a-n Professional Development Bursary

In March Sarah and I were awarded the a-n professional development project. The aim of the project was to inspire and teach us how to create larger, more ambitious work in the form of an immersive space.

We began the bursary by meeting with Ruby Soho who makes large-scale work for festivals that uses a mixture of art installation and performance. Ruby gave us loads of useful advice about funding, scaling up and health and safety. The piece of advice that will always stick with us was the ‘naked fox man’ story, the moral of the story was know who the festival audience is and consider how they will treat your work and if your work can withstand this treatment! Since meeting Ruby she has written a lot of blogs full of handy advice, take a look at them here. You can find the Ruby Soho blog on Sarah’s  blog.

From Ruby we went to Waterman’s Art Centre. UnReal: XYZ / s and were quite surprised by the way they got the audience to interact with the work. From this we learnt that audience participation shouldn’t be integral to the work as not everyone is comfortable with it. We both felt that our work needed to be visually impressive and have interactive possibilities that the audience can participate in if they want to. At the Waterman’s we also saw What’s In A Line, which had some brilliant interactive activities that were so simply and really affective. The blog for this is on Julia’s page.

In June Julia went to Random String Symposium, a day of lectures about digital art. This inspired us to think digital: before she went, digital art seemed pretty scary by the end of the day she’d found some really approachable ways to create digital art, for example Bare Conductive electric paint. If you’ve not seen this, have a look at Polyphonic Playground by Studio PSK. Melissa Mean from Knowle West Media Centre presented a seminar and it was full of useful starting points:

• Where are the people all ready? Go to where they are.
• Value what all ready exists.
• Reveal the richest that is all ready there.
• Start with people and not the tech.
• Bring the tech in slowly. What happens at the end? What does it do?
• First step very simply
• Put the means of production in the hands of the people.
• Create disruptive spaces for new rules and relationships.

These are definitely points to consider when starting new work. You can see the full blog on Julia’s page.

After Random String Nicola Richardson came to meet us. She runs Vortex-Creates along with Marianne Taviner. Vortex-Creates describes itself as a collection of professionalism, creativity and kickass design, they create costumes and sets for events, theatre and walkabouts. Nicola was full of fantastic advice, the key pieces were; use your voice, tell people what you do and ask for their help, make the right conversations, be in the right places, talk to the right people, go and seek out, travel all over, say no! (as well as yes) and be cheeky. You can read the full blog on Julia’s page.

During June we were busy creating Big Knitting. We think the a-n development bursary gave us a confidence boost, which really helped with our application for Big Knitting and we think it helped build Coventry 2021’s confident in us. Big Knitting was an amazing experience as it was our first really large-scale installation and the audience interacted with it more than we could have wished for. We learnt so much from the whole experience. Now we are in the process of getting dates booked for next year festivals. The full blog for Big Knitting is on Julia’s page.

Straight after Big Knitting we met with Loz Samuels, Arts & Pay Development Officer for Wyre Forest District Council. Loz runs Kidderminster Arts Festival (KAF), which runs for the first two weeks of August. We met with Loz as our experience of festivals has been paid entry festivals rather than community festivals. We were surprised to learn that Loz used to be an acrobat and aerial rigger and she therefore had a lot of useful tips for us, such as the idea that making Big Knitting climbable may be too tricky and not worth approaching. You can see the full blog on Sarah’s page.

From meeting with Loz we are now looking to create a new installation for KAF. We’re looking to create a community project that takes inspiration from their carpet history and local designer Lucienne Day. We are hoping to create large woven panels with different community groups to hang on the Town Hall along with weaving flagging tape along Kidderminster’s main street and a seating area out side the Town Hall. KAF really like the ideas and are just waiting to secure their funding before they can confirm the project.

The following week we headed to London to the Victoria Miro to see Yayoi Kusama solo exhibition and to the V&A to see Elytra. Victoria Miro was our first stop where we were immersed in Yayoi Kusama small room of mirrors and repeating objects. The use of mirrors really created that immersive feeling that we are looking to inject into our work and as such we feel that mirrors are something we should really think about using. In the Victoria Miro we were lucky enough to bump into Rana Begum, The Space Between. She had used metal in repeating forms to create art works that changed in perception as you viewed them from different angles. Her work really affirmed our use of repetition and how effective it is. After the Victoria Miro, gallery we headed to the V&A to see Elytra a filament pavilion that uses robots to create the fibre glass installation. We loved the way it was engineered and the visual qualities that were created through the making technique. The technique of the creation being embedded to the design is something we also do, using the textile technique to create our art works form, never embellishing it or manipulating it after production. I think this is a really strong technique and something we will continue to do. You can see the full blog on Julia’s page.

