Through craft, design, making and performing, we encouraged everyone to unleash their creativity and be inspired by our latest exhibition.

We called for creative responses to three themes that linked to our theatre design exhibition, Staging Places; A Sense of Place, Costumes and Wonder.

Creative responses that explore thoughts, feelings and experiences have been presented in a range of media (visual arts in 2D or 3D, digital, craft, performance art, poetry and music).

A selection of this work will be shown in NCCD’s Window Collection alongside Jo Fairfax: Play.

Fairy Glenn

Jem Dunn

Acrylic ink on yupo paper

Some of my most memorable childhood moments, was investigating Woods and coming out into a clearing. It felt like a magical stage already set up for a performance. Sun light making it through leaves, highlighting a leaf or a flower like a spotlight. Natures wonderful, ongoing, ever changing performance.

“and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them”

Joshua Joel Eteson

Bronze (lost wax), enamel paint

The title, an excerpt from O’hara’s poem, “Having a coke with you”, sums up this work and the current position I found myself in. Why have I chosen this path? Is this my life from now on? And ultimately, is this the art I want to be known for?

The figure wades through the unknown, to a yet unrealised destination, perhaps the figure is a self-portrait of what I would like to become.

Its small scale, bringing in the viewer, an invitation into the journey, longing to find the place, or at least, a sense of it.

The Artist Was Here (2020)

Lily Dodd

Video (4 min 59 secs)

‘The Artist Was Here’ documents my making process in the studio. Performance based, the work is a visual representation of the artist seeking refuge, a safe place where the artist can express themselves freely without constraint. A place where the mind and body become one, the process actively encourages the artist to look internally and express this through the action of painting.

COVID CUSTOMERS

WILLOW STACEY

Embroidery thread on vintage tablecloth

2020, the year of unprecedented times. For seven months I became a permanent fixture in supermarkets as a female security guard. The job came with a sense of belonging, like I was making a difference to customers who had been shielding for months, hadn’t seen their family or friends. Covid appeared to connect people with a familiar uncertainty, no longer rushing from work, to the school run, to home they had the time and were willing to stop and chat. I was a familiar face when people could not see their own family and friends.

As time went on customers grew tired of queuing and waiting, the need to rush taking over. The gratitude disappeared and the derogatory comments of being young, blonde female in a male dominated working environment resumed.

Covid Customers is a compilation of the remarks that were made to me, by men in my workplaces. These situations left me with the conflict of being at work, trying to stay professional whilst seething inside. The embroidery acts as a release, a way to portray what has been said to me.

The act of embroidering these words onto inherently feminine cloths creates a conversation between the brash sayings and the delicate, domestic textiles.

Chemical Landscape

Kelly Barfoot

Chemigram, alternative photographic process. A5 work on photographic gloss paper in a black edged frame

Fog rolling across the hills on a winter’s morning? In fact, Chemical Landscape is a completely fabricated place created by the reaction between chemicals on sensitized photographic paper. It is a photograph of light rather than a view that exists in reality, even so it still evokes a sense of place and atmosphere in me, triggering landscape memories. It was created using the chemigram process, where light sensitive paper is dipped between photographic developer and fixative. I made the developer myself combining herbs from the garden, washing soda and vitamin C powder for a more sustainable work.

The Waiting Room

Paul Sutherland

Poem

The Waiting Room is a memorial place in my history because the experience of being locked-out stimulated a memory buried deep in my subconscious. Stranded on a Lincolnshire railway station platform having misjudged the arrival and departure of trains, as expressed in the poem, all relates to the more intimate event remembered. The work seems a metaphor for how ‘places’ no matter how essential are sometimes open and sometimes closed.

Not a Journey

Steven Wood

Steel and tooled plaster sculpture

The vision of my materiality and seeing the darkness where I once stood, the passing of time and the thing I did not see, reality.

My sculpture is a representation of that time, and the void between the viewer and the sculpture is the pathway I travelled. The viewing experience is that special space of me in their head reflecting, visually and emotionally. Intrigued, excited, stimulated, or if you chose you can just walk away.

Out Standing

Gudrun Ståhl Sharpley

Monoprint linocut using ink on printing paper

Out Standing is a work that was influenced by the year I spent at Gunby Hall and Gardens before my exhibition Temporal Echoes in the Orchard Gallery. During this time I was enveloped by the timeless atmosphere that it exudes when you visit. In one sense time has stood still, yet subtly natural changes happen as people interact with the place and its fabric. This work has evolved using my own photographic reference materials where I have deliberately chosen elements and shapes that evoke the specific as well as a universal sense of place in the world.

