Fertility Fest 2018

Fertility Fest is the world’s first arts festival dedicated to fertility, infertility, modern families and the science of making babies. Hosted by London's Bush Theatre (8th - 13th May 2018) it will feature 150 artists and fertility experts in a week long programme of events, entertainment, discussion, debate, support and solidarity about how the human race is being made (and sometimes not being made) in the modern world. Click here for full line up.

At Fertility Fest 2018 I will be talking about a version of Warnscale that explores the male experience of in/fertility and biological childlessness that I am looking to create. Click here for details.

Using Warnscale as a model I am now looking to create a version of Warnscale that focuses on male in/fertility and biological childlessness. This version will find a ‘site/walk/landscape’ that works in response/metaphor to the specifics of the male experience; and, though this new walk and book will be a companion to Warnscale it would be have its own title, identity and set of material.

To create this work I will following a similar creative and research methodology that I developed when creating Warnscale. This will involve a series of mapping-walks with men experiencing in/fertility, fertility treatment, donation and the possibility of biological childlessness. I will also carry out research work in a fertility clinic and with fertility experts, support groups and sociologists together with field work on site in the chosen landscape. 

More info soon.

If you are interested in being involved please email me via louise@louiseannwilson.com

Glad-Var Gallery Exhibition

I am currently exhibiting and selling some of my recent watercolour studies from the series entitled 'Petra' (rock/stone) in the exhibition entitled “GLAD-VAR” at GALLERY 23 upstair in Arteria, Lancaster.

There is something about the anticipation of spring that fills you with optimism. New life blossoms all around you and we are rewarded with lighter evenings and the prospect of a brighter day! With “GLAD – VAR” we wish you a “HAPPY SPRING” with a collection of artisan creations celebrating the change of the season.  The show is a joyful mix of art and craft to uplift and inspire.

The exhibition runs from 11th Janaury to 12 May 2018. Call in the exhbtio and my paintings if you can.

For more information call 01524 61111 or email info@arteriashop.co.uk

Publication: Language, Landscape, Sublime

June 29-30 2016, Dartington Hall & Sharpham House, Devon, England.

Louise's paper is published in the Online Publication coming from the two-day symposium, which drew together artists and thinkers from a wide range of disciplines to explore ways in which landscape –– and the ways we represent it –– connects deeply to our lives and underpins our relationship to the world.

Article Title: 'Creating Warnscale: Applying Dorothy Wordsworth’s Mode of the Feminine Sublime to a Walking-Performance about In/Fertility and Biological Childlessness' by Louise Ann Wilson

Abstract: This paper will focus on Warnscale created and written by Louise Ann Wilson. Warnscale is a self-guided walking-performance specific to the Warnscale fells south of Buttermere Lake, Cumbria. Mediated through a multi-layered walking-guide/art-book, the walking-performance is aimed at women who are childless-by-circumstance. Society offers no rituals or rites of passage through which women who have ‘missed’ the life-event of biological motherhood can be acknowledged and come to terms with that absence. Warnscale, however, offers imaginative and creative ways through which participants can engage with landscape in order to reflect-upon, re-image and transition (even in the smallest of ways) the liminality that this circumstance can lead to.

This paper explores how Warnscale was developed through: an in-depth, ‘situated’ study of the landscape in which it was created; observational research in fertility clinics; and a close reading of the journal writings of Dorothy Wordsworth.

Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journals describes how she walked in, and engaged with, the landscape in a manner that was embodied, multi-sensory and materially specific – a mode, I suggest, that can be understood as a form of the ‘feminine sublime’. This sublime, I argue, can also be located in her ability to notice the ‘common-place’ and thus see afresh ‘everyday’ objects, people and experiences that are ordinarily overlooked, or on the edges of social and cultural discourse. Warnscale works with an applied use of Wordsworth’s ‘feminine sublime’ mode of walking, dwelling and noticing and is framed by extracts from her journals.

Mobile Utopia: Conference, Exhibition, Catalogue

2-5 November 2017, Lancaster University

Mobile Utopia Conference, Exhibition and Catalogue 

Exhibition: Mobile Utopias: Art and Experiments

Exhibit: 'Making Warnscale' by Louise Ann Wilson

Using texts, photographs, drawings, mapping-walk maps and artefacts this exhibition shows how Warnscale mobilised 3-tiers of research that involved an in-depth study of the landscape in which it is situated, observation field work in fertility clinics, and a series of group and one-to-one mapping-walks with individuals affected by biological childlessness. The exhibition also shows how a close reading of the journal writings of Dorothy Wordsworth who walked in and wrote extensively about her experience of the landscape of the Lake District, informed Warnscale and its desire to engage the reader/walker in new, or different, ways of seeing and feeling the landscape and through that embodied, creative and immersive landscape experience transform their experiences of the underlying subject matter.

