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...

Landscapes in Limbo part2

Geopoetic reflections, exhibition notes and images from the Limbo Landscape Lab

An exhibition at Wheal Martyn Museum, Cornwall, UK (July-Nov. 2018) 

by Antony Lyons, Heritage Futures senior creative fellow.

Assembling human and non-human stories in a transforming landscape

#Transformation theme of Heritage Futures

“It is the children born now who will see if
we humans can turn it around…can re-balance?
It’s not us. We’ve messed it up.
They will fix it…or they won’t.
I would like to be around in 75 years’ time to see 
which way it will go; what they do; what is done to them
…but I won’t be there”
(a worker at Wheal Martyn, Aug 2018)


a) DEEP-MAPPING in the mists of DEEP-TIME

"This film is time-compressed. I recorded it - hand-held - for over 30 minutes, from the shelter of my trusty mobile studio/campervan. The circumstance was happenstance, serendipitous. The occasion presented itself after many visits, over the course of a year, in the environs of the Sky Tip mound of mining waste outside St Austell in Cornwall - the centre of the long-established industry of kaolin mining. The Sky Tip has slowly, yet inexorably, inserted itself on my radar, and also now it is the focus for a project by a group of photography students - from the local Poltair School - with whom I’m working.

Re-directions, solidarity and support

or... Re: Directions, Solidarity and Support - at the turning of the year

I posted a variant of these words on a water forum, but am inclined now to repost here - as a prompt (mainly to self) to reflect on the topic of the myriad of water-related conflicts and rumblings-of-conflicts emerging around this globe.

The link below is now old, but is given a new lease of life by a very current, acute situation,

Water Citizenship, Creative Conversations, and Water Consciousness in action

Some thoughts on an emerging co-created project for Bristol EU Green Capital 2015

NOVA (the eco-creative fantasy-lab) and WaterCityBristol have joined-up with the education charity My Future-My Choice and performance artists Desperate Men in creating a new collaborative project called Bristol Loves Tides - celebrating tidal culture, processes and ecologies in Bristol, in the context of participatory research and fostering broader water-consciousness.
Bristol 2015 have chosen to fund our project as one of its flag-ship initiatives, and the roll-out of the year-long programme has now begun. The core elements are:

Autumn Leaves

A long overdue addition to the blogosphere - so this one will be a time-spanning assemblage. Working back from the recent past:

I'm on a train travelling through the birch forests of Sweden. My thoughts are drawn to some filmic memories and resonances. Strongest is the echo of Elem Klimov's powerful and troubling Come and See, which does not have a Scandinavian setting - but the atmosphere of the landscape feel somehow similar. Another of Klimov's films is Farewell, set amongst a Soviet community whose island-homes and lands are soon to be submerged by a huge reservoir project. There is a powerful theme of (loss of) deep place-attachment running through the film - a work that is inhabited by the spectral trace a different loss - the death of Larisa Shepitko (Klimov's wife) who was part-way through making this film when she and her film-crew were killed in a car-crash.

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...

Occupy the Intertide? part2

Tide + Time, NOVA (Lyons), 2006

My presentation (of a project proposal) at the recent interdisciplinary Emotional Geographies conference in the Netherlands was titled:

Dreaming of Sabrina
Geopoetic Possibilities In The Estuary  - A deep-mapping almanac

The 'estuary' in this case is the Severn (aka Sabrina, or Hafren). The inclusion of 'almanac' - a word derived from Arabic/Greek sources meaning 'of the moon, or month' helps express the dominant lunar-tidal process in this water-body, with the second-largest tidal-range in the world. The map below shows the main settlements adjoining the estuary...

Sao Macário Mountain Dreaming

                                                                                                                                                           an intimate space for water and women, in Sul

Sacred Waters - territories of timeless whispers and serenity

"But I know of places where there are stones
That speak to me" 
A. M. Pires Cabral, December, from Arado (2009), Portugal.

I recently completed a short rural artist residency in the remote mountains of northern Portugal, supported by the unique and inspiring Binaural organisation, and commissioned by the Tramontana Festival. Whilst situated within the realm of sound-art/intermedia, the exploration was, for me, primarily landscape-based; fossicking, turning over stones in search of some enduring essences, and intimate relationships between people and place. The Tramontana theme for 2013 revolved around 'divine/religious/sacred' connections. Responding to this, the quest was to uncover, and respond to, people's sensuous and deeply-felt connections to this land, especially those relating to pathways, pilgrimage, journeys and water. 

Submerged (Drowned Lands)

Chew Valley Lake, July 2013

Submerged (Drowned and Dammed Lands)

[aka The Almanac of the Submerged]

Environmental artist Antony Lyons is working with others, including Professor Steve Poole (UWE-Bristol/Regional History Centre, Bristol) on an Arts Council England funded initiative, involving creative fieldwork, community conversations/voices and research at a number of locations. The first phase of the project runs from Spring 2013 to late 2014.

The approach involves a creative and poetic response to a variety of landscape and cultural settings that are affected by changing water-levels. The unifying theme is that the waters come, the waters inexorably rise. Then everything is changed (and the waters recede...)

Post-dOCUMENTA ramblings

Ramblings (via Herzog, Heisenberg, Beuys and Joyce)

Notes written in the immediate aftermath of a visit to dOCUMENTA 13.
"dOCUMENTA (13) is dedicated to artistic research and forms of imagination that explore commitment, matter, things, embodiment, and active living in connection with, yet not subordinated to, theory. These are terrains where politics are inseparable from a sensual, energetic, and worldly alliance between current research in various scientific and artistic fields and other knowledges, both ancient and contemporary." (C. Christov-Bakargiev, Documenta Curator)

One of the benefits of undertaking a pilgrimage to such an 'event', is that it serves as a fresh lens through which to view one's own work - adding of course to the many existing lenses. 'Artistic research' and 'location' were some of the thematic platforms of this Documenta, which, for me, raises the topic of a discourse between scientific and creative research. A significant difference between the two fields is perhaps the attitude, or degree of openness, to accident. Whereas a scientific investigator may dismiss an event as a meaningless or disruptive accident, a creative researcher may embrace the same 'accident' as meaningful, thus positioning the whole process as much more porous and 'messier'. (This despite the fact that many major scientific leaps are known to have been prompted by accidental events, dreams and 'intuitions'). Also relevant are the related issues of detachment, bias and relationships. Whilst mulling over all of this, I was handed a copy of Doing Ethnographies (thanks Iain !), which explores - especially in relation to fieldwork -  some of the same ground, located at the overlap between the humanities and the sciences:

Salt Landscapes Revisited

A few words in the subject of salt, or more specifically 'salt landscapes', or even more specifically 'sea-salt landscapes'. This is currently the subject of investigation for me.

Perhaps it was all sparked off through encountering the Hopi Salt Trails in 2011, or more likely it was there all along, slowly building up to a precipitation point? In any case, over the past year, I have linked up with academics and heritage experts attached to the Ecosal Atlantis project. In parallel with (and related to) this I was commissioned by Newlyn Gallery to support their young artist group (LAB) in their research+exhibition project on the theme of salt.