Author: Susan Merrick

In July 2019 Hackers – or some algorithm – decided that my site was interesting enough to hack. They added a ton of blog posts and changed all access etc. As flattered as I was that they chose to play on my website I didn’t really want to keep it all and had to do a refresh of an older version of the site. I lost quite a lot of content including blog posts back to Sep 2018.

Please be patient with me while I get my site back up and running. On a positive note I am using it as an opportunity to tidy up my work sharing space!:)

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2018

During 2018 Barbara collaborated with me during two projects. My residency with Floating Island Gallery and then with my project Statements in Semaphore 2018. Our collaborations involve us combining and challenging each others practice, my performance and intervention work with Barbara’s soft wool sculptures. Barara increasibly wanted to attempt larger scale structures, and I wanted to get IN the sculptures. We found various spaces and places to try these performance installations out including workshops where the pieces created a sense of community, exhibitions which allowed audience participation, and also more considered performances where we were responding to social issues, themes of discussions and wider politics. We worked in a gallery space, office spaces, a car park and a shopping centre. Barbara’s careful and slow movements become connected with my quicker more impatient process, our arms and bodies entwine and the wool tangles, we are never left with the same web or pattern, a chaotic but also structured layering appears, and then disappears once the wool is cut and the work is reduced back to a ball of wool.

Two Women 2018 is a film of one of our performances that we have developed over some time. More information of it is here.

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Across the past three years I have been working with Amy Dignam at Desperate Artwives as both an Artist submitting performance proposals, but also instigating collaborative works including takeovers of public spaces – a physical and online takeover by women artists focusing on spaces of under-representation of women. Our most recent project is Woman Up! A podcast series in association with the Womens’ Art Library, Goldsmiths. 

For more information about the takeover please visit www.desperateartwives.co.uk

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Louise Ashcroft has been putting together her evenings titled Unperforming for the past five years. I have been involved in several of these events now in both 2015 and 2019. The work I have tried out in these evenings has been experimental, considering how I can use performance to explore the role of Interpreter that I hold in my other work. The power relations in this role, the assumptions made by members of the public about this work, about sign language and about the people who do the job. 

Photo Credits:  Unperforming

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Conversations in a Bucket 2016 and other works that became my initial exploration into social engagement.

These works are mostly performative or photographic works in which I situate myself in a town or place known to me, that is distinctly NOT considered an Art space. These spaces have included my current home of Aldershot, the place I grew up, Hornsea (Nr Hull in East Yorshire) and various spots that I remembered from my childhood where people were present and who ‘may’ communicate with me. Mostly I was ignored, but at times the action provoked conversations that would not have been had otherwise. This work was an instigator to my interest in audiences, social engagement and how to create spaces for conversations.

During 2016 I was studying towards my first year of an MA Fine Art at UCA. I was very concerned about the distinct divides between the ‘art world’ that I was entering at 35 and the ‘real world’ of my life outside of this. There were also other divides that came into play, going to uni in Farnham, a place where many people looked down upon the town I live in with my family, Aldershot. It brought up many divides I have experienced in my life, class divides, status divides, divides because I have a northern accent and am ginger! I decided to explore how to talk to people about art, but also about other social issues. 

I have an old blog post that discusses how the ‘bucket’ came about and the process of this work here.