L: Mary Pearson photo by Mark Loudon. R: mayfield brooks photo by Malcolm-X Betts
Design by Lan Le.
The first Arts Council funded curated residency at Newstead Abbey is around the corner!
Residency: 5 - 17 July 2021 10am - 4pm
The artists will be working throughout the house and gardens on most days. Feel free to pop by to see what they are doing, or even have a chat with them.
N.B. the house will be closed to the public on week days due to it being term time.
Free installation and performance: 17 July 2021, 10am - 4pm
About
Mary Pearson (Liverpool) and mayfield brooks (NYC), in collaboration with lens based artist Ben Harriott, will be in residence at Newstead Abbey with their performance project How to Be Afraid? which explores fear and trauma stemming from their different but connected ancestral links to the transatlantic slave trade. Responding to the accumulated layers of history on site will allow us to feel the compression of layers within our own bodies. In compost, compression over time creates heat which leads to activation. The more layers there are, the more they get activated. Everything breaks down eventually. Fragments. Layers. Pressure. Activation. Renewal. We investigate how histories also haunt the body and power dynamics create pressure that is felt within. Should the city of the future look more like the past? We explore headless heads of states, phantom limbs, and multiple pandemics and ask ourselves 'Who am I afraid of?'
Supported by