Every year the Serpentine has a summer pavilion that we always go to. This year it was by Bjarke Ingels and consisted of stacked cubes, the pavilion felt like it had erupted from the ground in an elongated form that had been hit by a massive sound wave. The pavilion was a very calming space, which was being used to relax within. Currently we have created immersive chaos and this was the complete opposite, we feel immersive calm is something to consider for the future. From the pavilion Julia headed to the Festival of Love at Southbank where immersive chaos was taking place in their water fountains. The Festival of Love had a mixture of calm, chaos and emotive work. Our favourite piece was Modified Social Benches, they were very social and could be used in many ways, they were also completely ‘naked fox man’ proof, something we really need to consider in our work. You can see the full blog on Julia’s page.

In August we headed to Just So Festival as it is very family friendly and know for having a lot of art. Just So did not disappoint in the forest there was a lot of art for children and families to get involved in. It was mostly performance based with story telling, comedy, theatre, circus and walkabouts. It was really interesting to see what work was out there and how families interacted with different pieces. After the festival we really felt it was the audience for us and something we’d very much like to be involved with. The full blog is on Sarah’s page.

At the end of the summer Julia headed to Finland and visited Kiasma where Choi Jeong Hwa and Ernesto Neto were both exhibiting. Choi Jeong Hwa had created full room installations from repeating mass produced objects. Happy Happy stimulated immense happiness, this was due to the bright colours and the plastic jungle he’d created. Bright colour is something that we should look at using. Ernesto Neto had created installations which again filled the room, his work felt very calming, very still. Removing your shoes really added to the immersive feeling, it really connected you to the work. The lighting also really adds to that calming feel, lighting is something that we should consider in our work concentrating on the effect it can have on the viewer. The full blog is on Julia’s page.

In October Coventry celebrated it’s art, culture and engineering with the Festival of Imagineers. During the festival we saw a lot of outdoor performance, Urban Astronaut, Wheel House, Osadia, Teatro Tascabile di Bergamo Valse and Orchestra of Samples. It rained a lot and we saw how professional companies dealt with this, which made us consider how we could deal with it. Most of the performances had meanings behind them; they were looking at themes that are affecting our society. Orchestra of Samples was a piece that really stood out, taking musicians from all over the world and then mixing them together to create a complete new sound was an amazing experience to see and hear. We are really interested in bringing individual’s art together through them interacting with our work, perhaps we could look at this on a bigger scale with people from across the world creating one installation.

In October Sarah visited the Hive at Kew Garden’s. This was really interesting for us as it’s very different space from galleries and festivals and it was on a larger scale to the work we’d seen previously and used a completely different structure. Like the work we’d seen at Imagineer it had a strong underlying concept, looking at bees and their communication skills and highlighting their decline. Inside the installation felt very calming and you felt very connected to the bees with the use of light, sound and vibration coming from their hive. This again made us think of concept and highlighting issues that we feel passionate about, creating calming work and working on a much larger scale. You can read read about it on Sarah’s blog.

A few days later Sarah headed down to Devon and saw Sculpting the Museum by Michael Shaw at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum. Sculpting the Museum filled the gallery, passing through walls and doorways, filling up entire galleries and played with negative space and it’s own huge scale, it also created a warming glow with its orange and yellow tones. The simplicity and scale of the work was very inspiring, taking one simple technique, finding a versatile material and scaling it up to create one very immersive sculpture. This is what we aim to do and will continue to do as it is very affective and creates an instant impact. The full blog is on Sarah’s page.

The winter saw us visiting two light festivals, IN LIGHT: Illuminating Compton Verney and Bruce Munro’s Field of Light at Waddesdon Manor. IN LIGHT children’s workshop ran throughout the festival with children decorating lanterns with different papers and these were hung in Compton’s ground. It was such an effective technique, it was really easy for the children and was visually amazing. It was a very inspiring piece of work as it was large scale, allowed for audience participation and looked brilliant. Bruce Munro’s Field of Light was something we’ve been waiting to see for a very long time, it was a very special afternoon and something we’ll always remember. The scale was immense, it felt as if the Field of Light went on and on, the lighting changed in colour and was beautiful tones, each individual element was so simple yet so powerful when all together. Again this demonstrates the power of repetition, how emotive light can be and the value of keeping things simple. The full blog is on Sarah’s page.