See the exhibition catalogue: Mobile Utopias: Art and Experiments (2017). ISBN: 978-1-86220-3339-6.

Panel: Utopia and Place.

Paper Presentation: 'Warnscale: Emplacing, Re-imaging and Transforming ‘Missing’ Life-Events' by Louise Ann Wilson

Louise's paper explored how rural landscapes can become a ‘site of transformation’ where ‘missing’, or challenging, ‘life-events’ are emplaced, re-imaged and transformed. The paper case studies (Warnscale) (2015-ongoing) and explores how, in Warnscale, the landscape and the act of walking and dwelling becomes a transformative metaphor for the underlying subject matter and applies theories relating to therapeutic landscape and mobilities. It articulates how Warnscale was created through three-tiers of research that mobilised the site, the science of the underlying subject (in/fertility) and, through a series of group and one-to-one mapping-walks, individuals affected by biological childlessness – thus challenging and re-imaging the normative ‘utopias’ around biological motherhood.

The paper, analyses how Warnscale evolved and applied a series of six scenographic principles. These principles were informed by theories and aesthetics relating to landscape, pilgrimage, Early Romanticism, and a close study of Dorothy Wordsworth’s, and her contemporaries’ approach to landscape. The mobile, embodied ‘mode’ of engaging with landscape that these women pursued enabled them to see afresh objects, people and experiences that were ordinarily overlooked – thus producing a materially specific ‘utopia of the everyday’ – that articulated non-mainstream ‘lived’ experiences and discourses on landscape, and can be mobilised as a creative strategy in contemporary socially engaged performance practice. 

Mulliontide: A Guide for Walkers

Publication of Mulliontide: A walk from Poldhu Cove to Mullion Cove.

Mulliontide is a coastal walk from Poldhu Cove to Mullion Cove that I created in 2016 in collaboration with residents of Mullion, Cornwall. The walk notices the effects of tide and time, acknowledges deep feelings for place and recognises the challenges of change – personal and topographical.

Those who did the walk over one weekend in October 2016 responded so positively that I have produced a special guide book so that others can share the experience. The walk takes you along the coast stopping at fifteen stations en route. The stations introduce you to residents who tell you what is important to them about that place. Each of these residents has deep feelings for this coastal landscape and knows it, and its constantly changing nature, intimately.

The guide book invites you to get to know these people through their words, photographs and songs and to immerse yourself in the place through your own actions. Even if doing the walk itself is not feasible, this publication will provide you with a striking record of my most recent work.

Mulliontide: A Guide for Walkers costs £6.00 + £1.50 postage & packing.

If you would like to buy a copy please email Louise at: louise@louiseannwilson.com 
 

Mulliontide: NEW walk by Louise Ann Wilson

Mulliontide

Created by Louise Ann Wilson

Produced by Golden Tree Productions

10-1pm, 29 & 30 October 2016

Mulliontide is a sited-walk from Poldhu to Mullion Cove, The Lizard, Cornwall. Evolved in collaboration with local residents, the walk focuses on a much-loved coastal landscape and explores the places where land, sea and people meet. It notices the effects of tide and time, acknowledges deep feelings for place and recognises the challenges of change. 

Moving from station to station along the coastal path, the walk invites participants to notice specific landscape features and layers them with memories, photos, songs and actions in order to think about belonging, loss and repair. The walk is a time for joining together to celebrate and reflect.

Please note: Mulliontide starts at Poldhu Cove at 10am. It follows (and leaves) the coastal path, covers approx. 2 miles and will take up to 3 hours to complete including stops and lunch. Afterwards, we will return walkers to any cars at Poldhu Cove. The walk has ascents and descents, is rough in places and crosses wet and uneven rocks (with care). We suggest, therefore, that Mulliontide is not suitable for children under 14 or those unused to walking on rough paths.

Mulliontide is part of the larger project Miss You Already produced by Golden Tree Productions.

It is funded by the National Trust, The Exchange, the University of Exeter and supported by Hall for Cornwall.

