Visit TERRA NEXUS, a new immersive show at Proposition Studios.

17 artists, including me, have been commissioned to produce new work responding to the role of the human in ecology. Each of our spaces join up to create a labyrinth of possible worlds.

It’s a fantastic, unusual and genuinely immersive show – book tickets now!

As part of the process Proposition Studios took us on a field trip around 3 sites at the forefront of ecological management of agricultural land in the UK.

The field trip was a rare opportunity to be introduced to new ecological means of working productively with the landscape. We visited 3 sites: Martin Crawford’s Forest Garden in Totnes, Wakelyns agro-forestry in Suffolk and rewilded agricultural lands at Knepp in Sussex.

Wakelyns Agroforestry, Suffolk

Martin Crawford’s Forest Garden, Totnes

Knepp Rewilding, West Sussex

The size of British fields have been defined by the way they are used, specifically, the size of crop-spraying machinery. In some imaginings this is not the future of farming; the future of the British countryside might be wilder, more densely hedged and more plentifully varied in its flora and fauna. Seeing these possible worlds make for radical propositions. Travelling with other artists working with complementary themes and disparate practices sparked fascinating thoughts and conversations which I hope will be carried forward into the show.

LORDSHIP will be showing in this exhibition in Peckham this October.

I’ve started a blog about the new project I’m working on.

View the website

I’m working on a new commission for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Trellis is a programme bringing together artists and researchers from UCL to create new public realm works to be shown for a short period in October 2019. Read a summary of the project below.

(Confusingly, the video above follows a different partnership, which wasn’t taken forward)

Dr. Tse-Hui Teh (Lecturer in Urban Design and Planning) and Dr. Lena Ciric (Senior Lecturer in Microbiology) are working with artist Amanda Lwin on a project that seeks to change people’s feelings about urine. As a society we’ve forgotten that urine is an incredible, free source of nitrogen – pee is regarded as a waste product and flushed down the drain, along with litres of drinking-quality water. Rather than consuming fossil fuels (in the production of ammonia) to fertilise our fields, while wasting both water and urine, the project proposes ways to celebrate urine as a useful, natural product linking our bodies to fertility, water infrastructure and the landscape.

The project involves the production of watering cans that double as (female) urinals which are, over the summer, distributed to allotment holders and community garden volunteers in the boroughs that surround the Olympic Park. In the autumn, the participants in the project gather at the Park to witness their vessels being festooned on a frame, which converts into a water fountain. A kind of temporary water fountain that disappears after two weeks, as the participants retrieve their vessels. The artwork becomes an ephemeral celebration of water, so essential to our cities yet so strangely invisible.

Read more

I’m pleased to be a recipient of an a-n artist development bursary allowing me to organise a basic electronics workshop for artists. The workshop will be in July with kind support from Platform Southwark.

This workshop is intended for people with little or no experience of electronics to start to develop practical skills that will be helpful in building interactive exhibits that include electronic elements. In two days we won’t make you a master, but we’ll help you get over the initial hurdles and feel comfortable building and experimenting with simple electronic circuits. Continue reading “Free electronics workshop for artists” →

At the end of Part I of our walking tour around the City of London I stood everyone down the steps to the Thames near Cannon St and talked about the Hanseatic League, Cannon St’s suburban services, BT Mondial House, waste disposal barges at Walbrook Dock, and Julian Baggini‘s ideas about systems, efficiency and Britishness.

Feedback from the tour:

‘Infrastructure & Superstructure’ was an eye-opener and Amanda’s expertise and enthusiasm inspiring. Thank you!

I attended Amanda Lwin’s walk and I thought it was amazing. I didn’t realise it would be based around history of the area/buildings which I was very pleasantly surprised about. Amanda was really sweet and to my surprise she took us to a few spots I wasn’t aware of – which is great!

We had a wonderful talk and tour by Amanda Lwin, on the infrastructure of the City of London. I couldn’t recommend this highly enough. Amanda was knowledgeable, engaging and thoughtful, and had obviously put a lot of effort into preparing. The walk was fascinating and we learnt so much.

