Film_Poem Images On Rocks

Film-Poem: Imagens Em Rochas / Images On Rocks

 

Between 2021 and 2024 I undertook an ecological artist residency in the Côa Valley, in eastern Portugal - a collaboration with archaeologist/ethnographer Bárbara Carvalho and also the musician Jesse D. Vernon. Much of our creative fieldwork and community involvement was carried out in the zone of the valley close to the Faia Brava nature reserve, which is the location of the Lapas Cabreiras site, known for its impressive collection of prehistoric ‘Schematic’ painted rock-art motifs.

How Wild Is My Valley

wanderings, wonderings and ponderings in two valleys

“All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost”
Bilbo Baggins, describing Strider, in Lord Of The Rings, JRR Tolkein

Last summer, I was back in the sanctuary - or retreat - of the ‘artist cottage’

A Culture of Transgression

The images (above and below) presents a collection of extracted details from a single old discarded ‘mosaic’ of aerial photographs of the China Clay mining area in Cornwall (UK). Whilst artist-in-residence at Wheal Martyn Museum in 2018, I discovered a large (6ft x 4 ft) glass-framed assemblage - technically termed an ‘uncontrolled mosaic’ - dating from about fifty years ago.

Lovely Weather

The Lovely Weather Donegal Residencies was a Leonardo/Olats art-and-climate project that took place in Donegal, Ireland, in 2009-10. As one of 5 commissioned artists, my artist-residency project - titled WeatherProof - was undertaken in the River Finn Valley. Recently I have written responses to researcher questions about the residencies. They are presented below.

Q: The level of community engagement and how this was organised

My understanding is that there was a high degree of community engagement extending through all stages of the project. I wasn’t involved with the inception, but I know that elected representatives were involved with the initial stages and selection of artists...

Foraging on the shingle shore

Orford Ness artist residency. First of a series of blogs revisiting findings and reflections from the Sensitive Chaos project, 2019.

Prompted by some recent requests and discussions, I have assembled imagery and notes from parts of the Sensitive Chaos installation trail. Unlike the project's video-sonic works (NebulousNess and Blue Danube Redux) and the photographic series (Lethality & Vulnerability), the elements featured here have not been documented elsewhere. More broadly, I was asked by a cultural heritage researcher to reflect on the artist residency and the ways in which I interacted with the specifics of the site (a former military testing area), the controversial strategies of heritage management (by the National Trust and others) and the legacy of a long pattern of artist involvements with this unique place. Some of these general reflections are included here.

The image above was taken at one of the observation windows on the top floor of an all-timber, eight-sided building called the 'Black Beacon'.

Long Exposure

Some early writing from an artist residency with Elan Links, in the Elan Valley, Wales. This upland landscape is dominated by a cluster of reservoirs - some over 100 years old - built to supply water to the city of Birmingham, in the midlands of England.

The first opportunity to share work emerging from this residency has been provided by the 'Ten Acres of Sound' festival organised by the Artefact co-operative in Stirchley, Birmingham.

This is an entirely appropriate setting, as the purpose of the creation of the Elan Valley reservoir/dam/pipeline system in the early 1900s was to supply water to the rapidly growing city of Birmingham. Fittingly, my installation is hosted by the Birmingham Brewing Company, emphasising this watery connection and dependency. Under the title 'Also listening with my eyes', there is a programme of six short 'video-sonic poems' on-show. These are works-in-progress from the Elan artist residency. Below I have extracted text and images from the exhibition:

Sensitive Chaos

Sensitive Chaos - poster
Exhibition at Orford Ness, 2019

Poster production with the assistance of the Letterpress Collective, Bristol.
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/orford-ness-national-nature-reserve/features/sensitive-chaos-on-orford-ness

Landscapes In Limbo part 4

SENSITIVE CHAOS @ Orford Ness

a creative installation project by Antony Lyons

APRIL-OCT 2019 

Part of the ‘Limbo Landscapes Lab’ project 

supported by Arts Council England and the Heritage Futures research project (AHRC)

“Nothing is weaker than water,

But when it attacks something hard

Or resistant, then nothing withstands it,

And nothing will alter its way.”

Tao Teh Ching (via Bruce Lee)

Sensitive Chaos * - flow, change and futures on Orford Ness  From April to October 2019, the National trust site of Orford Ness (UK) will be hosting works by environmental artist, Antony Lyons. As a creative researcher attached to the Heritage Futures academic project, Lyons creates ‘geo-poetic’ responses to landscape situations that are ‘in-between’, and undergoing transformation. The presented works reflect his explorations with people and landscape, based on visits over the past two years. Working with invited participants, he will use image and sound installation to give exposure to human, non-human and biophysical aspects of this unique place.

Landscapes in Limbo part3

Poster for Limbo Landscape Lab (2018)

With special thanks to:

Nick and Ellen (Letterpress Collective, Bristol)

Adrian Utley (Musician-Composer)

Landscapes In Limbo - part1

Section of Google-Earth track of first joint field trip by Antony Lyons and Caitlin DeSilvey in Cornwall in 2014

Landscapes in Limbo

JULY 2017
part 1 - juxtapositions and speculations


Two years into a four-year creative research involvement with the boundary-pushing academic project, Heritage Futures, I’m taking stock of what’s slowly emerging within my field of view; attending to the germinating seeds of some site-inspired video-sonic creative responses - or activations - in three 'landscapes in limbo'.

