COMMUNITY CLAY
COMMUNITY CLAY
Thinking in Circles
Ceramics
VENUE
2. Village Hall, West Coker
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am – 5pm
Sun 25 May, 10am – 4pm
Taking the festival theme Thinking in Circles as a starting point this exhibition brings together ceramic creations from over 30 of the extended community clay family. Pupils from East Coker, West Coker and Perrott Hill Schools are joined by Community Clay’s regular Thursday Night Potters, showing work that explores ideas of growth, production and consumption.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Community Clay (originally Lockdown Pottery) was established in 2020, by Chantelle Henocq and Simon Lee Dicker, exploring ceramics, and the multitude of ways that working with clay in a shared social space can improve the life of those that take part. From alleviating isolation and creating lasting friendships that develop in the studio, to learning new skills, increasing confidence they have worked with participants from 5 to 80 years old, learning about life through making with clay.
PATRICK KEILLER
PATRICK KEILLER
Robinson in Space
Single Screen Video with Sound
Film duration 78 mins (Played on a loop)
VENUE
2. Village Hall, West Coker
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am – 5pm
Sun 25 May, 10am – 4pm
Robinson in Space finds Patrick Keiller pushing the limits of British cinema to fascinating degrees with a rewarding and unparalleled pay-off. Robinson and his unseen companion, a narrator voiced by Paul Scofield, have been commissioned to investigate the ‘problem’ of England. The journey takes them all over the country, from Manchester to Liverpool and Yeovil to Birmingham, as they deconstruct English anachronism, culture, dilapidation, and the industrial economy. Keiller’s immaculately framed images and sly deadpan narration take the viewer on an unpredictable exploration of the cultural and economic landscape of England.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Patrick Keiller was born in 1950, in Blackpool and studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. In 1979 he joined the Royal College of Art’s Department of Environmental Media as a postgraduate student. For a time he taught architecture at the University of East London and fine art at Middlesex University.
YELENA POPOVA
YELENA POPOVA
I Feel Thy Footsteps With My Skin
Jacquard woven tapestry, 242x182cm
VENUE
6. Coker Court, East Coker
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am – 5pm
Sun 25 May, 10am – 4pm
The Ouroboros encircles the Tree of Life surrounded by a celestial array of birds and stars, reconciling chthonic and celestial energies that honour the cycles of life and death, healing and regeneration in this monochromatic boldly graphic tapestry. Through a masterful blend of primordial materials and timeless symbols, Popova invites us to contemplate our own mortality and the enduring forces that bind us to the earth and each other, from Breath to Dust.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Yelena Popova graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre School-Studio in 2000 and earned her Master’s degree in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2011. She has been living and working in the UK since 2003. Yelena Popova has exhibited her work in the UK, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Austria, the US, and Switzerland. Her works are part of prestigious collections, including the Arts Council Collection (London), Government Art Collection (London), RCA Collection (London), Saatchi Collection (London), Zabludowicz Collection (London), In4Art Collection (Netherlands), Jalima Collection (Düsseldorf), Nottingham Castle Collection, New Hall Art Collection (Cambridge), LWL Museum (Münster), CCA Andratx Collection (Mallorca, Spain), Sea Foundation (Netherlands), and various private collections.
t l k
t l k
The Butterfly Effect
VENUE
7. St Michael and All Angels, East Coker
EVENT: Sat 24 May, drinks from 7pm start 8pm
Responding to the festival’s provocation ‘Thinking in Circles’, t l k draws from chaos theory and psychoacoustics for Od Arts 2025. The butterfly effect suggests that small, seemingly insignificant events can have seismic and unpredictable consequences elsewhere: ‘the flap of a butterfly’s wings results in a distant tornado’. Using voice, electronics and field recordings, t l k explores how incremental changes to initial sonic material can lead to vastly different outcomes, highlighting the sensitivity and gravity of our microscopic actions in a chaotic system. The piece encourages reflection on the impacts of human behaviour within a paradox of chaos: we can examine cycles of human life and history, seemingly repeating themselves in deterministic ways, yet an unpredictable possibility of outcome remains.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
t l k is a Bristol-based artist, vocalist and producer. Fluid in form, with a leaning towards cinematic ambient, downtempo electronic, skewed pop, neo-classical and musique concrète sensibilities, their works evolve from memory, dialogue, dreams and ongoing explorations into loss, selfhood, human behaviour and its coalescence and tensions with the non-human. Centring the voice-as-instrument, t l k’s practice holds a deep commitment to the act of noticing. They have performed at the Barbican, Southbank Centre and Glastonbury Festival, with bespoke compositions for the Sainsbury Centre and Luke Jerram’s ‘Gaia’ installation, gathering a 35-strong choir to ‘keen’ the Earth at Bristol Cathedral.
