Queer River

New Forest Reflections

I’ve written a couple of posts on my time with Spud in the New Forest this Spring, once before I started my residency, and again after a week spent there in March. But nothing since setting up my installation Neuro/Queering Nature. So this post fills in those gaps, and shares the exhibition with those of you that can’t make it along.

I came home last week, a couple of days early and before the opening event, as I managed to catch covid. But we got the work installed before I had to leave, and I’m proud of what I achieved, and thankful for all the support I received from everyone. We hope to have a closing event, for those people who would like to experience my installation and hear a little from me about the work, before the exhibition ends. Full details to follow soon.

Since writing The Body of the Forest in March, I worked with Artist Hannah Buckingham, one of Spud’s graduate artists, and the Together – make art! group that she runs for Spud with local LGBTQAI+ young people. I shared with the group the ways that my work documents my experiences of places as an autistic, queer person, and that my time in the Forest was about paying attention to my sensory experiences of wetlands, layering documention of those experiences with ‘official’ natural history imagery.

We talked about the value of experiencing the world in ways that don’t fit the norm, and of making artwork based on those experiences, including work that blurs the boundaries between people and other animals. Together we designed wearable artwork, experimented with collage, and shared a walk from Spud through the village and out across the heath, to visit streams and woodland. Photographs of some of the group’s wearable artworks are now included in the exhibition.

My time in the Forest focused on Avon Water. My experience of that river was one of an interconnected network of bog and heathland plants, coloured clays, mammals including foxes, deer and ponies, and the wetland birds that live in the Keyhaven and Lymington marshes where the river meets the sea. It is a wooded river, the water runs between exposed roots, around trunks, and deposits stacks of fallen branches as the levels rise and fall.

It is a richly diverse and a managed landscape, even if at first glance it doesn’t appear that way. Stretches of river have been re-wiggled, animals are grazed, and plantations are fenced and gated. The installation that I pieced together at Spud refers to my journey along Avon Water, and connects together woody structures in a way that echos the wooded nature of the river.

Joined with rope and orange twine, wooden chairs and stools create spaces for the pauses that I took in my journey, whilst lengths of ladder make stepped connections between them, and boxes hold the objects that I gathered along the way. A video projected at the end of the gallery collages together photographs of muddy animal footprints, footage of bubbling amber water, camera trap film of deer, and the sound of calling waders. Large scale drawings celebrate the words used to name and classify bog plants and water birds, using ochre and red clays found along the river’s length.

Neuro/Queering Nature runs until 4th July 2024 at Spudworks, Station Road, Sway. SO41 6BA

Neuro/Queering Nature Exhibition – 13th June to 4th July

Running from 13th June to 4th July, Neuro/Queering Nature is an installation which draws together film, sound, drawing and found objects to share my experience of the New Forest’s wetlands, viewed through a queer, neurodivergent lens. The installation has developed through time spent at Spud this Spring as artist in residence.

The exhibition brings together my direct, sensory experience of Avon Water and associated wetlands, with some of the trappings of collection and categorisation, to neuroqueer the subject of Natural History, and highlight the value of sensory/systemising differences in developing new ways of living with wetland communities.

You can find travel information on the contact page of the Spud website. The gallery is a short walk from Sway railway station.

If you make it along to the exhibition, please do let me know what you think.

Neuro/Queering Nature: Exhibition Opening Event

A little advanced notice so you can get the date in your diary… the Neuro/Queering Nature exhibition, marking the culmination of my residency at SPUD in the New Forest, will open with an event from 5.30 to 7.30pm on Thursday 13th June.

For more information on the venue and how to get there visit the SPUD website.

The Body of the Forest

I came home yesterday after a week at SPUDworks in the New Forest, the first week of a part-time residency that will culminate with an exhibition in June.

I’ve called the residency Neuro/Queering Nature. I had the idea that I would draw from my lived experiences of the Forest, as a queer, autistic artist, piecing together a model of the Forest in my mind and body, through walking, talking (with others that live and work there), and making.

Once in the Forest I visited Avon Water, the nearest river to Sway where I was staying, and researched the way that the river has been re-wiggled along certain sections, as well as the rarity of such riverine woodland nationally. I also spent time seeking out the mires that capture water and feed the rivers across the forest, and read up on mire restoration at places like Soldiers Bog, inspired by reading Goshawk Summer by James Aldred.

While at the restored stretch of river near Wootton Bridge, I recorded animal tracks onto pages from charity shop botany books, and set up my camera trap to find out what had been feeding on spawning frogs. The image below is taken from the resulting footage of a munching fox.