Photograph: bob felce (Mullion)

Louise to speak at Fertility Fest 2016

Louise is talking about The Gathering and Warnscale at Fertility Fest 2016. The festival takes place at the Birmingham Rep on Saturday 28th May and at London’s Park Theatre on Saturday 11th June. It will feature over twenty five leading writers, visual artists, theatre-makers, film-directors and composers alongside some of the country’s foremost fertility experts in two days of live performance, discussion and debate. The festival is running alongside a new play by the award-winning writer Gareth Farr called The Quiet House about a couple’s experience of going through IVF.

Full details can be found here.

Warnscale on BBC Radio 4 ‘Ramblings’

On 17th September 2015 at 3pm you can listen to Clare Balding on a visit to Cumbria, walking and talking with Louise about her latest project, Warnscale: A Land Mark Walk Reflecting on In/Fertility and Childlessness. They were accompanied by Dr Celia Roberts of Lancaster Unversity and Dr Zakyeya Atcha, both of whom were involved in the development of the project.

Click here to listen.

Warncale: A Land Mark Walk Reflecting on In/Fertility and Childlessness (Warnscale) is a self guided walking-performance specific to, and created in, Warnscale, an area of fells to the south of Buttermere Lake. The performance is mediated through a walking guide and art book and is aimed at women who are childless by circumstance. 

The book (with geology hand lens) is available to purchase at a subsidised price of £23 (plus P&P) here.

Groups and individuals can undertake the walk in their own time. 

Warnscale book available to buy

Warnscale: A Land Mark Walk Reflecting on In/Fertlity and Childlessness

Warnscale Exhibition at The Wordsworth Trust

Exhibition at the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere – 20 June to 19 July

From 20 June to 19 July 2015 performance maker and artist Louise Ann Wilson will present an exhibition of photographs, drawings and artefacts at the Wordsworth Trust that offer an insight into the 12 month process of creating her new walking-art book, Warnscale: A Land Mark Walk Reflecting on In/Fertility and Childlessness.

Louise researched and developed Warnscale through in-depth studies of the landscape in which it is situated combined with observational research in fertility clinics, a series of mapping-walks, and a close reading of the journal writings of Dorothy Wordsworth who walked in and wrote extensively about her experience of the landscape of the Lake District. Indeed, Dorothy Wordsworth has informed the book and its aim of engaging the reader/walker in new, or different, ways of engaging with landscape in order to reflect upon and even transform their experiences.

You can find out more about the exhibition by clicking here.

Warnscale: A Land Mark Walk

A culmination of an experimental new project the publication is designed to enable participants to undertake a self-guided/performed walk in the Warnscale area of fells that lie to the south of Buttermere in the Lake District thereby making their own journey the 'missing' life-event of becoming a biological parent, for which there is no traditional rite of passage.

On 16 May & 17 May 2015, the book will be launched with an exhibition and two days of group walks with Louise. Those who want to join a walking group will need to register through the website here where they will also be able to reserve a copy of the book.  Each walk will be followed by light refreshments at the exhibition in Buttermere Village Hall, which will also be open to the public throughout the weekend, about the development of the project and a chance to talk with Louise and others involved in the creation of the book.

The book will subsequently be available for purchase through this website and groups and individuals can undertake the walk in their own time. For information about how to book a place on one of the two group walks planned to launch the project, please visit the gold tabs above. 

The project has been made possible with support from Arts Council England, Arts & Humanities Research Council; Seed Bed Trust and LICA, Lancaster University.

Make/Believe: Design for Performance 2011-2015

Curated and Produced by The Society of British Theatre Designers (SBTD) in collaboration with the V&A Museum and Nottingham Trent University Make/Believe: Design for Performance 2011-2015 brings together an extraordinary range of contemporary designers and artists in performance to show a collection of new work – made within the last four years. 

The exhibition title, Make:Believe, indicates the vision, skills and commitment found in the diversity of performance design today. It will feature work that defines the edges of this artform-in-industry – in music festivals, large scale events such as the Olympics, Paralympics, community opera, found space and promenade performance, in digital, landscape, heritage and media contexts, as well as the intimate and highly valued work that designers are currently doing in education, health and various community settings.

Revealing the ideas and processes behind performance made by UK designers here and internationally,the exhibition features work that defines the edges of this art form-in-industry. Make/Believe includes work for music festivals, large scale events such as the Olympics, Paralympics, opera and dance as well as found space and promenade performance, and in digital, heritage and media contexts. It also gives an insight into the intimate and highly valued work that designers are currently doing in education, health and various community settings.

For more information click here.