In November we were due to meet with Cathryn Peach from Wild Rumpus who run a lot northern festivals, including Just So. Sadly Cathryn was poorly so we are now due to meet her in January. For our a-n professional development project she has given us some key tips for touring outdoor work, this included pricing, her advice was look at the Arts Council daily rate information and contacts, really use the contacts you have and find out who they know. We will certainly start thinking about who we know and who we should be getting in contact with. You can see the full blog on Julia’s page.

It has been a busy year and we’ve learnt a lot on the way. The things that really stick out are ‘the naked fox man’, keep things simple, scale them and repeat, lighting and the possibility of more meaningful concepts and finally using the contacts we have. We feel that the a-n development bursary has been a big confidence boost for us and has increased organisations trust in us. We feel that as a result of a-n we created Big Knitting which has now opened a lot of doors for us, we are now creating a large scale project for Kidderminster Art Festival (dependent on funding), making a new interactive installation for Art in the Park in Leamington Spa (dependent on funding), possibly creating an installation for the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum summer exhibition and maybe even creating something for Just So, along with touring Big Knitting in the summer. It’s been a brilliant experience, we’d advise anyone that has begun to create work and is looking to develop it to a greater scale to apply for the bursary in the future.

Cathryn Peach is the Creative Producer at Wild Rumpus and the Network Manager, Northern Festivals Network. Wild Rumpus and Northern Festivals run a lot of festivals including, Just So, Kendal Calling, Ramsbottom Festival, Festival No.6, Underneath the Stars and Cloudspotting Festival. In addition to the festivals they run a lot of events as well. The Northern Festivals Network aims to increase the amount of high quality arts for families at Greenfield festivals. They work with Arts Council England and receive funding from them to create an environment where a wide range of high quality outdoor family art can thrive. They work with companies to develop audience for family outdoor work.

Ruby Jennings put us in touch with Cathryn and it feels like a really great contact to have. We were due to meet with Cathryn in November as part of our a-n professional development project. Sadly Cathryn was unwell instead we’ve had an email exchange with her and are now due to meet her in January. The two questions we really needed help from Cathryn was how do we approach organising a tour and how should we cost our work. Here is Cathryn’s response..

“The best way is often through gaining contacts from others, so mine the contacts you have for all of their contacts. Its always worth asking around as the festival world is so small.

Price points, I would work out your daily rate per person, then how many people for an installation, your travel per mile, your per diems, and then build in development money (either to cover what you have done or cover you going forward).

The Arts Council has advice on daily rates that you could start with. Obviously it might be to begin with that you need to be flexible and reduce a little but I would try and be flexible with the amount you’re offering, rather than so flexible on your fee. It is probably better for you to offer more at the same rate than reduce the cost loads, as the base cost for you getting there, and it will give you the chance hopefully, to exhibit more of your work.”

We need to start being a bit cheekier and a little braver and asking people for their contacts! I shall go through who I know and consider who they might know and if they could be useful contacts for us.

The price points information is very useful too. I hadn’t considered money for development in our current cost, of course this is something that needs to be considered.

In the same email exchange I sent Cathryn our e-portfolio and tour pack for Big Knitting, which again she came back with some really useful advice on..

“The portfolio of your work is really great and definitely what we would look at first. It is great to have a tour pack too, I would also include a variety of prices at different levels, these can always be negotiated but it gives the festivals a place to start, examples of the span of land you can cover would also be good. Is it always that you would need a cherrypicker? I imagine this might be a sticking point for some festivals.”

From what Cathryn has said a e-portfolio and tour pack are really useful tools. We have now added a range of base prices to our Big Knitting tour pack that allow for average mileage and different amount of days. Sarah is very good as using CAD, she is going to create a layout of the space we need. Both Sarah and I are quite small and Big Knitting needs to be high up, this is why we added the cherrypicker to avoid this issue I’m going to look into buying large portable ladders for us to use. At previous festivals we’ve had long waits for scaffold towers (2 days once), having your own equipment is a lot better and your own scaffold licence and cherry picker licence, we are getting these in preparation for summer 2017.

If you’d like to see our tour pack for Big Knitting or e-portfolio please email me [email protected]

Cathryn has kindly offered to acted on her first point of using others contacts and will send our Big Knitting tour pack to her contacts once we’ve made the amendments.

I’m really looking forward to meeting her in the New Year.

