Throughout the month of August this year as part BATCH:2; a series of contemporary dance and movement experiments curated by choreographer Claire Pencak, I was invited to develop an installation at The Bakery Studio in Jedburgh of my experimental paper and pigment ‘Unconformities’ exploring the physical structure of the studio space and its own unique environmental conditions, revealing ephemeral and ”alternative truths’ about the site.
‘We are not to look for nature in a quiescent state; matter itself must be in motion, and the scenes of life a continued or repeated series of agitations and events’
James Hutton, Theory of the Earth 1788
The title ‘Unconformities’ relates to the geological site at Inchbonny, next to the Jed Water just on the outskirts of Jedburgh. The geology is ‘unconforming’ in that the strata can be seen as vertical foldings rather than horizontal layers and there is a huge gap in time between the lower and higher rocks due to the action of erosion – it is not a seamless story.
The installation developed incrementally over the month and a new batch of unconformity drawings emerged. The final weekend of accumulations reached a point of saturation that felt awkward but also productive. This has been a fabulous opportunity to test my work as #accumulations and thank you to Claire Pencak for the commission and being supported by funding from Creative Scotland.