The Walking-Art Project, Cumbria

Coming Soon

May 2015

Louise is creating an interactive walk in an upland area of the Lake District which will be available for participants to experience individually and in groups from the Spring 2015. Please join the mailing list or keep checking back to the News page for further updates. 

Call for Participants

Spring-Winter 2014

Louise is creating an interactive walk in an upland area of the Lake District, Cumbria. The proposed walk will follow a route through a dramatic and varied landscape selected specifically for the project that will provide participants the opportunity to reflect on the significant, but under represented, 'missing' life-event of not becoming a biological mother through circumstance rather than choice.

As part of the process of making this proejct Louise is looking to engage a small focus group of individual women who are childless by circumstance in series of mapping-walks during which participants, either one-to-one or in a group, will search for and explore features of the landscapes that symbolically reflect experiences that relate to being without a biological child. Landscape features might, for instance, include: a rocky steep climb; a mirror-like tarn that reflects the sky in it still surface; and fleeting phenomena such as a delicate flower rooting in the crack of a rock, rain clouds that gather on the horizon, and the moon as it waxes full. From these mapping exercises one single multi-layer map plotting a rite-of-passage transition-walk will be created that can be used by solo walkers as well as groups.

Louise would be interested in hearing from you if the following applies:

You are looking at a future that might not involve having your biological child. This might be due to your life or social circumstances, or to biologically-determined or age-related infertility, and you might have attempted, or decided against, fertility treatment.

You are an experienced walker happy to cross uneven and steep, rocky terrain, regardless of inclement weather, in a mountainous area for a day.

You are interested in the process of mapping the journey (one day of walking), and later undertaking the finished walk and reflecting on it. 

The ‘mapping-walks’ will take place in Cumbria from Spring to Winter 2014. The completed self-guided walk will be launched on-site and with an exhibtion in Buttermere Village Hall in May 2015 - details tbc.

If you would like to find out more, please email Louise via the Contact page.

To develop this project Louise is working with sociologist Celia Roberts, scientist Joyce Harper and geologist Mike Kelly. It is supported by Gateway Women, CARE Fertility Group, ACE, the AHRC, LICA, Lancaster University, Honister Slate Quarry, local landowners and their tenants.

Still Life at Sea Change exhibition

From 13 August to 9 November 2014 a film of Still Life is showing in the Sea Change: The Art of England's North West Coast exhibition at the Atkinson Museum & Gallert, Stockport. The film is based on the live performance work Still Life and was specially conceived for the camera by creators Louise Ann Wilson and Nigel Stewart of Sap Dance. 

For more information on the exhibition please click here.

The Gathering - watch the live stream

On 14th September, our production in Snowdonia with the National Theatre Wales, The Gathering/Yr Helfa, was live streamed. You can watch the recording of the live stream here. Available until 28th September 2014.

The Gathering / Yr Helfa

12-14 September 2014, Hafod y Llan farm, Snowdonia, Wales.

The Gathering / Yr Helfa, was a site-specific walking-performance revealing the day-to-day and seasonal workings of Hafod y Llan, a “true hill farm” located on the foot-hills of Snowdon.  The performance took participants on a circular journey that traces a six-kilometre route through the landscape and into the farm.  As they walk they experienced installations, performance, film, poetry, music and sound as well as real-life happenings.

Louise was invited to create a performance work for National Theatre Wales which she has evolved over the last three years through observing life at Hafod Y Llan sheep-farm. 

The Gathering / Yr Helfa was written by Gillian Clarke, the National Poet for Wales with choreography by Nigel Stewart and was performed by a company that included: the shepherds, their dogs and two hundred sheep; a company of professional performers, the Deiniolen brass band and the children of Bedgellert Primary School. 

It was produced by National Theatre Wales with Migration and LAW Co and was supported by Hafod y Llan Farm and the National Trust.

Production Photo by Joe Fildes of Meilir Rhys Williams as 'The Boy'.

‘Creating A Scene’ on Tour

Creating a Scene: Collaboration in Art and Theatre

28 June - 27 August 2014 Oriel Davies Gallery in Powys, Wales

Louise was invited to exhibit a special selection of nine production photographs from across LAW Co's entire body of work from 2008-present as part of Creating a Scene at the National Centre for Craft and Design, Lincolnshire. This exhibtion is now on a national tour as soon to open at The Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown in Wales.

Creating a Scene looks at set design and considers the artistic design process and the underpinning collaboration between artistic disciplines necessary for success.

