Online Events: 1 – 17 May 2021

Meadow Arts launches RURALities, its first series of digital commissions, with a succession of online events from 1 -17 May 2021.

RURALities explores the idea of the rural, looking beyond conventional images of rolling hills and idyllic views of farmland, to the people who live within that landscape but experience it in very different ways. The digital is not usually associated with rural life, but in RURALities it is used by artists to reflect on rural narratives.

With technical support and mentoring from Vivid Projects, four artists have created new works that will be released one by one, alongside special accompanying events that celebrate their work.

Daniel Turner’s desktop performance, Craig David Parr’s inter-dimensional reporting, Lucy Wright’s re-animating of gendered folklore traditions and Martha Kelsey’s mirroring of the past and the present through animation will each have their own launch days and the works will be exhibited on the Meadow Arts website afterwards, alongside exhibitions at the County museums of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire.

Dan Turner – Kipsi

Online launch 1 – 4 May

@MeadowArts on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

Performance: 4 May, 4:30 pm – BOOK HERE

Join us on 4th May for an online artist’s performance by Dan Turner, as part of RURALities.

Dan Turner, an artist of Romani heritage, examines how Gypsy, Roma and Traveller cultures meet and interact with dominant mainstream culture, through the art forms of sculpture, video and painting.

Working with migration maps of Roma diasporas – and using traditional crafts and occupations such as; herbalism, peg and wooden flower making, and fortune-telling – Turner re-imagines Roma past, present and future to challenge mainstream culture’s view of Roma identities.

Exhibition in the Vardo Gallery at Hartlebury Castle: 18 May – 27 June

Martha Kelsey – Mirrors in Stone

Online launch 5 – 9 May

MA website & Instagram

Martha Kelsey is inspired by the ‘Herefordshire School of Romanesque Sculpture’ and the mysterious ancient stone carvings found in rural churches (especially those situated in the ‘Archenfield’ – the ancient name for the shifting border between Herefordshire and Wales).

She has created digital drawings that reimagine and reanimate these stone sculptural forms in the contemporary and impermanent medium of GIF animations.

“I hope that my animations will connect a 21st-century audience with their heritage, using these 900-year-old stone treasures to activate themes of conquest, identity and belief.”

Exhibition in the window at Hereford Museum and Art Gallery: 17 May – 27 June

Craig David Parr – TEMPORARY PHANTASMOUS ZONE

Online launch 10 – 13 May

MA website & YouTube

Craig David Parr has been considering how the past and future ‘hold hands’ in a familiar, but mythical way. He explored sites of importance within Shropshire, connected to the grave of the last ‘sin eater’ and how this has contemporary relevance when we view it through the lens of working-class labour.

The artist has created a series of seven individual film chapters that we’ll release on the Meadow Arts website and YouTube channel. Together, they form a strange narrative that relates to his “looking in holes for old things, and finding even older things and more holes in the holes … whilst uncovering inter-dimensional class war.”

“I’ve drawn together theory, fantasy, magic, sci-fi, history and class struggle to create the TEMPORARY PHANTASMOUS ZONE, which acts as a hybrid world that reconnects with a folk tale tradition.”

Exhibition at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery: 17 May – 27 June

Lucy Wright – Plough Witches

Online launch 14 – 17 May

Every day on Instagram

Instagram Live talk – 17 May 12:30pm

Join artist Lucy Wright and project participants on IGTV on Monday 17 May at 12:30pm to hear more about the ideas behind the project and the making of Plough Witches.

Gathering a group of 6 women and non-binary people together for Plough Witches, Lucy Wright has created striking animations and imagery that reinterpret traditional rural plays, “The role of women and non-binary people has long been marginalised in the English traditional arts, creating a canon of performances—and with it, an ideal of nationhood—that is strongly male-identified. Historically plough plays (also known as ‘mummers’ plays”) were informal and pantomime-like, performed by amateur actors, depicting a stylised battle of good versus evil—but in most instances, women were not permitted to take part.”

Exhibition at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery: 17 May – 27 June

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