Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Forestry Commission England have announced new support from Arts Council England (ACE) for their Jerwood Open Forest initiative, enabling an additional £30,000 commission to be realised.
The project initially offered five research bursaries of £2,000, developmental support from the teams at Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Forestry Commission England, and an exhibition at Jerwood Space, London, all in preparation for one project to be selected to receive a major £30,000 commission. The additional support through ACE’s Grants for the arts programme means that two of the five shortlisted projects will now go into production.
The news comes as an exhibition that charts the five shortlisted projects over a six-month period of research and development opens in London this week. The selected artists have expanded on their original proposals, engaging with forest sites across England, from Northumberland to Kent, and produced new bodies of work comprising sculpture, film, audio and performance.
Dialogue about nature
Juan delGado’s multimedia installation, Ringing Forest, aims to open a dialogue with the audience about nature, sound and motion. He is collaborating with an arborist to research ideas on phenomenology and the representation of movement and auditory perception.
Adam James is developing a new performance to be staged in forests, exploring cultural belief systems and rituals of a fictional isolated people, living in a pagan, folklore-inspired wild woodland. The piece makes parallels between performance art and live action role-playing.
Using a short, experimental documentary form, Amanda Loomes is exploring how film and forestry can be used on site to reveal the labour and stories of the foresters. Her proposal examines forestry processes and the life cycle of timber, drawing attention to the contemporary working forest.
Artist duo Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt) are developing a site-specific sculpture based on visualisations of the rich research data collected in and around the Forestry Commission’s forests and woodlands.
Chris Watson is collaborating with producer Iain Pate to investigate a multi-channel sound installation to be created from recording the remarkable and seldom heard conversations of ravens returning to their roost en masse.
Building new audiences
Speaking about its additional support for the project, Jo Baxendale, Arts Council England’s Visual Arts Relationship Manager, said: “Jerwood Open Forest is a fantastic opportunity for artists at an early stage in their career to develop ambitious work in unique environments. We are delighted to be supporting this project and it is a good example that reflects our ongoing partnership with Forestry Commission England.
“Jerwood Open Forest really resonates with our joint aim of building new audiences in areas of low engagement or limited arts infrastructure, and we look forward to seeing what develops from this engaging project.”
Shonagh Manson, Director, Jerwood Charitable Foundation, added: “This grant from ACE is a vote of confidence, recognising the scope of ambition of each artist in the Jerwood Open Forest shortlist. It is a privilege to be enabling two major commissions of £30,000.”
Jerwood Open Forest, Jerwood Space, London, 15 January – 23 February. The selected commissions will be announced on 11 February. jerwoodopenforest.org