I didn’t have a definite plan of what I wanted to cover or where I wanted to visit, because I want to piece together a body of work that emerges out of coming to know the Forest, rather than pre-empt what that might look like. I feel like I am neuroqueering natural history, because I’m documenting what I notice and how I notice it, creating artwork that pays attention to the relationships between the different elements that make up that land, rather than organising them according to a pre-existing, scientifically approved system.

Obviously I can’t claim to represent every neurodivergent person, or even autistic experiences as a whole, because we are all different, but I can start with my own sensory experiences of the Forest’s watery places, and gradually build a sense of the wider Forest ecosystem from there.

I didn’t plan to work with wetlands again, but as the days went on I started to recognise the way that the Forest’s wetlands link all the other elements together, as mire feeds brook, and flows through bog, down into river and on towards the coastal marshes. If the Forest is a body, as I am sensing it to be, then the wetlands are key elements of its anatomy, and the water that moves through them its lifeblood (This sense of the bodily nature of the Forest has been informed by reading an inspirational book during my time at SPUD – Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice by Chloe Wolfle Hazard).

Thank you to Robbie (@WovenTreeTrailTales on Instagram) who showed me around his local patch and introduced me to areas of river that I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered, and thank you to Pete Durnell from the Hampshire Countryside Service, who shared his extensive knowledge of the Lymington and Keyhaven Marshes, after I followed Avon Water down to the coast at Keyhaven. I was particularly taken by the wide range of birds that visit this place where the sea meets the land, either for the winter or to breed, and particularly by their names and calls. Listen here to Pete talking more about the marshland wildlife.

So far I’ve collected objects, taken photographs, made lists of wading birds, used burned gorse and river clay to write/draw, and recorded the flowing water with a lot of video. Now I’m home I’ll take some time to look through what I’ve gathered, and follow up on particular pieces of information. I’ll make more drawings, find maps, and look for new places to visit that fit into this emerging model of the New Forest’s watery body.

As I do I’ll share more on here, and the SPUD instagram page, and start to develop ideas for my exhibition and the sessions I’ll be running with SPUD’s Together LGBTQAI+ group, a group of young artists faciitated by Hannah Buckingham, with whom I’ll be working in April.

So thank you to SPUD, and to the community of life that makes up the Forest, to whom I’ll be returning very soon.

Neuro/Queering Nature at spudWORKS

On Friday 1st March I’m beginning a residency with SPUD in the New Forest. With the title Neuro/Queering Nature, I’m going to be looking at the perspectives of LGBTQAI+ and Neurodivergent people on ecologies of place.

I’ll be blurring the boundaries between humans and other animals, and thinking about the sensory and systemising differences that being autistic or adhd can bring to broader understandings of our place within what we’ve come to call ‘Nature’.

‘A radical politics of neurodivergent conservation is also consistent with a radical politics of environmental conservation. After all, it has been the same logics, the same system, that has ravaged the biodiversity of the planet as has sought to eliminate the neurological diversity of humanity..’
Empire of Normality, Robert Chapman

I will be primarily focusing on my own direct experiences of the Forest, allowing my existing Neuroqueer Ecologies thread of research, and what I’ve learned so far with Queer River, to weave its way into the studio at SPUD, and the work I make with the surrounding heathland, woods and mires. I also want to think about how natural history classification can be Neuro/Queered, as I have started to explore at Found Outdoors.

For anyone that’s new to my work, I’m fascinated by what we each bring to our perception and understanding of places, and the fact that LGBTQAI+ and Neurodivergent people’s sensory experiences and interpretations of place, can often be at odds with heteronormative and neuronormative ideas of human-Nature relationships.

My time at SPUD will be explorative and playful. I want to record the signs of animal life through tracks and camera traps, and to spend time with Avon Water as it winds itself through the area on its way to the sea.

‘The outdoor community should prioritize neurodiversity in its efforts to make the outdoors more accessible, by pro-viding sensory-friendly accommodations, supporting neuroqueer voices, and recognizing neuroqueer individuals as leaders and advocates. These efforts aim to break down barriers to accessing the outdoors and to create a more inclusive and equitable outdoor community for all.’
Neurodivergence is also an LGBTQ+ topic: Making space for “neuroqueering” in the outdoors, Tarah Loy-Ash

I’m planning on building on this initial residency period by returning to work with SPUD artist(s) and local LGBTQAI+ young people during April, inviting them to respond in ways that make sense to them, and in June I’ll return to SPUD for another week to develop and install an exhibition that will open to the public from 13th June to 4th July. I’ll add more info on this participatory element, the exhibition and associated events as/when they are all confirmed.