Revealing Hidden Waters

To mark World Water Day 2017, I'm assembling a few words and images to offer glimpses into a current watery research project that I'm involved with, as part of the NOVA Creative Lab. The project is called Towards Hydrocitizenship, and this blog post looks in particular at one of the site-based case studies - Water City Bristol. The overarching theme for the Bristol study is hidden/forgotten waters.

Conversations Around Water

There was much talk of 'conversations' at a recent gathering of a group of - usually - geographically dispersed watery investigators - all of us immersed in the Towards Hydrocitizenship research project, a 3 year AHRC initiative. With NOVA, I'm involved as lead artist/creative adviser - alongside Iain Biggs - on the Bristol-specific case-study - 'WaterCityBristol'...

Invitation to The Black Wood

This is a re-post of something recently published on EcoArt Dialogues, which is a record of my ongoing conversations with Glasgow-based environmental artist duo, Tim Collins and Reiko Goto, supported by an a-n Re:View bursary.

Waking up to Glasgow sunshine, I was transported by my generous hosts to the world of The Black Wood of Rannoch - 

A Long View

With Glastonbury Festival now kicking off, it seems appropriate to give an brief update on the creative research project - Submerged (Drowned Lands). Recently, I presented some early findings at a workshop on an island in the Wadden Sea (Netherlands). These relate to a collaborative exploration of the dynamic and contested landscape of the Somerset Levels, its waters and 'lost islands'. Glastonbury Tor (pictured above) is an ever-present landmark throughout this area...

Eco-Art Dialogues

 Revegetated clay waste-lands, Cornwall, 2013

Some preparatory musings, questions and themes - prepared in advance of my a-n Re:View conversations with Glasgow-based environmental artists, Tim Collins and Reiko Goto. Our time together will include a visit to their current main field-based project at the Black Wood of Rannoch. Our continuing dialogues will be documented via an a-n Artists Talking blog.

Water Everywhere?

Working with water; Working with tides (Bristol, Jan. 2014)

The year begins with a return to the topic of the endless dialogue between water and land; between the sea and the shore. Flooding is much in the news - along with mounting evidence of increasingly energetic couplings of weather events and rising sea-levels (including tides). There has been some very interesting coverage of the 'island village' of Muchelney in Somerset. Accompanying the typical deluge of media coverage of these latest floods (river and coastal), there is also to be found some more considered public discussion of strategic solutions - aside from the stock political/techno-fix response of "we must invest in more defences".

Dissolving Into Water(s)

A blog post emerging from the 'More Than Human Research' project (the water element…)

It is productive - even necessary perhaps? - to have a pressing deadline, pushing me to gather my thoughts on this process of water interactions and conversations. A reflection, looking-back - to compliment a looking-ahead penned earlier this year:

Recently, I was invited to a viewing of a documentary film about the artist Anselm Kiefer, Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, which contains some of his musings on water and life, including a kind of yearning for our origins in the salt-laden seas (Kiefer comments on the similarity between the composition of our blood and that of sea-water).

Water, Water-Bodies, Water-Ways

...and the poetics of vital matter

photo: a lyons

"You can't keep water down"

This comment bubbled up in discussion with Dr. Owain Jones at his PLaCE seminar talk last month (the final instalment of the long-running PLaCE Research speaker sessions).  Over the coming weeks and months, I'm aiming to write a detailed blog-post on what could be termed the 'geopoetics' of each of the materials woven in to my intermedia installation for the recent Tramontana Festival 2013. Water is the topic of the first of these.

Data Ecologies, Geopoetics and Augmented Spaces

What follows is the transcript of a presentation I gave at the Data Ecologies Lab, hosted by i-DAT, on November 10, 2012. This was the final happening of the 18-month 'Confluence Project', situated within the North Devon Biosphere Reserve.


DATA ECOLOGIES - INTRO

The Confluence Project
It would be fair to say that - for all involved, this project was a challenge - as its aims were, and are, numerous and diverse:
 - for the creative process to engage with a place - an entire watershed, 
 - to engage with the Biosphere Reserve's stewards and environmental issues, 
 - to engage with innovative technologies and eco data-logging,
 - to engage with communities and schools, 
and in our case, 
 - to engage in a creative collaboration. 

All of this in very limited time and resources allocation. By necessity then, it was a probing exercise, an experimental process, allowing space for serendipity and chance. 

'Shadows and Undercurrents'; this is the title given to the strand of the Confluence Project undertaken by sonic artist, Jon Pigott and myself. We were interested in teasing out some vital, yet somewhat 'obscured' ecological threads within this special protected landscape setting. Making the invisible, visible. 

Obfuscation and Illusion

Colorado Conjectures (continued)
The Grand Canyon is extreme in many ways - the magnitude, the space - but also extreme in the domination of a packaged pictorial 'view'; the 'picture postcard'. For most visitors, the iconic images are familiar before their arrival; and the main focus of the on-site encounter is the photo-op. For some, no doubt, the on-site visual experience is a disappointment when compared to the pre-packaged representations. The sense of the 'sublime' has already, and in a piecemeal way, been undermined by  thousands of published photographic images.