The exhibition views set design in its broadest sense, aiming to capture something of the variety of disciplines in which set design is employed. Creating a Scene includes work by leading international artists and designers working in theatre, opera, dance, film, photography, the visual arts, performance art, and work by emerging new talent. Throughout the exhibition you can see examples of the design process including sketches, working models, finished designs and theatre sets.

Exhibiting artists include Edward Allington, Franko B, Ivor Beddoes, Giuseppe Belli, James Casebere, Julian Crouch, Richard Deacon, Thomas Demand, Hein Hecktroth, Christopher Hobbs, Howard Hodgkin, Derek Jarman, Philip Lee, Davy and Kristin Mcguire, Bruce McLean, Louise Ann Wilson, Edwin Zwakman. 

For further information about the exhibition, including tour venues, please click here.

Fissure Exhibition at AirSpace Gallery

Between 7 February and 15 March 2014, we exhibited production photographs, texts and audience responses to the 2011 production of Fissure on display at the AirSpace Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent.

We were delighted to have been selected to take part in the Walking Encyclopedia exhibition, alongside makers of walking based art projects from around the UK and abroad.

The Fissure exhibition moved to Stoke on Trent from Cardiff, having been exhibited there as part of World Stage Design 2013, where it was shortlisted for a Performance Design Award.

AirSpace Gallery noticed the recent surge in popularity of walking as a cultural activity, and the validation afforded it by the Art World. In collaboration with The Walking Artists Network, The Walking Encyclopaedia seeks to present an overview, or a survey, of walking as a contemporary cultural activity. 

For more information about the exhibition, please click here.

Ghost Bird Exhibition, Cumbria

18 January - 4 April 2014 NOW CLOSED

FREE

In 2012, the critically-acclaimed artist Louise Ann Wilson created a performance and art installation in the Trough of Bowland, which responded to the local environment and plight of the hen harrier in the North of England. This new exhibition reinvented for the gallery at RSPB Geltsdale in Cumbria features stunning production photographs by the internationally celebrated Manuel Vason and elements of the original art installations.

Ghost Bird was first presented in 2012 as a silent walking-performance and live-art installation specific to, and performed in, the Langden Valley in the Trough of Bowland, an upland landscape internationally important for its heather moorland, blanket bog and rare birds. Referring to the ghostly grey feathers of the male hen harrier and the increasing absence, due to persecution, of nesting pairs in the Trough of Bowland, Ghost Bird celebrated the birds’ beauty whilst drawing attention to its fragile existence within the north of England. In doing so, the work became a means of reflecting on the journey taken 400 years earlier over the Bowland Fells to Lancaster Castle by the persecuted Pendle Witches.

Ghost Bird was created, directed and designed by Louise Ann Wilson with choreography by Nigel Stewart of Sap Dance, sound by Lisa Whistlecroft, and was performed by dancer Julia Griffin and a team of life-models.

Ghost Bird was produced by Louise Ann Wilson Company Ltd and co-commissioned by Green Close, as part of the Lancashire Witches 400 Programme, and Live at LICA. It was made with the support of land-owners United Utilities Estates and their tenants, the Forest of Bowland Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and hen harrier experts from the RSPB.

For information about the exhibition, opening times and directions are available here.

Creating a Scene Exhibition

Creating a Scene: Collaboration in Art and Theatre
24 January - 24 April 2014

Louise has been invited to exhibit a special selection of nine production photographs from across LAW Co's entire body of work from 2008 to present as part of Creating a Scene at the National Centre for Craft and Design, Lincolnshire.

Creating a Scene looks at set design and considers the artistic design process and the underpinning collaboration between artistic disciplines necessary for success.

The exhibition views set design in its broadest sense, aiming to capture something of the variety of disciplines in which set design is employed. ItCreating a Scene includes work by leading international artists and designers working in theatre, opera, dance, film, photography, the visual arts, performance art, and work by emerging new talent. Throughout the exhibition you can see examples of the design process including sketches, working models, finished designs and theatre sets.

Exhibiting artists include Edward Allington, Franko B, Ivor Beddoes, Giuseppe Belli, James Casebere, Julian Crouch, Richard Deacon, Thomas Demand, Hein Hecktroth, Christopher Hobbs, Howard Hodgkin, Derek Jarman, Philip Lee, Davy and Kristin Mcguire, Bruce McLean, Louise Ann Wilson, Edwin Zwakman. 

For further information about the exhibition, including directions to the venue, please click here.