Yarmouth Springs Eternal Exhibition

The Yarmouth Springs Eternal exhibition will feature artwork and a co-designed pamphlet created during a series of artist-led community walks/workshops, attended by adults in Great Yarmouth with lived experience of homelessness and migration. The exhibition will also include showcases from guest exhibitors from across UK exploring creativity and the connection to the natural world: Jacques Nimki, James Aldridge, Jason Evans Bill Vine and Company Drinks.

Curated by Kaavous Clayton of originalprojects;, the exhibition will be a market stall style show, featuring eclectic ‘kitchen table’ and ‘potting shed’ arrangements with participatory activities, hobbyist curiosities and living plant-based displays. During the exhibition, there will be a series of free public artist-led walks/workshops.

Yarmouth Springs Eternal is a community arts, walking and nature project led by Genevieve Rudd, in partnership with originalprojects;. It explores personal relationships to the natural world through contemporary arts, highlighting the overlooked and everyday interactions with nature from diverse perspectives. The project runs from Spring Equinox to Summer Solstice, and includes a series of community and public artist-led walks/workshops, an exhibition, conference and a participatory arts & nature resource.

From the Spring Equinox, supported by Norfolk & Norwich Festival’s Creative Individuals Norfolk programme, there will be a series of artist-led walks/workshops in Great Yarmouth, led by Mark Cator, Ligia Macedo, Georgie Manly, Kaavous Clayton and Genevieve Rudd.

Exhibition artist bios:

Jacques Nimki is a Norwich-based artist born in Mauritius who works from or within the environment, using wildflowers and weeds flowers, inspired by sources from art history to gardening illustrations. Plants looked at but not seen, forgotten in the backdrops of the every day, inhabiting places that are usually neglected or unexplored. Each work is about a specific site; he begins by researching and walking an area to collect information, very much like a classical botanist, but in a deliberately unstructured way. Jacques’ returns to these areas to collect plants for drawing, flower pressing and seed collecting, and form part of a database of plants. Jacques has a postgraduate degree from Royal Academy Schools (1989-1992) and an undergraduate degress from Chelsea School of Art (1986-1989).

Website          Instagram

James Aldridge is a visual artist, based in Wiltshire. James graduated in 1996 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art (Sculpture) from UCA, Farnham, and is an Associate Artist with CAS (Chapel Arts Studios, Andover), MK Gallery (Milton Keynes), and active member of Climate Museum UK. James’s artwork is multi-disciplinary, comprising of intimate objects formed in the hand whilst walking, larger sculptures that echo his bodily experiences, and sound/video pieces that collage imagery and sound together, to evoke embodied experiences of place and connection. Much of James’s work also incorporates participatory or collaborative practices. Underpinning all areas of James’s practice, is a belief in the need to develop new ways of seeing and being with the world, in this time of ecological crisis.

Website                    Facebook                    Twitter

Jason Evans is an artist working with photography. His images and sculpture have been exhibited internationally and his ‘Strictly’ series is held in the Tate collection. Best known for his collaborations with musicians and playful editorial work he began volunteering at his local community garden in 2016. The Garden Gate Project supports people with special educational needs and/or people with mental health issues. Evans delivers photography workshops that engage with the growing surroundings whilst developing creative confidence for participants.

Website                    The Garden Gate Project                    Instagram

Bill Vine is an experimental composer, performer, improviser and audio/visual artist. ‘northsong’ is an acousmatic composition in three movements, created from raw and manipulated field recordings made by the composer in some of the green spaces of the NR3 postcode area of Norwich. It highlights the various wonderful natural and man-made parks, woods, rivers, heathland and marshland of the NR3 area, sharing the multifaceted character of this rich, diverse and often underappreciated area of Norwich.

Website

Company Drinks is a community space and social enterprise based in Barking and Dagenham, where we make drinks with and for each other. Company Drinks started out in 2014 to bring people back together through the act of picking and reconnecting with local green spaces and nearby countryside. Company Drinks is now a co-working space and an expanding network of users, collaborators and partners, who come together to pick, grow, make, learn, unlock and share the resources and knowledge around us. Like the seasons, Company Drinks changes and adapts, and is shaped by those who are involved. We collaborate and champion the ideas of those around us, encourage each other to re-imagine new ways of working, trading and existing together, through conversation, care and good company. Company Drinks was set up in as an art commission, and registered as a Community Interest Company in 2015.

Website               Facebook               Twitter               Instagram

+ Kaavous Clayton/originalprojects;

+ Genevieve Rudd