(be)longing Workshop: Keith Clapson
This entry is about my on-going project (be)longing which looks at themes of race, heritage, transracial adoption and estrangement. Click here to read all of the posts on this topic.
For the second event for the (be)longing Bethlem Gallery programme of events that I am curating, artist Keith Clapson ran a collaborative painting workshop exploring how we navigate where we belong in relation to others.
Participants worked together as a group using techniques of splashing, dripping and squeezing paint to create a large-scale painting that represented both parts of ourselves and our collective identity. The session was a chance to create freely and playfully, with no judgements.
At the beginning of the workshop people were invited to intuitively start working into the large paper on an individual basis, playing with texture, marks and colour. As the workshop progressed people began to collaborate - tentatively asking permission to add or transform the work of others. People made prints of other people’s work and incorporated them into their own, and witnessed their individual works become the part of a collective creation.
The work then became 3D through acts of tearing and stitching into the paper. It was fascinating to see how people responded to ideas of collaboration through either invitations or being protective over what part of the work was theirs. I spoke with participants about what belonging meant to them with reflections on:
What it means to be neurodivergent and finding likeminded people - going from being constrained to feeling free.
Feeling like you’re on the outside looking in, like you’re trapped in a globe.
How a change of career can lead you to finding a new community and sense of belonging.
Experiencing the world differently - being able to hear the sounds of the marks that others were making.
The importance of the separation of me/you/us - the need to do things alone first before being able to do things with others.
The final piece became a riot of colour and texture, the amalgamation of 12 people’s creative contributions.
