Workshop: Jules Cunningham
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.
The first event for the (be)longing Bethlem Gallery programme of events that I am curating was a creative workshop run by artist Jules Cunningham. Where We Begin & End was run on 19th October at the gallery, inviting participants to explore aspects of our identity and the idea of the self through a combination of movement of the body and drawing. The session focused on ways to think about our ‘edges’ – where we begin and end. In the session participants reflected on how we might shift and change shape in response to our environment and others, exploring ideas of what it means to belong, and what it means to fit in or stand out.
It was really fascinating to see Jules take participants through a number of movement and drawing activities, each with a prompt to do it in 3 different ways:
Alone.
In conversation (without talking).
Being together.
I enjoyed witnessing people go from working alone through to navigating making together based on a silent conversation, picking up (or not) on social cues, and navigating ways to work together in synchronicity. It was interesting to hear about people’s sense of belonging and whether that happened at all, in smaller groups, or part of one larger group when working together.
It made me think about how our ‘edges’ shift and change dependent on our moods, life events, and those around us. Our boundaries can be blurred together with others or feel impenetrable at times.
After I left the workshop I came back to my studio to process some of the thoughts from the workshop. I started with drawing concentric circles trying to ensure that they stayed separate from each other, but as close as possible. I have quite shaky hands so this tasked seemed impossible - I’d slip, make mistakes, the lines would touch, my circles were imperfect. It was frustratingly exciting. It also became an exercise in concentration for me. When I make I need to make quickly because I am impatient and sometimes it’s mere seconds before I’m distracted and want to do something else. Starting with a smaller scale was hard enough - but I worked up to producing the same idea on A3. As I was drawing these I kept thinking about proximity - how close one can feel to others, or how distant we can feel that others are to us, and all the layers of those in between.
Over the coming weeks I kept thinking about the word ‘edges’ and produced a list of written responses of what came to mind.
When I begin
Fluid
Malleable
Touching
Flinching
Sometimes touching
Boundary
Interoception
Layers
Liminality
Fear
Blending
Lost in translation
Where you end
Prickly
Changeable
Liquid
Moving away
Almost touching
Pulling away
Forcefield
Parameters
The space between us
Intimacy
Sensations
Jelly
I then took some time working with the words and thinking about how they interact. A lot of the time I’m just really enjoying playing with the translucency and opacity of tracing paper, not thinking about where it will go.
