Beneath Clouded Hills: A Day of Events
Saturday 20 May
1:30 - 6:30pm
1st Floor, 14 - 16 Matilda St, S1 4QD
Free & open to alL
Documentation image from the research of Beneath Clouded Hills. Image courtesy of the artists.
Join us for a magical day of events to collectively re-imagine what 'England' is. Our programme invites practitioners to share ways of knowing that are guided by landscape, identity, place, spirituality, folklore and mythology.
Featuring discussions, musical performances, screenings and somatic exercises, the event investigates the term 'deep England' by feeling-thinking alongside other cultural practitioners who foreground inclusivity, the radical imaginary and more-than-human forces in their work. This event accompanies the exhibition 'Beneath Clouded Hills' by artists and researchers Una Hamilton Helle and Verity Birt. It offers a chance to collectively reconsider an earthier, more capacious England in a specially facilitated setting.
Free and open to all, with drinks and light refreshments available.
We're excited to share the day's breakdown.
Opening harp composition: Manon McCoy Lafay
Discussions: Zakia Sewell, Richard Smyth, Una Hamilton Helle & Verity Birt
Facilitated somatic practice: Crone (Freya Barlow, Blue Firth & Isabel Jones)
Screening: artist moving image work + archival materials
Please note that the event is on the first floor of a building with no lift access. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Contributors:
Zakia Sewell is a broadcaster, writer and DJ from London. She regularly produces and presents radio documentaries for platforms such as BBC Radio 3 & 4, Tate and Boiler Room on music, history, arts and culture and is a host of the Breakfast Show on NTS Radio. Her 2020 Radio 4 series, My Albion, explored the songs, stories and symbols of British national identity, through the prism of folk culture, myth, archaeology and family history.
Richard Smyth is a writer and critic. His non-fiction books include An Indifference Of Birds (Uniformbooks, 2020) and The Jay, The Beech And The Limpetshell (Icon, 2023), and his essays on nature and nature writing have appeared in the TLS, New Statesman, Prospect, Verso, Aeon and New Scientist. His novel The Woodcock was published by Fairlight in 2021.
Manon McCoy Lafay is a Sheffield based composer, experimental harpist and singer whose work draws from her training in western classical music, contemporary classical music, free improvisation and British folk music. Manon is currently studying an MA at the RNCM generously supported by the Radcliffe Trust.
Una Hamilton Helle is an artist and art worker. Her long term project Becoming the Forest looks at questions around ecology, black metal, belonging and plant sentience through exhibitions, events and a publication series. As a curator with Legion Projects she curated Waking the Witch, an exhibition which toured Britain in 2018-19. Her most recent artistic projects include an exhibition and LARP for Kim? (Riga), a site-specific sound installation for Waltham Forest Borough of Culture (London), a video essay for New Art Gallery Walsall and a text-based adventure game for Celsius Project Space (Malmö).
Verity Birt is a funded, practice-based PhD researcher at Northumbria University and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (BxNu) in Newcastle. She has an MA from the Royal College of Art (2015) and BA from Goldsmiths University of London (2011). Situated in intersectional Feminism, Verity’s practice of writing, performance, sculpture, sound and film-making seeks to materialise enchanted encounters and meaningful intimacies between each-other and the more-than-human world.
Crone are Freya Barlow, Blue Firth & Isabel Jones: bound together by healing, myth, magic, movement. They use their voices as an instrument for incantation and in response to place, light and the living moment. Join Crone and share in three rituals throughout the day.
Supported by:
This exhibition project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 863944 THINK DEEP).