Sarah and I are very lucky to live in Coventry, a lot of culture happens here and at the beginning of October we were treated to the Festival of Imagineers and a visit from our very lovely friend Ceri. On Saturday 1st October the ran was coming down, a quick check on Twitter that the rain hadn’t out the performers off and the festival was still happening.

Urban Astronaut by Highly Sprung

We headed down to University Square to see the first performance Urban Astronaut by Highly Sprung. This is a performance I seen glimpses of but never the first performance, it was great to see the full piece. The Urban Astronaut looks at what the world could be like in the future with serious air pollution problems. A female dancer explains through dance that the rich have left in rockets to other worlds and those who couldn’t afford it are left, some with more money have astronaut suits and others don’t. The female we are watching doesn’t wear a suit and is nurturing the earth, growing plants and collecting water, it feels she still loves the planet. Some time into the performance the Urban Astronaut arrives he is suit wearing along with his companions, his companions walk and they propeller him up and down on a travelling time machine. At first they destroy her world, pull her plants and home apart but she starts to show them that the world is okay and they don’t need suits and masks and slowly they begin to see. Eventually the Urban Astronaut is suit and mask free and dancing in formation with female. It is a beautiful performance with a powerful and easy to understand story. It was also interesting to see the performance taking place in heavy rain and how well the performers dealt with it. When Sarah and I are creating new outside work we should consider how it would work in the rain.

Herbert Art Gallery & Museum

After the performance we headed into the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum who were celebrating the Festival of the Dead. The gallery was a hive of activity with Drink & Draw, street dance and crazy hairdressing from Osadia. Osadia was performance hairdressing, the two stylist didn’t appear to say anything and we’re dress fantastically in evening gowns, they did members of the publics hair in absolutely amazing styles.

Wheel House by Acrojou

Back in University Square we watched Wheel House. Wheel House is a converted German Wheel, props have been added to create the feeling of a full home within the wheel. The performers go about their day to day lives living in the wheel. Through the performance you watch them work through the struggles of living within the wheel, the most moving was when the female character fell out while sleeping. I really enjoyed the performance, visually it was brilliant, watching the acrobatics taking place in and around the wheel was a lot of fun.

Teatro Tascabile di Bergamo Valse

The performance was meant to take place within the Cathedral ruins but sadly couldn’t because of the rain. The new Cathedral is very large and has a very high ceiling, the performance was moved inside instead. It felt very special to be within the Cathedral during the evening, it looked stunning with low lighting and candles. Teatro Tastable di Bergamo was a dance performance on stilts and was beautiful to watch, the ladies where dressed in beautiful ball gowns and the gents in suits. My favourite part of the performance was when they light giant balloons filled with helium which floated to the ceiling and burst at the top exploring confetti everywhere. Visually the whole performance was very impressive I felt it really showed how being flexible with venues can actually really add to art as the Cathedral felt like the perfect fit for the performance, we just missed a few fireworks!

Orchestra of Samples by Addictive TV

The final performance of the festival was Orchestra of Samples by Addictive TV. This was a brilliant performance, while touring Addictive TV have recorded hundreds, thousands of musicians and filmed them playing. They have now mixed the recordings together, you have a few musicians playing together at once with all of their videos playing on a screen behind the mixing desk. This really changed the music the musicians where playing, you would get some very traditional music and modern together creating one sound. I loved the way this twist was created, taking individual musicians and then creating a whole new product from them. Perhaps this is something for Sarah and I to think about.

On a beautifully sunny day in August I headed to London to see the Serpentine Pavilion and Summer House and the Festival of Love. After watching the world go by in Hyde Park while eating my lunch I head to this years Pavilion by the Bjarke Ingels Group.

The Pavilion was a cool and calm space with a light breeze. Inside the space is a small cafe and plenty of space for sitting to take in the space. People are taking it easy, relaxing and admiring aspects of the Pavilion. Through the day this will be an ever changing space as the sun moves and creates shadows and light across the Pavilion in different spots. At the moment the sun is right above me and the light is predominately coming from the left, this is because the cubs are shallow, on my right they are dead rectangles which are perhaps as long as me in length (if you’ve not met me, I’m quite short and so is Sarah). It would be fun if yay could crawl through them but it would completely change the calming atmosphere. The Pavililon is created from stacked cubes / rectangles and they are all stacked with an overlap. A baby girl has just entered her eyes are wide and she is looking all around in a totally calm trance. A little boy comments it’s like a little house. The calmness of the space really intrigues me. Big Knitting was full of children running, in here it is the complete opposite, is this something we could try and capture in our work one day? We really wanted to create something very interactive which Big Knitting was and we both feel we can develop on this and create even more interactive work, for now I think we will continue to create interactive chaos but maybe next year we’ll fancy calming it down a bit!

