Abstract
Part 9: Practice Assembly is the latest action from Association of Unknown Shores. AOUS is a collaboration between Bristol, Iqaluit, and Plymouth artists. We use social and process-led practice to explore the relationships, places, and material traces arising from events that took place from 1576-78, when Martin Frobisher was commissioned by Elizabeth I to locate the Northwest Passage. Part 9: Practice Assembly brings together conversation, research, collective making, casting, instructions, and collage as expanded sculpture that assembles gifted and made objects responding to these histories. Materials, text, video, sound and performance take form as an imaginative assembly of practice.
AOUS invites you to the work, to reflect on how objects relate to colonial legacies, to respond creatively, to contribute your responses to the AOUS Lending Library, and to participate in a series of speculative workshops and events.
37 Looe Street, Plymouth, PL4 0EB: 17 - 31 March 2023
Opening event – all welcome
Friday 17 March 2023, 5.30-8.00pm
Your Heart’s In the Right Place, But
Saturday, 18 March
11am-2pm
The 300m that connects Looe Street and the Minster Church of St Andrews holds the material, remembered, and persistent traces of colonial violence. Join us for a conversation and making workshop where we’ll cast objects and explore using them as navigational tools in wayfinding our place in space.
Book a place on the workshop: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/your-hearts-in-the-right-place-but-tickets-574847372967
UnEmpire Me Nail Bar
Sunday, 19 March
1pm-4pm
Expert nail technician Nathan Taylor and Juste Adomaviciute join AOUS to offer an ‘UnEmpire Me’ nail bar for personal initiation into un-empiring body and self – one nail at a time. Join us for tea, conversation and shoreline nail art.
Seaweed in the Fruit Locker
Sunday, 26 March
12-1pm
This LGBTQIA+ sea shanty choir was formed in 2022 by Rhys Morgan as part of his Give & Takeover commission exploring queer motifs within seafaring history and collective performance in marginalized communities through the tradition of shanty singing. The choir have used their lived experience to rework existing shanties and inspire new ones, continuing the tradition of these folk songs being adapted time and again through generations. Musical exchanges are also part of the AOUS story as Frobisher’s crew and Inuit sang and made noise with bells and trumpets. During the 19th century whaling industry and further contact between Inuit and Europeans, sea shanties became part of an Inuit tradition. Inuit adopted and transformed the shanty, fiddle and jig dancing into Indigenous form. Seaweed in the Fruit Locker similarly aims to transform shanties, with their roots in the work songs of enslaved African peoples, into songs of liberation and joy.
+
Teach Out!
Monday, 20 March
12-1pm & 1-2pm
As part of industrial action by the University and College Union (https://www.ucu.org.uk/), we are running two 1-hr conversations about the work with students and staff of University of Plymouth.
St Stephen’s Church, Bristol, BS1 1EQ: 25 November - 9 December 2022
Opening event – all welcome
Friday 25 November 2022, 5.30-8.00pm
Workshops
Shore-to-Shore
Saturday 26 November 2022
11am-3.30pm
A shore-to-shore performance ceremony between AOUS artists in Iqaluit, Nunavut (via Zoom) and in Bristol. We met, discussed the project and our individual and collective responsibilities to land and colonial reckonings. Working with Cleo Lake, Jamie Griffiths and workshop participants, we created a banner in response to the work of Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and Jamie Griffiths. Their White Liar and the Known Shore: Frobisher and the Queen (2021) was a response to the piece of amphibolite that we returned to Nunavut from Dartford, via Bristol following its theft by Martin Frobisher in 1577.
During the afternoon, we made the banner, prepared gestures and walked a route from St Stephen’s Church towards the river Avon.
Electrical Waste Basket Making
Sunday 27 November 2022
12.30-5pm
Norah Kennedy taught us how to make a traditional ‘wicker’ basket by reusing electrical waste cabling such as laptop, phone, tablet leads, old aerials and ether net and electronic appliance cable.
UnEmpire Me Nail Bar + Hydrophone Gig
Sunday 4 December 2022
1pm-4pm
In the cafe, Nathan Taylor and apprentice, Juste Adomaviciute, ran an ‘UnEmpire Me’ nail bar for personal initiation into un-empiring body and self – one nail at a time.
In the church, Kathy Hinde mixed sounds recorded underwater in Bristol along with sounds from live hydrophones in tanks of harbour water, with submerged stones.
