an egg hunt. Swung from the rope swings under the huge oak that towers outside the studio. We saw deer. Went to the beach. Spent much-needed time as a family having fun, enjoying each other after a hard couple of years due to a family illness. And although I didn't really think about making art whilst there I took lots of video footage in the bluebell woods which I am now, 6 months later, beginning to editing into a small moving image work. An approach I’ve wanted to try out ideas with for a while now.

The Mothership offers a space, as a magical place to stay but also mentally. To reconnect with the idea of being an artist, aligning that with being a parent and starting to see that the two are not as incompatible as they first felt to me. Relaxing into making work alongside, or even with, your children. I hope to go back this year and next both on my own and with my family. It’s a very special place that I wholeheartedly recommend going to experience. Anna is a generous host - around for chats but also giving you space so you feel very much free to do your own thing.

Thinking about making art in relation to being at the Mothership - the times I have had, and hope to have in the future, are more than about creating work whilst there. The visits have fed my mind and my soul, and reconnected me to my family and nature in a deep and nourishing way. 

And from this seeds will grow…

Stones and moss

A week at the Mothership. Drawing moss, filming stones, starting a mezzotint and writing up last year’s notes. A wonderful evening discussing work with students from Hooke Park. https://giftsformothermnemosyne.wordpress.com/2019/04/25/untethering-a-stone/ 

Luminara Star 

The Mothership Artist Residency is run by artist Anna Best. Set in the middle of the beautiful Dorset countryside, the eco log cabin is a haven from the interruptions of the outside world.

Eating, sleeping and working in the same space, brought fluidity to my days spent at the Mothership. I found myself drifting from one activity to another with ease, something that doesn’t seem to happen in my home studio. The work, I had originally intended to focus on for the seven days, did not take place. Instead, a new dreaming and ideas settled in, encouraging me to experiment in unfamiliar ways with familiar mediums.

Inspired by the wildness of the surrounding forest and a copy of singer/songwriter/performance artist, Kate Bush’s book ‘How to be Invisible’ (a birthday gift from my mother) I played with text, sound and digital filters. Many of Kate Bush’s lyrics reference witches and witchcraft. I focused on two songs, The Hounds of Love and Waking the Witch. Working with selected lyrics and presenting them in contrasting realities of the forest outside my window and the digital world. Instagram was used as a virtual gallery, mapping my journey throughout the residency.

I drove to the beach on a day when it did not stop raining. Setting up camp in my car, I ate takeaway chips while listening to Kate Bush songs on the cd player. Allowing tears to flow freely when they came and singing along when I wanted. Following the lyrics of songs word by word, marvelling at the nonsensical poetry of them.

Eye of Braille

Hem of Anorak

Stem of Wallflower

Hair of Doormat

Evenings, at the Mothership were spent listening to podcasts about mental health by Fearn Cotton, Russell Brand, Stephen Fry and Dawn French. This is something I rarely have the opportunity to do in my “ordinary” life.  It was a reminder of how important self-care is, especially, with the physical, emotional and psychological conflicts that can arise when being an artist and a mother.

Jon Gracey

"Spent a wonderful time working on my writing, going for walks with this excellent dog, thinking and developing ideas. Was such a productive, useful time. I can't wait to go back. The Mothership unlocked a lot of things that had been sitting in my mind for a long time, gathering dust. Can't recommend it enough."

Ulijona Odišarija and James Lowne

During our time at Mothership we walked, talked, wrote lyrics, drew and recorded sounds. We spent time discussing theories around improvisation and recording, authenticity and performance, differences between the art world and the music world. We talked about survival, wilderness and the X-files after we found a deer carcass on the roadside. On our walks through the fields we talked about language and how some things can't be said. We got lost once. We made plans and dreams for our band Steve & Samantha and did field recordings. On our last day we talked about our art practices with Anna.

Sharon Bennett and Dan, Nora and Cordelia McDermott

When we decided to apply for the Mothership residency as a family, we hoped that we would reconnect with a creative practice (Dan), develop an idea for a project (Sharon), paint on a canvas (Nora aged 4.5) and have lots of painty play (Cordelia aged 19 months).  

On arrival we were blown away by the serenity and creative energy of the place. We noted how we instantly felt creative and calm.  Although we had also rented the caravan, we decided to all sleep in the studio, at least for the first night (in the end we stayed in the studio for the whole week).  After the children went to bed, Dan and I stayed up talking about art practice and came up with a great idea for a new project for me.  Then Dan started playing about with light and shadows on the wall and we ended up making a film and taking photos.  A good start to the week.

That first night set the tone for the whole week.  We quickly settled into life at the Mothership.  Nora and Cordelia made friends with Serena and Emilio who lived next door and over the course of the week we got to know and developed a friendship with the whole family that has lasted beyond our residency.  We took turns having creative time alone and as a family.  The children played outside, picked vegetables from the garden, climbed trees and we all enjoyed walks and lots of outdoor time.  We visited Bridport and Lyme Regis and had a bit of beach time.  

We were so inspired by life at the Mothership that I wrote the Code of Creativity as a manifesto to take back with us to ‘normal’ life.  

Code of Creativity

1. Early to bed, early to rise

2. 30 mins of creativity each day

3. Mediate (or yoga or Qi Gong) for 15 mins each day (create emotional space)

4. Do less, less commitments (create temporal space)

5. Simplify our belongings and home (create physical space)

6. Take it in turns for longer creative sessions / childcare

7. Live joyfully and playfully

8. Practice gratitude every day

9. Be attuned with nature.  Have time outdoors.

10. Follow ideas when they come.  Give them time and space to develop

11. Learn to live and create alongside fear

12. Happiness leads to success

Nora added number 13

13. Play with my friend Serena

The residency was life changing for us.  We had time as a family to live in a way that we want to, being creative together in a natural environment.  Nora talks about the residency a lot.  It has had a huge impact in her short life.  Writing this blog post has reminded me of our wonderful time there.  We can’t wait to go back.

Natasha MacVoy

D U R I N G  M Y  R E S I D E N C Y  A T  T H E M O T H E R S H I P  I  T H O U G H T A B O U T  S P A C E  

I considered the space I occupy, but also, how much space I would like to take up.  I thought about boldness and the qualities required to achieve it.  I read in the middle of the night when the storms clattered on the roof. I wrote. I wrote about events from my past that have been accompanying me for years. I thought about time no longer drawn in a straight line from past to future. I walked for hours in the lanes, reducing the decisions I needed to make to the choice of left or right. I talked about my work. I thought. I thought about seeing and being seen. I drew out ideas and let others formulate. I listened to my music, at the volume I wanted it. I drove myself to cities and openings. I took turnings that had appealing names when I became distracted. I drew without prescribed intention.

I did not try to finish anything. I did not close ideas down or stop the ones that felt too big. I did not question my lack of desire to admire nature or marvel in it. I stopped trying to make things I already knew.

I had an intense, productive two weeks opening my practice up and exploring it. The Mothership was the perfect setting for this and Anna was the perfect host.

Thanks!