I’m thankful for SPUD for being flexible enough to accomodate my needs, and those of my family, through an extended, part-time residency, and am really excited to be getting started!

Pre-recorded Talk for Engage’s Going Green Week

I’ve recorded a short talk (approx 20 minutes) on Queer River and The Ripple Effect for Engage, the National Association for Education in Art and Design.

You’ll need a ticket but they are free, and my talk is one of three that you can watch in Going Green Week (follow link for information on all the events and booking details), which starts on Monday 4th March 2024.

Sodden

It’s been a while since I’ve been on a Queer River walk, although like the river itself, my Queer Rver research doesn’t stick within the boundaries that I originally used to define it. Instead they evolve as the work progresses, with the words that I use to describe it changing to fit with what I’ve learned.

After originally starting out working with my local section of the River Avon in Wiltshire (the western arm of the upper reaches of the Hampshire Avon), my river related work eventually spread out to Glasgow, Hampshire, Norfolk, Reading and via online events and exhibitions, connecting with rivers and their people nationally and internationally, as well as forming the foundations of my work on The Ripple Effect in Salisbury.

I later shared that I was setting up a sister project, Neuroqueer Ecologies, the research from which has now informed the planning of residencies with Spud in the New Forest (beginning March 2024) and Found Outdoors (research and funding application underway to start April 2024).

I’ve described Neuroqueer Ecologies as a project, but see it as more than that, as an approach which underpins all of of my practice whether I’m explicit about that or not, and which in time will see me collaborating specifically with other autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people.

As with Queer River, the boundaries of this Neuroqueer Ecologies approach are permeable, and flow thoughout my work and my life. I am queer, I am neurodivergent, the ways that I relate to the world are informed by that, so it will always be more than a neatly tied up project.

It can be hard to describe and communicate the nature of approaches that seek to allow things to be as they are in reality, sharing their fluidly and queerly connected systems of relationship rather than simplifying and abstracting them.

And what now for Queer River, with a New Year begun, and boundaries between projects continually dissolving and shifting? Now that The Ripple Effect has come to an end, I’m thinking again about where to take my Queer River research. I visited Groundwork Gallery in Kings Lynn last month to start to plan a short residency working with Kings Lynn’s rivers, which I’m excited about, and will share more as details are confirmed.

I’m also still developing plans to deepen my work with the Bristol Avon, and to consider the relationship between river and canal restoration, following a really interesting conversation with Professor Jodie Matthews in the Autumn, author of The British Industrial Canal – Reading the Waterways from the Eighteenth Century to the Anthropocene.

Right now though, my mind is on flooding. Outside my home I’ve been watching the rain come down constantly for weeks. There’s no doubt in my mind that the increased rainfall and the saturated ground, flooding the fields as the Avon breaches its banks, are due to the effects of climate breakdown.

Everywhere the ground is sodden (I love that word). Temporary streams run from fields, carrying away the precious soil, or the darker stained water of piled up pig manure, to run into roadside ditches that lead on to the river itself.

Earlier today I went back to my local stretch of river where Queer River began, to see the flooded fields, and witness the shifting relationship between land and water. I took some blank walking pages and black/white mark-making materials, to match the starkness of the raw, wet, bare branches and barren fields that dominate the landscape right now..

I’ve included a few photos and short video clip here to give a taste of the walk and the resulting Walking Pages..

Drawings available to buy from the ‘Drawing on Water’ exhibition

Please follow the link below, to view a list of artworks available from the Drawing on Water exhibition held earlier this year, and instructions on how to buy them.

If you have any questions please do get in touch.

Drawings available to buy from the ‘Drawing On Water’ exhibition

The Ripple Effect – Project Film

At the preview of The Ripple Effect exhibition last night at The Young Gallery in Salisbury (open now until 16th December) , we also launched the project film, created by Wessex Archaeology Videographer and Photographer Tom Westhead. The film is around 30 minutes long and tells the story of this two year project through the voices of the participants themselves.

Please have a watch and let us know what you think. I reckon Tom has done a wonderful job, and feel very proud of what the whole team have achieved, on this art and wellbeing project focused on the past and future of the Salisbury Avon.

Drawing on Water – Virtual Tour

I’ve put together a short virtual tour/talk, sharing the Drawing on Water exhibition at The Pound Arts Centre in Corsham from Summer 2023, for thse people who weren’t able to make it in person.

Thanks again to Visual Arts Coordinator Claire Todd and Deputy Director Jonathan Mansfield for all their help with the show.