This project has been a working study for the past fourteen months, starting as far back as June 2020. Beginning as a simple lockdown- daily walk around local woodlands and finding a secluded spot that felt calming and tranquil, transformed into a site of daily ritual and transformation experiences. This site became the start of a long period of study of this area, building physical artefacts and estab- lishing ritual performances with the intent to establish how ritual can promote mending, and how ritual is the constant across a constantly changing environment, signifying regeneration and renewal. The ultimate aim is to become the active participant between site and ritual, providing a link to objects, a terrestrial environment and the manifestation of a process. With an ancestral link to Scottish druid ritual and magick, my understanding of the practice had already been established, if not cast aside for more modern approaches. I had memories of ointments and medicines being made from grown herbs and mud in our family kitchen, and small trinkets being made as protective talismans to be hung at windows and doors. With this in mind, my approach to this site instinctively meant a place of safety and experimentation with the transition from old into new but also new into old, with the application of old practices into a new situation.
The annual Degree Show is a highly anticipated event amongst staff, students, external partners and friends of the School of Art – it provides a platform for the work that the students have spent so long conceiving and producing. The 2023 Degree Show has been realised through an ongoing testing of ideas in public arenas in which the discourse around art practice takes place. This process of realising practice which engages with audiences has over […]