A Sense of DisPlace

Elsa Godinho

Video (1 Min 33 Secs)

My Sense of Place,is currently more disPLACEment – from loved ones, activities, work, leisure, etc. into quotidian details.

I feel lost& loss and seek out contact online, where before I would dive-hug-& close-embrace-dance

So, I have paired each voice with a photo that connects me to that friend –a small detail as each voice is only a tiny part of the memories and hopes we share from afar.

Within these apart & shared restrictions, I inspect the smallest details for sustenance from these gifts received, I offer to you, and hope that you might enjoy and explore with me inner places.

Dr Lia in the kitchen

Elaine Gorton

This piece is all about how I related to my space during the covid crisis. I moved in 2020 and inherited a large dresser that couldn’t be removed without breaking it apart. It became the backdrop to my life and my partners old blue and white pottery sits on it. Dr Lia sat in my kitchen, we talked and I sculpted her there. So now she sits on the dresser, I glazed her white and blue, her porcelain skin and dark blue signature eyeliner like the strong and beautiful old pottery that surrounds her.

LUKA

Arati Reddy-Devlin

Pen and ink

‘Luka’ depicts a unique spot on a small island in Croatia called Šipan. From this particular vantage point I captured the micro elements of the plants around and beneath my feet and the vast distance of the sea and mountain range in front of me of the mainland of Croatia. This drawing captures a moment in time and reminds me of the intense heat and dust of the day, the sounds of the church bell ringing at midday and of the few villagers’ cars passing by that created a small dust storm as they went by.

Library of Celsus, Ephesus

Evelyn Jennings

Hand embroidery

Ephesus in Turkey, was an important port city in the 10th century and even in ruins as it is today, gives off a sense of splendour and importance, which I hope you will find in my embroidery. The Library of Celsus was a funerary monument, and was the third largest library in the Roman empire, holding around twelve thousand scrolls. It lay in ruins until its façade was re-errected by archaeologists in the 1970s. It is interesting to note that Ephesus is now 6km from the sea, due to the silting of the harbour over time.

The Wonder of 2 belong – celebrating 1 tune by 1 soul with 2 homes

Elsa Godinho

Video (4 min 48 secs)

Music written, performed and recorded (all instruments) by me, with 1 guest guitar lead track by Ian Cox. Photos taken mostly by me and a few by my son, Dominic.

I was lucky to be a child in one Country & grow to adulthood in another: Portugal and the UK, I love them both, the peoples, the languages, the cultures, the music, the humour, the spaces – I could go on and on, and often do!!!

This is a tune in celebration of riches found in between, and back to the ancients roaming both: the Celts. With the tune, a few snapshots of my home in Sleaford and my grandparents’ home in Portugal – where I lived to the age of 13 years.

Simple joys are everywhere to share.

660 Minutes SW

Kelly Barfoot

Ink on paper

To me there is such wonder in the power of natural elements and the weather has inspired many artists over the centuries. For my work, I collaborated with the wind to make art by freely suspending a pen over paper to make a drawing for 660 minutes. It fills me with wonder and fascination to see the intricate patterns that the breeze makes, showing direction and force over a long duration. It reminds me that the weather is ever present, ever changing and ever impacting our lives.

Perfectly panda

Linda Wilson

The reason I picked wonder is because the wonder of the animal kingdom and nature is often an influence in my work. This particular piece incorporates nature, animals and Japan.

Japanese nature and animals have always created a sense of wonder for me. It’s almost mystical and magical and feel that it just fits the theme beautifully.

I love using wood slices as a base for this media and it allows me to bring some of nature into the pieces.

Wonderment & Enchantment

Luke John Walsh

Foot Stools LED Lights, Junction Box

The two footstools that I modified have had multiple LED lights installed into the space where household objects would usually be kept. In this piece, light is a signifier for joy, excitement and new experiences. The footstool can also be closed as normal with no indication of any modification, this gives the piece more layers of possibility and can be altered as and when to play with the intentions of the piece. I invite viewers to interact and use the piece, both as it’s original intention, let them view it as an art object or both.

The Language of Life

Chelsea Marie Bellham

Sculpture set of four, made of plaster

Language is an essential part of life, an imperative need of communication in a vast world of complicated beings, using dialect as a tool to help them to navigate their journey of life.

