Welcome to the 2022 F.S.A.L Arts Festival, that responds to the quote "In Nature Nothing Exists Alone" by Rachel Carson
The has been work created with a focus on sustainability in Performance, Sound, Dance, Music, Sculpture, Installation and Art.
ECO GUILT
(Clay/Sound/installation)
Collaborative expression of personal Eco Guilt and responsibilty
REPACKAGE
(Print/graphics/construction)
Objects and artworks made with print processes
RECONSIDER
(sculpture/sound/installation)
Sculptural forms married with soundscapes explored in the 3D workshop
REFORM
(Clay/ceramic forms )
Exploring all the elastic forms that clay can take
REPROCESS
(Photographic processes)
Making images from sustainable exposures, creating and recording work through photography.
RECONSTUCT
(textiles/installation)
Sculpting with soft, recycled materials, weaving, plaiting, making paper and natural dyes.
"In Nature Nothing Exists Alone"
Quote from Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, (FSAL 2022)
The 2022 mission was to make new work that explores personal and collective ideas responding to this evocative quote, with a strong focus on sustainable practice. A programme of talks, which ran from 7-11 February, was given by artists and creative practitioners whose work and practice is motivated by these themes. These helped to contextualise and inspire an energetic response and sense of environmental responsibility in the artistic labourers.
Creative production centred around a collective work, entitled Eco Guilt Filter, led by Simon Lee Dicker.
​
As the earth hurtles around the sun we cling on to this planet.
It seems almost effortless
But with constant reminders that we are doing it wrong.
Celebrating the Platinum Jubilee of its publication last year ‘ The Sea Between Us’ by pioneering marine biologist and environmentalist Rachel Carson reveals the science and poetry of the sea that talks to us in a way that is still relevant today. This year’s gathering of the Friendly Society of Artistic Labourers explores nature and togetherness through visual art, performance and music with a quote from Rachel Carson, ‘In nature nothing exists alone’ as the starting point for creative exploration. Simon Lee Dicker
Associated Artists
SImon Lee Dicker
Simon Lee Dicker, artist and co founder of OSR Projects, and lead artist for F.S.A.L for the past two years. His work explores a discordant relationship with landscape, the marks we make on the natural world, often evoking ritual activity and personal narratives that involve other people in the production and presentation of work. Connecting people through artist-led activity.
Lotte Scott
Lotte Scott’s artwork explores place, time and material. Informed by an interest in archaeology and traditional rural industries, her practice seeks a deeper connection to the land.
The opposing themes of preservation and destruction are present in much of her work; her sculptures and drawings are often fragile, temporary and unfixable. Using processes such as charcoal making and lime burning, Scott transforms materials gathered directly from the landscape to create installations referencing archaeological remains, historic industries and environmental conservation.
Bridgette Ashton
Bridgette Ashton is a multidisciplinary artist from the UK. She works in sculpture, ceramics, print and publications making objects, models, depictions and proposals engaging with histories and narratives, sites and locations.
Discussing her newest project Fake Minerals and Fancy Plinths, Bridgette shared ideas about how work can be experienced by different audiences through exhibition, zine and digital engagement.
​
Carrie Mason
Carrie Mason is a visual artist based in Dorset. Her practice involves the transformation of materials through the application of often painstakingly repetitive actions and includes drawing, sculpture, printmaking and occasional performance or video.
Carrie discussed how she uses repetition to explore a connection with time and place, the psychological concept of Flow, and how repetition can transform the most ordinary of things into something that is compelling and extraordinary.
Sophie Sherwood
Sophie Sherwood is a visual artist and creative workshop facilitator based in the South West of England. Her work is concerned with illustrating nostalgia, memory, relationships with others and the self and nature. She explores these themes through light sensitive materials and darkroom techniques including sun printing and Phytograms, a process which uses chemicals found in plants to create imagery
Veronica Vickery
Veronica Vickery is a visual artist with an interdisciplinary background in art and cultural geography. She is interested in the tension between the complex non-human ecologies crucial to human life and human exploitation. Her multimedia, often performative practice, is research-led and worked through long-term projects. Recently moved from West Cornwall to live on a boat on the fast-flowing, regularly flooding Bristol Avon, she discussed her latest project that is centred around water, mud, detritus, micro-organisms and the permeable edges of coasts, rivers, skin.
Pete Ward
Pete Ward is an interdisciplinary artist, his environmentally focused practice and research have focused almost exclusively around the geology, history and creative applications of earth pigments gathered and processed by hand in Devon and Cornwall. Pete’s work has made a major contribution to the revival of earth pigment painting in the UK.
Pete presented “a long intimate conversation with some rocks” An illustrated account of the artist’s journey with earth pigments and some of the questions it has raised including a film and face painting workshop.
Tania Kovats
Tania Kovats makes drawings, sculpture, installations and large-scale time-based projects that explore our experience and understanding of the natural world. Kovat discussed her enduring themes; the experience and understanding of landscape, geological processes, patterns of growth and the intersection of landscape, nature and culture and how art can speak to our critical climate crisis. Recently she has focused on water as her central subject; the seas and oceans, river systems, maritime culture, flooding and tides, touching on socio-political and environmental concerns.