Event

Playing With Time

EXPIRED Saturday 4 March 2.30pm – 4.00pm FREE. No need to book

Sean Harris and cave palaeontologist Professor Danielle Schreve (Royal Holloway University London) discuss their extensive creative collaboration with Elinor Gwynn at Ruthin Craft Centre.

Moving between time-frames stretching from twenty-fifths of a second to geological epochs they consider how understanding mammalian response to past abrupt climate change can help to avoid future extinctions (including our own), how past environments create valuable context for the present – and how the research lineage of which Danielle Schreve is a contemporary part emerged from the mythology of the Old Testament. Were we happier in a universe defined in ritual storytelling? And where does the most enduring truth lie?

Followed by an opportunity to experience their collaborative work The Cave Hunters And The Truth Machine in an installation within the watermill at Loggerheads Country Park, CH7 5LH. This will also offer a unique opportunity to talk to Harris and Schreve about their work both collaborative and as individuals working in diverse but complimentary disciplines.

The Cave Hunters And The Truth Machine runs in the watermill at Loggerheads Country Park, 6.00pm – 8.00pm. The piece is 25 minutes long and will run on a loop. Stay for as little or as long as you like – and perhaps embark on a meditative walk at dusk through this beautiful and scientifically important limestone landscape using the animation app Udfil, specially created for Loggerheads, as your guide.

Event

Open studio

EXPIRED 11, 18, 25 February 11am – 4.30pm FREE. No need to book

An opportunity to explore and informally discuss Sean’s use of printmaking and animation in both digital and analogue guises and to talk about the inspiration and evolution of the project as it travels from the hills of Clwyd to the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament, Cardiff.

Stay for as little or as long as you like!

Event

The Curlew: The Archive Of Possible Future Loss – Recording Sessions 

EXPIRED 18 & 25 February  Book a slot between 11am – 5pm FREE. Book via Eventbrite

Scientific research informs us that without urgent action the curlew will disappear from Wales in less than a decade. Conversations about this charismatic and emotion-inducing bird invariably end with a mournful “you don’t hear them anymore”. To highlight this alarming decline, which speaks of the disintegration of a wider ecosystem on which we depend for our own well-being, we invite people to come to the Craft Centre and record their memories of the curlew. As well as forming an archive, these reminiscences will be incorporated into the soundtrack of a new work so as to share them with younger generations, thereby demonstrating that extinction is happening not just in ‘TV Land’ but on our own doorstep.

The recording process is very informal, will take no more than thirty minutes and can be conducted in both Welsh and English. Please indicate your preference when booking.

Saturday 18 February. Book a slot between 11am – 5pm through Eventbrite here.

Saturday 25 February. Book a slot between 11am – 5pm through Eventbrite here.

*We’re particularly keen to hear from farming families.

Event

Artist Talk and Open Studio

EXPIRED 4 February 2.30pm FREE. No need to book

Re-animating our connection to the land; species restoration and culture

An introduction by Sean Harris to his residency project Cymanfa’r Adar – Llais y Gylfinir, looking at how cultural and environmental continuity are entwined, encompassing experiences in North Dakota, Somerset and Mid-Wales. Around the world and throughout time people have used creative process as a means to honour the land, taking resonant beasts as conduit. Can this mechanism be deployed to good effect as we strive to avert the disappearance of the curlew from Wales? And what does this iconic species tell us of our relationship with nature?

2.30pm in the education room and afterwards in the residency studio.