Touch Wood 2 & 3 - Poetry Walk and Evening Amphitheatre performances

Touch Wood (2) - live performance, as part of 'Poetry Walk' at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, an event organised by Hari Byles.  With PB, inc on harmonica.

Touch Wood (3) - live performance in the outdoor amphitheatre, evening, at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve.

Touch Wood (2):

A perambulatory performance, around the Nature Reserve, sequencing micro-locations within the site that I had been manoeuvring in previously.  Re-performing these manoeuvres to journey around the site, with PB on harmonica.  Snips of hair posted through the chicken wire fence.  Foot hovered over the low stone wall.  Shoeless foot and shoe-in-hand as I swing the open gate.  Heliotropic lilac wool to criss-cross bind my leg up a tree.  A sudden dash with PB to the amphitheatre.  Stepping onto the log with harmonica from PB, and balancing-crouching to tie my head to the thorn bush.  

Touch Wood (3):

A seated performance, with reading from my book 'Touch Wood', skipping from one passage to another within it, and snipping of hair while I read.  Hair, ultimately, covering face, obscuring my face and muffling sound.  Snippets of hair falling into the book, and retained in pages.

Photos by Hari Byles (some edited GB)

Touch Wood - Kupola performance

'Touch Wood (1)'

Live performance at Phytology/Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, for Kupola event, 2019

With PB

Part of my residency at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve in 2019-20

Screenshots/stills from film by Michael Smythe

Touch Wood Residency

In 2019 - 2020 I was Artist in Residence at Phytology/Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, London - my project became 'Touch Wood'.

I made artwork and experiments in the Writer's Hut, herb garden and nature garden.  I produced movement experiments,  5 live public performances, an artist's book and 3 large scale billboards.

I was invited and supported by Hari Byles and Michael Smythe.  

In 'Touch Wood' I devised a series of ‘manoeuvres’  - finding ways to connect myself, my body, to the plants and trees of the Nature Reserve – whilst thinking about ritual, personal history, our bodily adaptations/expressions, and how that enables us to connect, or not, with nature, and in turn finding myself/ourselves there.  Often using my hair, or wool or parts of my body to physically connect myself to the plants and trees, or to hover or move between them.  I would then find language to describe the manoeuvres, which became distilled into poetry, an artists’ book, and hand-painted full-size billboards.  I re-worked these texts and physical manoeuvres to become live public performances, within the Nature Reserve and elsewhere, with the final one transplanted to the Feminist Library where I attached myself by my hair to a hatstand rather than a tree.  The manoeuvres and surrounding works employed absurdity, endurance, arduousness, inversion, futility - delicacy, intricacy and intimacy – ritual, repetition, connection – communication, description and instruction becoming discovery and expression - to explore the feeling of our bodies fitting and not fitting with nature, and the rituals that can connect us to it.

 

TOUCH WOOD

LOOK UP AND TURN

FACE TO SUN AND 

BALANCE ON ONE

FOOT

STAY

 

Gail Burton is manoeuvring with the trees, plants and soil in the Nature Reserve, touching and not-touching, on one foot and two. Finding points of contact, fragility, entry and repulsion in a series of experimental movements, repetitions and devised encounters, sometimes simple, sometimes intricate and absurd.  These solitary performances become writing, slowly.  The billboard is the first extract from the book of manoeuvres.

'Touch Wood' performance 1. Stills edited by GB from film documentation by MS

'Touch Wood' performance 2. Photo HB

Pages from 'Touch Wood' hand-painted artists' book

Hand-painted full size billboards.  Photos MS

'Hat Stand' performance, Feminist Library. Photo Trezzi

Pie Napkin (puff) - After Woods

Pie Napkin (puff) - dried out after being in the woods all weekend

See Pie Napkin (puff) on day 2, after being in the woods over night

See Pie Napkin (puff) on day 1

See Pie Napkin (puff) in its original condition before going into the woods

Pie Napkin (pasty) - After Woods

Pie Napkin (pasty) - dried out after being in the woods all weekend

See Pie Napkin (pasty) on day 2 after being in the woods over night

See Pie Napkin (pasty) on day 1

See Pie Napkin (pasty) in its original condition before going into the woods

Pie Napkin (chicken kickers) - After Woods

Pie Napkin (chicken kickers) - dried out after being in the woods all weekend

See Pie Napkin (chicken kickers) on day 2, after being in the woods over night

See Pie Napkin (chicken kickers) on day 1

See Pie Napkin (chicken kickers) in its original condition before going into the woods

Pie napkin (brown food) - After Woods

Pie napkin (brown food) - dried out after being in the woods all weekend

See Pie napkin (brown food) on day 2, after being in the woods over night

See Pie Napkin (brown food) on day 1

See Pie Napkin (brown food) in its original state before going into the woods

Walk in the Woods - Day 2

On Sunday 7th September, the second day of the exhibition Take a Walk in the Park, I walked through Queen’s Woods to find the matchboxes and napkin drawings that I had deposited there the day before. The route I had taken on Saturday when I placed the drawings in the woods had begun from the main clearing, so I started from there on my walk to find them. I was able to remember some of my route and to find locations on it where I had left matchboxes and napkins. I could not, however, remember all of the route or places where I had left drawings. Sometimes I found drawings nearby to where I had left them, sometimes exactly where I had left them, and sometimes they were gone. I did not remember at all where some of the drawings had been, and did not find them. Sometimes I encountered a drawing unexpectedly, having forgotten where it was. I have posted pictures of the matchboxes and napkins that I did find below, in the order that I originally placed them on my route through the woods. You can compare the condition and variety of drawings on my Day 2 walk to those on my Day 1 walk

down exercise matchbox and Pie Napkin (pasty) - Day 2

This is the log where down exercise matchbox had been left on day 1. On day 2 the matchbox was not there.

See down exercise matchbox on day 1

See down exercise matchbox and down exercise rizla in their original condition before going into the woods





Pie Napkin (pasty) on day 2, after being in the woods over night. This napkin was still attached to the holly bush where it had originally been placed but it had got all twisted up. It was possible to unfold it and lay it back onto the holly bush.

See Pie Napkin (pasty) on day 1

See Pie Napkin (pasty) in its original condition before going into the woods

Pie Napkin (steak and kidney) - Day 2

Pie Napkin (steak and kidney) on day 2, after spending the night in the woods. This napkin had fallen from the tree on which it had been hung, and was now laying on the ground. It was quite crumpled and bits of earth, stick and small creatures had got mixed in with it; it was not possible to rescue it.

See Pie Napkin (steak and kidney) on day 1

See Pie Napkin (steak and kidney) in its original condition before going in to the woods

Pie Napkin (and peas) - Day 2

Pie Napkin (and peas) on day 2, on a bush after being in the woods overnight. This napkin had remained in its original position. It was soggy but untorn and still strong. Some of the colours and dots were still visible. The pie had changed colour somewhat.

See Pie Napkin (and peas) on day 1

See Pie Napkin (and peas) in its original condition before going into the woods