Continue reading “Infrastructure & Superstructure – a walk around the City” →

Pleased to be taking part in Nocturnal Creatures, an evening event hosted by Whitechapel Gallery on 21 July.

Free to attend and accessible to all, highlights of the programme include:

• An immersive audio-visual environment created by Tom Lock especially for a new building in Broadgate
• Hourly performances of Alexis Teplin’s mesmerising performance Arch (The Politics of Fragmentation) at the Whitechapel Gallery
• Artist-led tours of artworks installed across the surrounding area for the 8th edition of Sculpture in the City
• The premiere of audio compositions created in response to East End sites, Sculpture in the City x Musicity

I’ll be leading a walking tour of the City of London, provisionally titled ‘Infrastructure & Superstructure‘.

Book here

READ MORE

Nocturnal Creatures Press Release

Read More

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been selected to participate in Sculpture in the City, a cultural initiative that turns the City of London to an urban sculpture park.

Exceptionally for this programme, which usually showcases already-existing works, I will be making this installation specifically for this site, Leadenhall Market, in the heart of the City.

The new work will be from my Capricious Cartography series – handwoven nets inspired by Polynesian fishing net-maps – which was developed from a Venice fellowship with the British Council.

Sculpture in the City launches to the public on 30 June and the new work will be up until May 2019.

This year, artists participating include Marina Abramovich, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas. Previous years have featured Yayoi Kusuma, Ai Wei Wei and Anish Kapoor.

The selection jury this year was Iwona Blazwick (Director Whitechapel Gallery), Stephen Feeke (Director New Art Centre), Jane Allison (Head of Galleries Barbican) Wendy Fisher (Art Collector and Philanthropist), Robert Hiscox (Honorary Chairman Hiscox), and Whitney Hinz (Hiscox Curator).

READ MORE

Official Press Release (PDF)

Lacuna Projects newsletter

Last year’s programme (PDF)

“A spider in a worldwide web of somewheres, London caught the world in lines of news.”
      – Maya Jasanoff, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World

I’ve just been awarded Arts Council funding to curate an exhibition and website about domestic interiors.

Six London-based painters will each work with a writer, together looking at a property being advertised within a mile of Homefinders Estate Agents, London E8 (where the final exhibition will take place). Working together, they will create an interpretation, story or narrative about this property – expressed through a series of images and a short text.

I’m incredibly excited to work with these artists and writers, each of whom makes brilliant work and I’m looking forward to seeing what they produce together.

Check out their work:

Writers: Martin Jackson, John Z. Komurki, Portals of London, Karina Lickorish Quinn.

Artists: Hannah Bays, Dawn Beckles, Elysia Byrd, Héloïse Delègue, Brian McKenzie, Anna Jung Seo. (click to enlarge)

Hannah Bays

Dawn Beckles

Elysia Byrd

Heloise Delegue

Brian McKenzie

Anna Jung Seo

Part of the idea will be to tour this to other cities, with each iteration featuring local artists and writers.

Update

Unreal Estates has launched! Please check out the website or read more about the project here.

British Airways have commissioned a short film about me and my practice:

It accompanies an artwork I created for the front cover of their First Class mag which uses the sculptural language developed in my series The Skyscraper Index to depict a fictive tower.

My studio in Wapping is halfway between London’s two skyscraper districts – the City of London and Canary Wharf. For this film we took a walk around the City on a cloudy day, and then visited the Stoke-on-Trent factories who make my metal sculptures. Lots of fun.

Other artists who have participated in this series include Rebecca Ackroyd, Alex Chinneck and Phoebe Cummings. The editors have great taste!

The free iPad app features an interview and fancy animated cover (above). To download the app, click here. To read the interview, click here.

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Now extended: The Rebellious Script, a show I put together with Geoff Titley for ArtLicks Weekend 2017. Runs until 7 October at A/Side B/Side Gallery in Hackney.

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