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For Exhibition 10 The Notice Board welcomes Lincolnshire born artist and curator Alice White and Uffington resident Cecily Genever-Jones. Both have responded to a call-out to show during lockdown 1. Their work directly connects with the Notice Board’s aims and theme but also references the pandemic. Cecily imagines a new world or is it an old one currently lost? Alice amplifies languages spoken across the UK pertinent not only to Brexit but also our reliance on culturally diverse residents to keep us both serviced and alive. 

Alice says: Do you speak my language? (DYSML?) loudly celebrates the many languages spoken everyday across the UK. It started as a protest against a racist sign titled’ Happy Brexit Day’ that was put up in some communal hallways on 31^stJanuary 2020. The inward-looking, disheartening and polarising sign demanded that residents speak the ‘Queen’s English’ or leave. In response I have invited friends and colleagues to translate this phrase into their mother tongue or a language that they speak. I turn these translations into prints, which becomes an artwork incorporating them all. Participants are invited to share the project with a friend who speaks a language different from their own to further amplify our collective voices. So far languages include: Chinese, English, French, Greek, Italian, Polish, Spanish and Welsh. If you would like to participate in the project, please email: alicetfwhite.com

Cecily says: Peak Island is a bit like Uffington, it’s a village. But it’s above the clouds. At the bottom you can see the clouds. In the corner you look through the clouds to see the normal world. In Peak Island you don’t have to social distance, people are meeting up. These are all my friend’s houses. My house is in the middle, there is the farm and sheep and some ducks too. Some houses are true, Henry’s house has a football net. The 2 people in the picture are me and Penelope. We are best friends, we are holding hands and meeting for a chat. In Peak Island during the days we go to each other’s houses, where we run around and have fun. There is no parental guidance and you can wander where you like – that’s why it’s called The Lands of the Free. You get to eat the same food as England, but it’s all sweet. You get a midday nap of 2 hours and the night time is also the day time. The world keeps itself light. Peak Island is important. It’s like a parent in some ways, it gives you a lesson to be kind, and to be a good person. The flag I designed is Peak Islands. It shows that some of us are different but the same too – we all have feelings. The pink part shows the sameness underneath, the rest shows our difference. Cecily is aged 8 and attends Copthill School. She loves animals and her favourite thing to do is play outside with her guinea pigs and be with her friends.

I’ve been pleased to recently hear that the Artist Investigator work of last year has led to some further funding from Hull based Brignall Trust. This enables me alongside art organisation 3 Ways East and a whole host of residents and community based groups to build on our networking, strategic planning and actions. Coming at a strange time the funding however will immediately support needs relating to impacts of Covid and power the elbows of those connecting, keeping and caring for wider HU3 commnities.

Consequences – draw and discuss continues to grow on Zoom and so we’re pleased thats this will soon be added to with analogue paper based deliverable options. Pleased as what’s become apparent now more than ever is the need by participants to have a place to share their feelings, for those to be acknowledged and them to exit our bodies through the act of drawing. Drawing is obviously both an action and the outcome but here, I argue, we see the act taking greater importance than the product. I’m interested in how we communicate distinction when we share this work at some point in the future. It’s the ongoing issue of much socially based practice –  where the “work” is in the doing. I continue to grapple with this problem as we look at photos of computer screens of people in rooms rather than photos of people in rooms….

In a recent doodle made while Zooming for the online Consequences chat and draw, revealed both ‘an anxiety of’ and ‘a reason to’. Working remotely has been, as we all know, something to acclimatise to. I miss the bodies, the silent languages, the riffing off each other without a digital lag. But I learn anew, which of course is never a bad thing. It does however bring the group close for laughs and deep talking of beauty spotted, colours worn and far away imagined landscapes. Isolated we maybe, but still our gatherings, like our drawing, brings complex overlapping and shared synchronicities.

Sutton St James Church, with tower and chancel but tree filled gap in the middle, demonstrates either a yearning for or the weirdness of social distancing? Both seem relevant observations as part of the work I’m developing with the village. I’ve been inviting people to gather “News from our now” : the sounds, smells, sights & soon to be forgottens: ‘contemporary collection of the intangible’. Which provides purpose for residents and I argue will make for fascinating consideration in a post lockdown future.

The Notice Board is still OPEN and is offering, instagrammers, dog walkers and hour exercisers a point of focus or provocations. As I aimed for it to be an action orientated project – this moment seems like it needs action. So I’ve shifted the timeline to make space for a show [May15 to June15] that responds to now, while still recognising its central Land of the Free theme.
To apply please send 4 images and a very short reason to: kate@kategenever.com I can pay return postage, but sorry no show fee.

Part of the Consequences – drawing and talking project, moved online last night and given the project has always asked “What are the Consequences of not coming together?” this seems even more pressing than ever. With a workshop taking place on Zoom it’s an experiment and although we didn’t want things to be like this, we are in part enjoying the connection it brings. – seems Covid-19 wont stop us! For more information visit metalculture.com

Thank you to Haarlem Artspace who will be showcasing my prints and drawings at this years Print Fair at Nottingham Contemporary. If your interested please follow this link.

At last nights Consequences session this segment from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath came up: I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
It was used as an anology in the consideration of being overwelmed and how this stalled us and made us sad – too many figs. The story was relevant too in describing life disappearing before our eyes, the unhealthy problems of comparision and the pressure many women are under to do and have everything [ahh the problems of the priviledged!]. However on reflection I asked if its not useful to let things fail, fall, drop and what might an alternative meaning or possibility be? What if there is good to come when collapse happens or we are truely without? Can the Consequences of wrinkled figs be positive?….It’s a pondering I continue to grapple with.