Swimming A Long Way Together 13.10.23 // Sea Lanes Swimming Pool, Brighton

Swimming a long way together is a durational project led by visual artist and long distance swimmer Vanessa Daws curated by Rosie Hermon. It is inspired by pioneer swimmer Mercedes Gleitz.

Amy Cutler and I participated in a 47hr swimathon organised at Sea Lanes Brighton with Fabrica inspired by Mercedes Gleitz’s epic solo record breaking swim of same length in Worthing 90yrs earlier. We provided entertainment for the swimmers doing laps in loops over the same number of hours.

We were delighted to create a live performance and ambient projection of an under / over water dance of strokes and bubbles in ongoing spirals using flowers, light and sound to hint at the movements of the swimmers.

Adventitious Routes and Rhizomes a collaboration with Amy Ash 13.03.23 - 20.08.23 // Plas Bodfa and Window135 Gallery

Amy Ash (CA) and Alice McCabe (UK / AUS) have been collaborating on creative projects since 2017. Their collaborative work, under the moniker of Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes, looks to the characteristics, language, mythology and historical contexts of plants for guidance. With plants as their mentors, Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes translate plant wisdom through varied methodologies as a means to both disrupt systems and discuss difficult topics that resonate into the realm of human communities. Previous projects have focused on immigration, queer ecologies, and disrupting colonial histories.

Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes last worked together in 2019 through the Cultivar Residency, where they were hosted by @museumoftheflatearth on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, off the Atlantic Coast of Canada. The Museum of the Flat Earth is an offshoot of the absurdist conceptual platform, the Canadian Flat Earth Society, which was founded by Leo Ferrari, Alden Nowlan and Ray Fraser in the 70s. The Museum of the Flat Earth in Fogo Island, is run by Kay Burns who uses Flat Earth Theory as a playful curatorial platform and means of promoting critical thought, investigation and research in (and via) art.

During the Cultivar residency Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes created a series of works intended to open discussions on human travel, borders and boundaries. These range from interventions on local touristic signage, to performance and playful pedagogies. In each case, the work centres and translates plant community wisdom and ways of being in the hopes of generating new understandings of how we, as humans, organize ourselves and relate to one another.

Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes are delighted to continue the collaboration during a residency hosted by Plas Bodfa in Wales. Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes, is grateful for the dedicated time and space to pursue their work on another rural island, a site of in-betweenness that punctuates the Atlantic between the two artists’ respective homes. While rich in unique history, culture and character, these in-between land masses are also links in the chain of European-North American migration. For Alice McCabe and Amy Ash, two white artists, these locales are also important reminders of their respective positionality within the system of colonization, and present valuable sites for learning, reflection and action.

Plas Bodfa is a 100-year-old manor home transformed into a gallery, art space, and community activator that creates unique, inclusive, creative projects with roots on the Isle of Anglesey and branches throughout Wales and the world. Plas Bodfa aims to bring together people of different ages, knowledge bases, interests and backgrounds to share with each other, learn from each other’s experiences and create something new collectively.

Adventitious Routes & Rhizomes look forward to presenting both new and re-fathomed works at window 135, which is an active vitrine gallery and performance space in New Cross Gate, London, UK. Since opening in 2004, window 135 have developed a mandate of showing a new exhibition every week, highlighting exciting new works and practices.

Bodfa Continuum 09.04.22 - 24.04.22 // Plas Bodfa, Penmon, Anglesey

I greatly enjoyed taking part in Bodfa Continuum, an exhibition exploring the multiple histories of a now empty house in Penmon with over 70 participating artists, curated by Julie Upmeyer. I exhibited two placards dedicated to Saints, back to back, hanging in the moongate, to occupy the spot where a placard to St. Matilda once hung on the east facade of house. Now with the help of the birds, these seeds, (all used to prepare grounds for wildflower meadow) can be distributed and re-incorpated into the site.

Fieldworks 11.09 – 19.10.20 // Glass Cloud Gallery

'Fieldworks'. An installation of hanging tapestries of flowers and collage inspired by permaculture farmer Masanobu Fukuoka's relationship to nature.

For Glass Cloud Gallery, McCabe has created ‘Fieldworks’ an installation of floral tapestries made from dried, repurposed and foraged floral materials inserted into a mesh structure in gestures almost like painting. Given their exposure to sunlight the materials will change colour over the course of the exhibition, reminding us of the seasons and referencing the fascination for bringing nature indoors as well as our increased observation of nature this year. Atop of the natural background are badges of chopped up ephemera from exhibitions visited, botanical drawings and the artist’s archive of photographs ‘inspired by nature’. These tokens insert a sense of distance from floral material and reading of landscape, teasing our ability to understand nature and our representation of it. 

Press release available at Glass Cloud Gallery

Review of exhibition by Miriam Al Jamil on Lucy Writers