This year the Pavilion included Summer Houses as part of the exhibition. Kunlé Adeyemi’s created a inverse replica of Queen Caroline’s Temple. Barkow Leibinger was inspired by a 18th Century temple which was designed by William Kent. Yona Friedman’s was a modular structure that can be assembled and dissembled in different formations, this was a extension of La Ville Spatial (Spatial City). Sarah & I are really interested in modular work and what it could become, it was great to see this summer house to get modular ideas. The structure was very simple, based on a cube but felt very unique with the way it was stacked, this is definitely something to think about as it allows for the installation to feel different at every exhibition it goes to and can also adjust to fit into different spaces.

Asia Kha’s summer hose was inspired by the Queen Caroline’s Temple which was positioned to catch the sunlight from the Serpentine lake. This was a great place to sit and catch the sunlight, I spent a good half an hour soaking up the sun and watching people interacting with the sunhouses, it was a brilliant space to be in.

From Hyde Park I jumped onto a Boris bike and headed to Southbank, I was pretty impressed with my self as I made it pretty quickly! This summer Southside is celebrating with Festival of Love, a festival for families for ‘fun in the sun’ and it was a very sunny day for me to have a bit of fun. Appearing Rooms by Jeppe Hein was the first installation I came across, it was certainly fun in the sun. Appearing Rooms is a water fountain shooting water from the ground in different shoot formations for children to run through. The sounds of joyous screams fill the air as the kids have the time of their lives jumping in and out of the water. I wish I could join them, maybe I’ll have to make one in my garden. I am enjoying the odd splash and sprays that are bouncing off them as they run. The screams are infectious and bring absolute joy, I can’t wipe the smile off my face. Maybe water art us the way to go! For now work that creates excitement and screams of joy is the aim.

My second find is Modified Social Benches NY again by Jeppe Hein, bright red benches in fun different shapes. They are very hard to photograph, kids are loving them too much and adults too. Either posing for a pic or sliding down them. I love that they are here all summer, so solid, safe and useable.

Inside the Royal Festival Hall Ventricle by Softlab NYC hangs, the structure of a heart on a massive scales shining in reflective pinks and purple. The material is very interesting, I’m not exactly sure what it is, the guide says a complete woven aluminium, I will see if I can research it. Love Stoies from Southbank made me slightly tearful, the Archive Studio wall is covered in a tales of love stories that all have a connections with Soutbank, here is just one of them from Stewart “I did my courting there. Concert followed by 5 shilling supper – choice of 2 out of 3 courses. Little lamplit tables overlooking the Thames. Not too expensive for two young people, romantic, and then my “young man” walked me over the bridge to put me on the last train to Putney. Happy Days’. Capturing and sharing stories is a wonderful thing that art can do and something I’d like to do as an artist, meet people find out their stories, create a platform for them, share them and preserve them.  My final find inside was The Blue House by Alpha Diagne, this was a real moving insight to the Jungle. To end my visit I saw Just You and Me by Jonathan Kenndy Enyin-Otebil with How About Studio. Enyin-Otebil won the Southbank’s Design Challenge to work along Nick Wood How About Studio. For Summer of Love he’s created Just You and Me which is inspired by two polar bears and evokes ideas of love and sustainability, I really like the structure of it.

I am very lucky to have my sister (Emma) living in Finland and on my most recent trip I was excited to find out that my favourite artist Ernesto Neto was exhibiting in Kiasma, Helsinki and I had to go! It was also a brilliant chance for my sister to get a better understanding of what ‘immersive’ and ‘installation’ art is and for her little boy, Harri to experience his first exhibition.

We got the train to Helsinki which had a brilliant children’s section on it with a slide, books and toys to play with. After a wander round Helsinki we headed to the market which is on the harbour and had some delicious, very traditional fish. Then we headed to Kiasma, Sinikka (Emma’s friend) thought she knew the way, but perhaps was slightly unsure! Not to worry we made it there and Harri had a massive bowl of soup, possibly as big as him.

