1-4pm
The NewBridge Project: Gateshead
ALL WELCOME
Members: Free
Non-members: £2.50
Please book here.
This workshop is aimed at anyone with an interest in writing or performance — no previous experience is necessary.
Bryony Gillard will lead a workshop exploring relationships between peripheral landscapes, feminism, sexuality and creativity. The workshop is part of her recent project, ‘A cap like water, transparent, fluid yet with definite body’, which draws on the writings of the Modernist poet H.D and her experiences of psychic breakdown and creative and sexual awakening on the Isles of Scilly in the early 20th Century. During this time of retreat, she had what she referred to as her ‘jelly-fish experience’ — an awareness of tentacled connections between female erotic body and mind, a state of autonomous sexuality and creativity described through the metaphor of a jellyfish connecting to her body.
Through a series of performative exercises, we will collectively explore what our own jelly-fish experiences might be and how we might use the spaces between poetry, prose, visual art and autobiography to translate experiences that exist beyond the visible or thinkable.
We will be using a series of short excerpts of texts to interrogate a jellyfish-like territory in which the tentacular, fluid, transformative, erotically autonomous and diabolical are intimately entangled.
(The reading list includes excerpts from texts by H.D, Elizabeth R. Johnson, M. Jacqui Alexander, Donna J. Haraway, Karen Barad and Lila M. Harper)
We will also play with some performative exercises to collectively explore what our own ‘jelly-fish’ experiences might be and how we can use the spaces between poetry, theory, performance and autobiography to translate experiences that exist beyond the visible or thinkable.
IMAGE: Viki Browne in ‘A cap, like water, transparent fluid yet with definite body’, 2018. H.D video, 14m45s. Bryony Gillard with contributions from Autobitch, Viki Browne, Maggie Nicols, Dannie Spooner and D-M Withers.
Bio:
Situated between writing, performance, video and exhibition making, Bryony Gillard’s practice draws on the notion of ‘constant revision’ — states of being in which structures or ideas can be subverted, dissolved or questioned.
Bryony has an MFA from the Dutch Art Institute, School for Art Praxis. Forthcoming projects in 2018 include a solo presentation at Turf Projects, Croydon and a group exhibition exploring the writings of Virginia Woolf at Tate St.Ives, Pallant House (Chichester) and the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge). Her work has been included in a range of national and international contexts including Documnt (New York/Berlin), BB15 (Linz), Exeter Phoenix (U.K), Casa de Pova (São Paulo), Upominki (Rotterdam).
This event is supported by The NewBridge Project, The Collective Studio and Newcastle University.
Accessibility: NewBridge Gateshead has full accessibility, this event will take place in the Co-Work space on the ground floor of NewBridge Gateshead.