SIMON LEE DICKER
SIMON LEE DICKER
Red Hot Haystacks
VENUE
6. Coker Court, East Coker
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am – 5pm
Sun 25 May, 10am – 4pm
Using a combination of black light and wild meadow grass, Red Hot Haystacks explores ideas around the unseen environmental impact of human activity through a story of nuclear testing in the 1960s. High levels of radiation were reported on the coasts each side of the Pentland Firth that separates mainland Scotland from the Orkney archipelago. The seas proved too treacherous to complete any survey, but later, soil particles from haystacks contaminated by atmospheric nuclear testing, were described geologists as Red Hot.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Simon Lee Dicker is an artist based in south Somerset whose work explores a discordant relationship with landscape and human-made marks on the natural world. He describes an artistic practice that examines matter in a state of flux as being ‘restless’.
Dicker’s recent exhibitions include temporary sculptural installations with ceramics such as See-an-enemy in Lisbon made from chalk, unfired clay and ceramics, and The Flatlands at the Arnolfini in Bristol, a large-scale sculptural installation of a tyre stack and film inspired by Robert Smithson’s Hotel Palenque. His work exists alongside a practice in creative writing with drawing that continues to inform his ideas.
Simon is a co-founder of the artist-run organisation OSR Projects that run the bi-annual Od Arts Festival and regular Community Clay pottery workshops.
VICKY PUTLER (FLAX PROJECT CIC) & RACHEL DOBBS
VICKY PUTLER (FLAX PROJECT CIC) & RACHEL DOBBS
The West Coker Strop - 2025
Drop-in workshop
VENUE
1. Dawe’s Twineworks, West Coker
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am
Visitors are invited to contribute to the making of the West Coker Strop while the artists ‘spin a yarn’, bringing to life the language and vocabulary of flax, linen and rope-making which still informs our everyday speech. The West Coker Strop will be a new community folk art object made from rope which is intertwined with people’s wishes, hopes, magic manifestations, and affirmations for the village and its community.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Vicky Putler is the Founder / Director of Flax Project CIC. Previously a textile designer/printer, frustration at not being able to source UK linen led her to want to grow her own flax. In 2021, under the name The Flax Project, she began growing flax in Cornwall and seeking ways to create the necessary green infrastructure. In 2022 Vicky set up an experimental textile workshop for processing and experimenting with flax, offering workshops in flax crafts, natural dyeing and printing.
Flax Project CIC has run several grant funded community projects in Plymouth and is currently commissioned for the two year HLF funded ‘Blockhouse Folk: Past, Present & Future’ project (Stoke Village, Plymouth, UK) led by Rachel Dobbs. Vicky recently exhibited linoleum experiments in ‘Pull My Thread’ at Brantwood House, (Coniston, UK) and flax straw work at ‘Green Making-Materials-Objects’ at the Levinsky Gallery, (Plymouth, UK).
Rachel Dobbs (IRL) is an artist based in Plymouth (UK) whose practice spans a range of collaborative artistic and community-focused projects, all with a strong emphasis on people, relationships, communication and systems of exchange. Rachel’s work as one half of LOW PROFILE has recently featured in Social Fabric (Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange, Penzance), and Faraway Festival Reims (Reims, FR), and their artwork is part of public collections at The Box (Plymouth, UK), Harris Museum, Library & Art Gallery (Preston, UK) and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (Reims, FR).
PaC
PaC
Walk – meet at The Village Cafe, East Coker
Sun 25 May, 11am -12:30pm
Booking required
PaC
Together we walk, explore and create a commons of exchange and peer support. PaC: placing artists in common / practicing artists commoning / utm (utm = yoU Tell Me, acknowledging that PaC can be and is different in experience and meaning to different participants).
Throughout Od Arts Festival PaC artists Gemma Gore, James Aldridge, Laura Eldret and Melanie Rose will be in residence and on Sunday you are invited to join them for an artists-led walk through the ancient holloways local to the Cokers.