Choi Jeong Hwa

I was excited to learn that artist Choi Jeong Hwa was also exhibiting. I’d not heard of him before but I absolutely loved his work. Choi Jeong Hwa is an Korean artist designer who uses both new and used mass produced objects in his art. He aims to make art on a human level with the belief that everything can be art and everyone can be an artist “Your heart is my art”. I believe everyone can be artist but they need some creativity to make their art come to life, it is Choi Jeong Hwa creativity and visionary approach which makes his work astounding.

Happy Happy

Happy Happy is a true description of this installation. Every day kitchen plastics in vibrant colours are stacked on signal threads which hang within the gallery creating a beautiful plastic jungle which you can walk through. It filled my heart with joy, I love art that you can touch and experience and here you were invited to walk through the installation and touch the work. The vibrant colours were really stimulating, I think it really did make you release happy endorphins. Harri looked and reached to touch the installation and seemed to really enjoy the experience.

With the kitchen objects he’d used a lot of the same items, salad spinners, glasses, bowls, colanders and repeated these in different colours. The way he stacked them created the illusion of different, more beautiful objects. It draws the unexpected beauty out of the household items. They are all made of ubiquitous material that does not decompose but can be reused. I’m sure you’ll agree from the pictures they are absolutely stunning. The items where sourced from street markets, shops and flea markets in many different countries. The work was put together by the Friends of Kiasma and students in Helsinki.

Love Me, Presence of Eternity, Cosmos (We Are All Flowers) and Flowers Chandelier by Choi Jong Hwa where also being exhibited.

Ernesto Neto 

Sarah and I love, love, love Ernesto Neto, it is the way he creates spaces to interact with that stimulate your senses in so many ways. He creates spaces that give you time to breathe and relax within in which allow to really encounter your own senses and the art created.

A lot of Ernesto Neto’s work takes influence from the Huni Kuin people from the Amazon. There are about 8,000 members of the Huni Kuin spread among villages in Acre, northwest Brazil. Huni Kuin translates as ‘true people’, the core of the Huni Kuin culture is their connection with the natural environment and their unity with other living things. Shamans are able to communicate with natural phenomena, animals and plants by changing shape. In the 19th century the Huni Kuin began to have contact with the majority population of Brazil and Peru and led to enslavement of the Huni Kuni and widespread destruction of their culture. Today the Huni Kuin are fighting for their land rights and for the preservation of their traditions, the collaboration with Ernesto Neto is a way for their voice to be heard. Ernesto Neto has been studying their life in depth and has gained trust of the community and is now making their culture know through his art.

Sailing Between Us 2012

[carpet field] where do we go?

Sailing Between Us and [carpet field] takes up the entire gallery, you are invited to take off your shoes to encounter the piece. Sailing Between Us hangs from the ceiling and is a crocheted structured which creates 6 floating beds. The beds are created from crochet in the same way but filled with plastic balls for comfort. Each bed is placed so you are facing your neighbour. Crochet is often associated with small handy craft but here it is on a massive scale, to me this isn’t surprising at all, that’s because I knit giant art but the gallery has commented on it in the gallery blurb which reminds me what I do is quite unusual! The [carpet field] is a lovely texture for your feet to walk on, again it is crochet, I feel this really connects you to the work as you are physically grounded to it. The beds are a lovely space to sit, relax and watch the world go by, the lighting in the gallery is just right and really adds to the relaxing experience. Lighting is something that Sarah and I should maybe think about, how it changes the way you experience something and the benefits it can have.

The below pieces make up one installation which fills the top gallery of Kiasma:

Boa Garden

Every Tree Is a Civilising Entity

Healing House

Shamans talk

Boa head, hands to be together 

Spiritual Sky

Synapspiritstring

Bamboo Spine

Boa Knit

This Eye Sees Two Sides

Ground Body Earth Spirit

Lake Altar

Light Dotes

Texan Seat and Table

The installation has been especially made for the gallery in Kiasma. It takes influence from the Huni Kuin, the centre piece echoes a communal space form their villages that are used for celebrations and rituals. The boa is a recurring theme through the exhibition, it represents the guiding and empowering spirit for the Huni Kuin. The installation uses Neto’s characteristics of art, textiles and hanging shapes, again the installation is crocheted. It has the same beautiful texture underfoot and you are invited to remove your shoes. It is a fabulous space to sit within, the use of crochet makes the structure feel very light and very calming. I laid on the floor looking up through the patterns created by the installation. There are so many different elements to it, so many areas to enjoy, the shapes colours and patterns compliment each other perfectly, it is an absolutely beautiful place to be, breathe and relax.