Ovalhouse Adult Company
2019
For ten weeks I led a group of artists at Ovalhouse in exploring scenography and how it could support their practice and open our minds to participatory and playful spaces. We played with materials taking the lead, creating whole new worlds out of wool or paper, or light, and we built and rebuilt responses to key places in the local area, working collaboratively to find meaning and tell stories through the manipulation of objects, bodies, and space. The work culminated with a public exhibition at Ovalhouse, entitled Crossing the Line, the title chosen by the group in response to their interest in the local politics of ownership of space and the rampant regeneration/gentrification of South London.
This crash course in participatory scenography was part teaching, part experiment, part research, and has since been redeveloped into a short course at Central St Martins, and also chosen to represent the UK as an example of workshop practice at the Prague Quadrennial, where I worked alongside artists Jon Mcleod and Francesc Serra Vila to incorporate deeper exploration of sound and video.