ABOUT
PaC was initiated and is convened by Laura Eldret as part of More Than Ponies and is made possible with commitment from fellow PaC artists James Aldridge, Gemma Gore, Alys Scott-Hawkins, Melanie Rose and others who have walked with us. Monthly meet-ups take place within the New Forest.
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Melanie Rose is a painter exploring place. Exhibiting widely she has paintings held in both private and public collections. She is a British Academy research scholar, having been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leeds.
Gemma Gore is a visual artist, arts educator and writer, based in Southampton, UK. Grounded in positions of disability, motherhood, queer-ecology and radical vulnerability, she explores the modalities and qualities of interconnectedness.
James Aldridge is a Wiltshire based visual artist working with people and places. James’s practice researches the role of artful and embodied explorations of place within learning/research, and their benefit for individual/ecological wellbeing, with a particular emphasis on Queer and Neurodivergent perspectives.
Laura Eldret is an artist and PhD researcher, exploring commoning as a creative and socio-ecological practice. Her works, including installations, posters, drawings, textiles, videos and events, are frequently the result of cross-disciplinary or collaborative approaches.
ROWAN CORKILL
ROWAN CORKILL
Floriculture (artificial environment 1)
Floriculture examines the concept of collapse within commercial horticulture and its profound environmental impact. Manmade materials replace the organic conditions, simulating an environment optimized for profitable growth but disconnected from the ecosystems these plants were once part of. The work is a reflection on the contradictions inherent in our manipulation of nature, the potential for these artificial environments to serve as temporary sanctuaries, and the inevitable collapse that awaits both the natural and artificial worlds we have created.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rowan Corkill was born in Scotland in 1986. He received a BA in photography & Electronic media at Robert Gordons University, Aberdeen, followed by an MSC in Sound Art & Design at Duncan of Jordanston University, Dundee. Exhibiting nationally and internationally with shows in Europe, North & South America and Canada, the artist has been working with nature as a prominent theme since 2010. Rowan’s works possess a sense of power as well as fragility, a duality which echoes that which exists within nature. Materials play a strong role in the artist’s practice, particularly the use of animals and plants which are collected and used in most of his works. The use of taxidermy in his work acts as a foundation on which to apply materials, most of which are imbued with symbolic meanings which elevate the objects beyond the norms of the everyday.
GROUNDMOUTH
GROUND MOUTH
Workshop and Installation
VENUE
1. Dawe’s Twineworks, West Coker
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am – 5pm
Sun 25 May, 10 am – 4pm
Harry Martin and Milly Melbourne are Groundmouth, a collaboration born from The Field artist residency in the old headquarters of the National Coal Board in Derbyshire, where they worked and played together for 18 months. Groundmouth will weave new mythologies of industrialisation to intuitively understand its complex and haunting legacy, through a sprawling and scavenged installation of sculpture and sound.
ABOUT
Harry Martin’s work describes alchemical transformations leading to a deepening sense of embodiment, interdependence and connection to the land, through shimmering pastel drawings, drag rituals and fragmented choral soundscapes.
Milly Melbourne is the founder of oB wear where pieces are slowly hand worked with care, incorporating labour-intensive historical garment making techniques and handpicking natural materials with a story to tell.
MONICA RIVAS VELASQUEZ
MONICA RIVAS VELASQUEZ
Noticeboards and large scale drawing
VENUE
3. OSR Projects, West Coker
Fri 23 – Sat 24 May, 10am – 5pm
Sun 25 May, 10 am – 4pm
And various noticeboards in East and West Coker
Articulating interwoven narratives at the intersection of climate breakdown, ecological resilience, political and personal histories, Rivas Velásquez’s work addresses the currents that drive resistance to historical memory. In this new collage series, developed for Od Arts Festival, the work explores a re-composition of the gaps, glitches and failures that emerge from those very attempts to name and represent our encounters with nature and the botanical world.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Mónica Rivas Velásquez is a Colombian artist and researcher. Her practice traces ideas of encounter and relation through expanded notions of drawing, embodied narratives and the coming together of image, text and voice. Her work explores the fragmented experience of national identities placed under erasure by violence and environmental destruction. Iterations of her latest project (AHRC funded PhD), I Want To Write To You Like Someone Learning, have been exhibited, published and performed, among others, in Theatrum Mundi’s, JOAN publishing, Café Oto, London, South London Botanical Institute, Stanley Picker Gallery, London, ICA London, Omved Gardens, London, Radiophrenia Glasgow, Clouds and Tracks, FieldNotes Journal Audio, Resonance FM.