THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL SPRING 2022 DUE TO ILLNESS.
The Way Way Back
AN EXHIBITION AND SOCIAL PATHOLOGY
Art By Graham Martin
3rd-14th November 2021 - 10am-4pm (12-4pm on Fridays)
@ The Studio Morland
Talk and Opening Night on 3rd November (7pm)
Free Workshop on 4th November (10:30-2pm)
Exhibition:
In 2019 after returning from an Arts Council funded trip to Bangladesh a growing cyst was re-diagnosed as cancer and I began chemotherapy and radiotherapy. This exhibition is a creative investigation of that time and my ongoing recovery during the pandemic. It was begun in sketchbooks and developed through action and reflection, extensive editing and developing insight. It is a ‘field’ of discourse’ rather than a traditional narrative story line. Its themes flow through and across it.
One thing that struck me during treatment for a major illness was how memory rewinds and replays as if trying to understand / make sense of what’s happening and what has happened? This rewind and replay taking one ‘way way back!’ to understand & reconnect. Going backwards to perhaps find the way way back. I was also struck by the word ‘treatment?’ What is the treatment, what are its effects, and how are we treated as human beings and how do we treat ourselves? What sort of treatment did we receive in life, and how do we want to be treated? In this I thought individually, socially and about the socio-political conditions we live in.
I also thought about working class culture, social justice, class, language and power and the place I grew up, and was inspired to work creatively with children’s play & the displays and imaginations of my Blackpool youth, especially after treatment when the figure of ‘little ghaham’ - my inner child - appeared in my sketchbook and led me on a journey!
The work was also informed by the ideas of Dr Gabor Mate - the disconnects and the disconnecting factors / why does the body turn against itself? / the toxins and toxicity in society / and is illness connected to society and the way we live and treat each other? I also thought of ‘connective history’ - joining up previously unrelated & disconnected events
Most of the materials were from cheap shops. Mediums include drawing, photos, graphics, newspaper formats, bags, cereal boxes, dolls, coffee spills, toilet rolls & more. These in keeping with analogue making of children back in the day, and an idea of ‘pocket money’ art.
In the exhibition I also include the playful and provoking Carnival of Misrule posters about an imagined uprising in Cumbria! These will also be posted around Cumbria.
Why Cumbria? I have made artwork here before and wanted to explore it in a different way. Also as a child we came here often on short breaks and my sister was sent to school here.
Graham Martin. September 2021
Workshop (4th November - 10:30am-2pm)
On the 4th November, Graham will run an informal workshop exploring our connection to nature or distance from it, looking at the nature outside and nature inside us.
To begin Graham will explain ideas and show some images. Everyone will then go for a walk and respond to the landscape to the sites and narratives (and feelings) contained in them by using and placing our bodies in them creatively and imaginatively. There will be individual and group exercises and lots of freedom to try out, experiment, mess about, mess up and play! Use of found materials is also encouraged. It’s probably best not to wear your best clothes. Ideas will be photographed.
Graham has previously worked this way on a workshop with Bruce Lacey and Jill Bruce, and later with Nigerian political performance artist Jelili Atiku in 2012 when they spent a week in the Lakes together.
If badly raining the workshop will run in the studio and gardens.
FREE - Donations appreciated (recommended donation - £20)
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Photo credit: Graham Martin, 2012
About Graham Martin:
Graham Martin is an international artist & curator living in Yorkshire. He has a PhD and an MA in Fine Art and has shown in Italy, Germany, Mongolia, USA, Bangladesh, India and the UK, and explores the ‘how and why of living’ in a playful, creative & informed way.
Initial sketchbook and photo and action work funded by Arts Council England.
Thanks to the lovely chemo nurses and McMillan Welfare workers - real magic people!