Narwhal Casting
Throughout the exhibition, we offered a narwhal tusk casting service in exchange for donations to Qaggiavuut! performing arts space in Iqaluit, Nunavut Canada https://www.qaggiavuut.ca
AOUS invites you to the work, to reflect on how objects relate to colonial legacies, to respond creatively, to contribute your responses to the AOUS Lending Library, and to participate in a series of speculative workshops and events.
37 Looe Street, Plymouth, PL4 0EB: 17 - 31 March 2023
Opening event – all welcome
Friday 17 March 2023, 5.30-8.00pm
Your Heart’s In the Right Place, But
Saturday, 18 March
11am-2pm
The 300m that connects Looe Street and the Minster Church of St Andrews holds the material, remembered, and persistent traces of colonial violence. Join us for a conversation and making workshop where we’ll cast objects and explore using them as navigational tools in wayfinding our place in space.
Book a place on the workshop: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/your-hearts-in-the-right-place-but-tickets-574847372967
UnEmpire Me Nail Bar
Sunday, 19 March
1pm-4pm
Expert nail technician Nathan Taylor and Juste Adomaviciute join AOUS to offer an ‘UnEmpire Me’ nail bar for personal initiation into un-empiring body and self – one nail at a time. Join us for tea, conversation and shoreline nail art.
Seaweed in the Fruit Locker
Sunday, 26 March
12-1pm
This LGBTQIA+ sea shanty choir was formed in 2022 by Rhys Morgan as part of his Give & Takeover commission exploring queer motifs within seafaring history and collective performance in marginalized communities through the tradition of shanty singing. The choir have used their lived experience to rework existing shanties and inspire new ones, continuing the tradition of these folk songs being adapted time and again through generations. Musical exchanges are also part of the AOUS story as Frobisher’s crew and Inuit sang and made noise with bells and trumpets. During the 19th century whaling industry and further contact between Inuit and Europeans, sea shanties became part of an Inuit tradition. Inuit adopted and transformed the shanty, fiddle and jig dancing into Indigenous form. Seaweed in the Fruit Locker similarly aims to transform shanties, with their roots in the work songs of enslaved African peoples, into songs of liberation and joy.
+
Teach Out!
Monday, 20 March
12-1pm & 1-2pm
As part of industrial action by the University and College Union (https://www.ucu.org.uk/), we are running two 1-hr conversations about the work with students and staff of University of Plymouth.
St Stephen’s Church, Bristol, BS1 1EQ: 25 November - 9 December 2022
Opening event – all welcome
Friday 25 November 2022, 5.30-8.00pm
Workshops
Shore-to-Shore
Saturday 26 November 2022
11am-3.30pm
A shore-to-shore performance ceremony between AOUS artists in Iqaluit, Nunavut (via Zoom) and in Bristol. We met, discussed the project and our individual and collective responsibilities to land and colonial reckonings. Working with Cleo Lake, Jamie Griffiths and workshop participants, we created a banner in response to the work of Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and Jamie Griffiths. Their White Liar and the Known Shore: Frobisher and the Queen (2021) was a response to the piece of amphibolite that we returned to Nunavut from Dartford, via Bristol following its theft by Martin Frobisher in 1577.
During the afternoon, we made the banner, prepared gestures and walked a route from St Stephen’s Church towards the river Avon.
Electrical Waste Basket Making
Sunday 27 November 2022
12.30-5pm
Norah Kennedy taught us how to make a traditional ‘wicker’ basket by reusing electrical waste cabling such as laptop, phone, tablet leads, old aerials and ether net and electronic appliance cable.
UnEmpire Me Nail Bar + Hydrophone Gig
Sunday 4 December 2022
1pm-4pm
In the cafe, Nathan Taylor and apprentice, Juste Adomaviciute, ran an ‘UnEmpire Me’ nail bar for personal initiation into un-empiring body and self – one nail at a time.
In the church, Kathy Hinde mixed sounds recorded underwater in Bristol along with sounds from live hydrophones in tanks of harbour water, with submerged stones.
Narwhal Casting
Throughout the exhibition, we offered a narwhal tusk casting service in exchange for donations to Qaggiavuut! performing arts space in Iqaluit, Nunavut Canada https://www.qaggiavuut.ca
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Media of output | Other |
| Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Keywords
- Bristol
- gold fraud
- Inuit
- Martin Frobisher
- Nunavut
- Plymouth
- practice-as-research
- settler-colonialism