my artist cv / Lottie Child / Jessica Thorn

After writing my artist statement for my CV (well this is what it is for the moment) I think that with this project I should try to direct my work:

Abandoned, forgotten objects, my changing environment from country to city and exploring historical buildings and cultural sites inspire me. From moving from a house surrounded by fields to a residential area, I’m interested in the spontaneous and prescribed notion of playing within a city and green spaces, inside and outside, with provided objects or imagination.

I know that at the moment that Jessica Thom is the residency artist at the South London Gallery as part of SLG's 'Making Play' project. "Her project for Sceaux Gardens is to research and map children’s play on the estate through a series of visual and scientific explorations of the local environment, its history and imagined future." (SLG website) Which is an interesting idea so I'll try and see if I can chat with her.

Lottie Child:
Also on the South London Gallery website I saw that an artist called Lottie Child has done a few events - Camberwell Urban Napping (3/8/08). Developing Peckham Street Training collaborativly with Peckham Space and Street Training in Camberwell

Street Training in Camberwell :
launching the Camberwell Street training Manual (21&22/6/08), as part of Camberwell Arts Festival a 24 hour urban exploration which involves research and intervention:
"Research is wandering, talking, looking, thinking, and Intervention might include talking to strangers, drumming on street furniture, climbing trees, visiting people, being asked to leave shops, lighting a fire, sitting around, tracing magic symbols on the ground, looking out for the dog with one eye, kissing, foraging for fallen fruits, listening to the sounds of the night, shouting and smelling flowers."
link to manual: http://malinky.org/files/camberwell_v4_ARTWORK.pdf∞

Climbing Club:
started in 2002 and met monthly for three years, to explore the buildings of the city of London by climbing, traversing and scrambling all over it. No equipment is used, and the pace, scale of adventure and time it lasts, is up to the participants. "Bring your kids and your grandmother, wear long skirts, have a hangover." Urban climbing looks at the city with new eyes on its potential for play. Climbing club was started as a faculty of the University of Openness- a group of artist inspired by Copenhagen's free university.

Street Training:
"is the art judging how and how not to interact with place and people on the street, by regularly, safely and joyfuly exploring ourselves and spaces we inhabit, like a martial art it also balances rigorous physical exertion with quiet still meditation by 'doing nothing' typically by lying on the ground in a public space"
"During the session you may learn such things as:
Guerrilla gardening, urban climbing, using the acoustics of city architecture, hanging from ledges, trespassing, entering secret derelict corners, chalking, psychogeographising, getting into the bushes, hiding and finding things eating bananas, doing nothing, cartwheels, jumping over, building up, pissing on, nurturing or sidestepping barriers physical, social and psychological. but mostly you will be supported in doing your own creative/antisocial behaviour."

Accidental Holiday:
http://malinky.org/wikka.php?wakka=AccidentalHoliday
Is a guide book for a walk in Greenwich Peninsula, in the area around the Dome, created at a period of planning for a “ master planned community” for the area. The guide invites you to engage with area in playful ways that call into question the appropriate uses of public spaces.
It is a result of collaborative research. Including a local councilor, children and parents from Nillennium Primary School, local residents, workers and employess of the company developing the area Merdian Delta, and local media arts company Independant Photography who commisioned the project, each with their own perspective and link to the area.
All over the Greenwich Peninsula, plants are bursting through fences and breaking through concrete. Sometimes in big cities, the people are doing little more than surviving, while in forgotten corners a diverse array of plants and animals, birds and insects are really thriving.
This leads to the question, what do people need in order to thrive in the city? Do we need to copy some of the characteristics of wild and feral plant and animal life and be:
lawless devious exuberant curious trusting
challenging risky nurturing patient primal


My hopes of getting in contact/meeting with Lottie Child may have just been abolished due to me reading that on new years day she begins a residency in Brazil! anyway just reading some of her words for her residency here is what I've picked out:
researching the uniqualy Brazillian quality of malandragem untranslatable but interpreted as street smart....I will immerse myself in different urban and rural places always asking - how do i need to behave to be safe and how do i need to behave to be joyful in this place?


Website Links:
Lottie Childs blog: http://malinky.org/wikka.php?wakka=HomePage
her website has loads on and I've printed off some of the manuals/guides to try and do one
pinched most of the above info off there

Artist info / association sponsoring her residency in brazil : www.solarassociates.net/lottie-child
and a gallery of her work off the same website: http://www.solarassociates.net/picture-galleries/