I am very excited to announce a collaboration between myself and James McColl as part of my Plymouth Art Weekender project, Cleaning in Progress, (which is backed by Arts Council England and Visual Art Plymouth’s mentorship scheme Plymouth Platform). As part of Cleaning in Progress, James will be producing the content for a guide/publication to be released alongside the city centre performance. Read James’ guest blog post below to find out more about his art practice and our collaboration.
My name’s James McColl, I am a Writer and Artist based in the South-West. I’ve written for art publications including VASW, Art Cornwall, The Skinny, Young Artists In Conversation, Made In Plymouth, Three Weeks and This Is Tomorrow. My work mixes performance, video and text. I’m one half of First Line Theatre, which is a performance group whose work is site-specific and deliberately outside of art spaces. A recurring theme of my work is to try and bridge the gap between the art world and general public through inclusivity, engagement and direct action.
I’ve been aware of Elena’s work for sometime, so it’s with both pleasure and excitement that I am producing a collaborative piece of text for her Plymouth Art Weekender project, Cleaning In Progress. Interestingly enough, during last years Weekender, First Line Theatre’s show Basic Space took place at the same time as Elena’s piece Metal Detectives, both performance pieces taking place in the heart of the city and an apt precursor to this collaboration.
We share a strong belief in what art can do in the everyday, whether it’s through her performance or my writing. Art should and can be for everyone, which is an ethos that is at the heart of this collaboration. This shared value was the start of our initial conversation and the starting point for the free handout that will be produced for CIP. With this in mind, my approach has been to create text that is accessible to everyone and explains Elena’s work in an interesting way. I also plan to use some creative writing as a response and companion text to the descriptive text. Currently, I’m writing in response to images of bombed out Plymouth, as well as automatic writing exercises.
Find Out More:
James McColl:
Instagram: @jamesmccoll999
Twitter: @jamesmccoll999
ELENA BRAKE 