For some this comes with a use of their hands as an instrument to replace some of our senses of which a portion of people may take for granted.

Did you ever wonder what someone else was saying when speaking in another language or using sign language? I imagine they felt very much the same.

Language may not be universal; but a need for interaction most defiantly is.

In The Orchard

Gudrun Ståhl Sharpley

Monoprint linocut using ink on printing paper

In the Orchard was inspired by coming across the most amazing old apple tree, its branches gnarled and contorted, with big lumps where scars remain from the cutting, and breaking off of branches by nature’s storms. It would have been simple to just focus on the tree, but using references from a family archive I feel that the resultant work does evoke a feeling of an excitement for life in that moment juxtaposed by the longevity of the apple tree, nature. Of course there are other interpretations one could make, but I shall leave that to the viewer.

Little Red

Jem Dunn

Gouache on watercolour paper

There was a mist but the sun was trying to shine through. Up ahead my daughter, in her red hooded coat was walking. Her face was filled with wonder, looking up, investigating the trees which towered above her. It reminded me to look at the world through a child’s eyes.

In Search For Wonder near Lake Erie

Paul Sutherland

Poem

In Search of Wonder Near Lake Erie highlights how ‘wonder’ is something that can occupy the mind as if an objective. I admit to some extent ‘wonder’ is a mystery; why something raises my consciousness to the point that imagination is alert to the creative potential of a scene or person remains elusive. The poem suggests ‘wonder’ is something the artist can train him or herself to seek and that this instruction can be passed on to another. Lake Erie, in the Great Lakes in Canada, sets the location where exact observation, history of a lost people and the truth of friendship combine to produce, I hope for the reader, an experience of wonder.

Wonder in Icelandic Vulcanism (No 9)

Sigvaldi Fridarsonur

Steel wire, plaster of Paris, acrylic paint

How magma and lava are in the way they are created and how they appear, considering shape and flow.

The lifeblood of Earths creation.

The core structure needed to be strong and the final appearance needed to be flowing.

A light yet strong wire sectional structure sealed with ModRock was my choice.

Material flow dominated the chances as the plaster of Paris was allowed to flow and find its own shape, stages of painting were similarly poured and allowed to flow.

Lynda Benglis’ sculptures gave me inspiration and ‘happenstance’ was the key.

Inner Nature

Cassandra Newby

Ceramics, raku clay, under-glazes

This ceramic piece was created to capture my sense of wonder at my experience of nature and it’s ability to transform my inner experience. This has been especially true during Covid lockdowns when I have been on long walks under the stars and trees and I have felt wonder at it’s beauty and also wonder at the part of me that is not a part of the modern world, that is ancient and still animal.

Walking Shadow

Janet Farahar

Mixed media

Artwork produced in response to a quote from Shakespeare: Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In The Castle Museum

Paul Sutherland

Prose Poem

In the Castle Museum relates to one of the startling experiences I had in the museum during my work as a valued part time cleaner. The conservator in the piece said once ‘you’re the only cleaner I have ever allowed into my lab.’ The work conveys the contrast between the conservator’s tainted costume and the pristine quality of the burial clothes the two of us examine. The museum costumes took me back to the Victorian times and the different tensions between how people viewed mortality and immortality. Maybe the reader can also sense the growing relationship between the conservator and me as another reflective seam of how exquisite costumes can connect different times and places and hearts.

Unresolved identity

Steven Wood

Foam, plaster, cellulose paint, and bronze flakes. Variable sizes, sculpture

These sculptures signify repressed emotions that do not mirror our true being and the outward projection that is only a placebo of our inner sanctum. When we shield ourselves with a cloak of illusion that masks our internal deluge, onlookers reflect with cognitive dissonance.

This set of work is extremely faceted as it covers a broad spectrum of today’s society. Examining the relationship between our mind, body, emotions and how that transpires to everyone. Making you cogitate, but not always seeing the reality as their mind has dressed to disguise the stark nakedness of their circumstances.

Village Pump

Gudrun Ståhl Sharpley

Monoprint linocut using ink on printing paper

Village Pump was developed using a series of wonderful and old photographs taken by my father in the 1950s. Parts of Europe lived a simpler and harsher life, and some parts still have elements of this life conveyed in the work. All the photographs show the traditional and local costumes that all the women were wearing. The cloth was heavy and richly coloured. This was the uniform for all the women signifying their gender and role in the community. They also signify an era passed. However, studying the material closely, it is clear that human nature and self-allocated roles remain.