Fermynwoods Contemporary Art presents Where to Stand in the Wind at East Carlton Countryside Park, an exhibition of art made in collaboration with nature.
Marion Coutts
Simon Faithfull
Regan Gentry
Inger Lise Hansen
Jess MacNeil
SUPERFLEX
Bill Viola
Guest curated by Yasmin Canvin
East Carlton Country Park
Church Lane
East Carlton
Market Harborough
LE16 8YF
31 July – 3 October 2021
10am – 4:30pm daily
When working with and not against the elements, artists surrender a portion of creative control to living, organic, or unobserved forces within their environment. This results in work that contains a poetic beauty, even when the natural forces are destructive.
Humanity is currently experiencing destructive natural forces in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasingly dramatic effects of climate change. The title of this exhibition takes its inspiration from a rhetorical question raised by Chris Watson when discussing the challenges of documenting live sound. The wind is present, undeniable; it is our actions that determine the final outcome.
Read the interpretation sheet here.
View extracts from Jess MacNeil’s Opera House Steps as the online counterpart to this exhibition here.
Listen to the accompanying podcast for this exhibition here.
Marion Coutts is an artist and writer. Her work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally, including solo shows at Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, Chisenhale Gallery, London, and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. She has held fellowships at Tate Liverpool and Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. After the death of her husband, the art critic Tom Lubbock in 2011, she wrote the introduction to his memoir Until Further Notice, I am Alive. Her first book The Iceberg was published in 2014 to wide critical acclaim. The Iceberg won the Wellcome Book Prize in 2015. It was shortlisted for The Costa Book Award, 2014 and The Samuel Johnson Prize, 2014 and was a finalist in the US National Book Critics Circle Awards, 2017. In 2016 she was a resident writer at Cove Park. She is a Lecturer in Art at Goldsmiths College and lives in London.
Simon Faithfull’s wide-ranging practice is well known internationally and his artworks are represented in many public collections including the Pompidou Centre, France and The Government Art Collection, UK. Recent exhibitions include solo presentations at Galerie Polaris, Paris, Naturkunde Museum in Berlin, and The Exchange in Penzance, UK. His practice, combines video, digital-drawing, writing and performance and has been described as an attempt to understand, to test and to explore the planet as a sculptural object. Faithfull also teaches at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London.
Regan Gentry is a New Zealand artist and sculptor. He has held a number of artist in residence positions and his work can be seen in public spaces throughout New Zealand. His artworks are often constructed from recycled or repurposed items such as gorse bushes and road safety barriers.
Inger Lise Hansen was educated at North East London Polytechnic, St. Martin’s College of Art, London and received Masters of Fine Art Film from San Francisco Art Institute. She has made a number of experimental animation films with support from Arts Council England, Film London and the Norwegian Film Institute, and has won several international prizes such as Gold Prize for animation at Bilbao Festival of Documentary and Short Films, Chris Frayne Award for Best Animation at Ann Arbor International Film Festival.
Jess MacNeil works at the points of intersection between painting, installation, video and photography, often taking as her subject matter the dynamics of the human/environment relationship. MacNeil has exhibited widely internationally and within Australia. Her work was included in Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the Samstag Museum of Art in 2008 and was presented at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, in 2009.
SUPERFLEX is an expanding collective of humans and non-humans working with an expanding idea of art. SUPERFLEX acknowledges the agency of all beings and practices art as a human activity that embraces non-human perspectives, in an effort to move society towards interspecies thinking and living, beyond the end of the world as we know it. Originally founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen, and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, SUPERFLEX studio is today composed of members from very diverse backgrounds. As an expanding collective, SUPERFLEX facilitates and urges the collaboration of others, bringing participation to an extreme. For SUPERFLEX, the best idea might come from a fish.
Bill Viola is internationally recognised as one of today’s leading artists. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, and in so doing has helped to greatly expand its scope in terms of technology, content, and historical reach. For 40 years he has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. Viola’s video installations—total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound—employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity. They are shown in museums and galleries worldwide and are found in many distinguished collections.
As a curator, Yasmin Canvin brings artists and audiences together through art. Her approach is informed by her interests in cross-disciplinary practice, social and environmental issues, and meaningful interactions. She collaborates with arts organisations and other partners to develop strategic programmes that are founded on artistic practice. Until recently she was Director of Leicester Print Workshop and before then the Director of Fermynwoods Contemporary Art.
Assembly, 2000, Marion Coutts – Where to Stand in the Wind at East Carlton Park, curated by Yasmin Canvin in partnership with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art. Photo Andy Eathorne 2021; Flooded McDonald’s, 2009, SUPERFLEX – Where to Stand in the Wind at East Carlton Park, curated by Yasmin Canvin in partnership with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art. Photo Andy Eathorne 2021; Stills from Hus, 2000, Inger Lise Hansen – Where to Stand in the Wind at East Carlton Park, curated by Yasmin Canvin in partnership with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art. Photo New Leaf Photography 2021; Stills from Hus, 2000, Inger Lise Hansen – Where to Stand in the Wind at East Carlton Park, curated by Yasmin Canvin in partnership with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art. Photo New Leaf Photography 2021; Still from Proximity, 2006, Inger Lise Hansen – Where to Stand in the Wind at East Carlton Park, curated by Yasmin Canvin in partnership with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art. Photo Andy Eathorne; Flooded McDonald’s, 2009, SUPERFLEX – Where to Stand in the Wind at East Carlton Park, curated by Yasmin Canvin in partnership with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art. Photo New Leaf Photography 2021; Flooded McDonald’s, 2009. RED, 21 min. Still image. Photo – SUPERFLEX; Still from Common Cold, 2004, Regan Gentry – Where to Stand in the Wind at East Carlton Park, curated by Yasmin Canvin in partnership with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art