SPARK #10: (Natural) Fibre

1 April 2023 / 10-1

SPARK #10 is a tenth in person meeting for Greater Manchester/North West-based artists who want to intervene in the trajectory towards climate breakdown, and is an opportunity to meet other artists and to share information and ideas.

Saturday 1st April 2023

10:00-11:00 : Optional canal walk and talk led by artist Steve Sutton – meet outside Timperley Metrolink station at 10

11:00-13:00 : Tea and talk at AIR Gallery, 30 Grosvenor Rd, Altrincham WA14 1LD

Steve Sutton will host a session focussing on the value and importance of trees, including giving a short introduction to his own work with trees and to Peter Wohlleben’s book The Hidden Life of Trees which draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries by Suzanne Simard and others to describe how forests are social networks and trees are like human families. You can read a short interview with him here: https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/writer-and-forester-peter-wohlleben-on-what-nature-can-teach-us-about-creativity/

AIR curators Alan Baker and Becky Wild will give a short tour of AIR gallery’s current exhibition Fibres, which explores how contemporary artists are embracing new technological advances whilst retaining elements of traditional craft to explore themes of personal experience, collective memory, political and ecological messages and tongue in cheek approaches to textiles. Fibres runs until 22nd April.
https://www.airgallery.space/current

Steve Sutton is an artist with a background in art education, sculpture, drawing, painting, and photography. In the last 4 years his practice has increasingly become low carbon based, often using discarded and re-cycled materials. As an artist he wants to intervene in the trajectory towards climate breakdown by creating a challenging dialogue with the viewer.

In his practice he focusses on the relationship between humans and the natural environment with an emphasis on aspects of the climate crisis. He explores themes of environmental pressure, tension, and balance between humans and the natural world, using many sustainably sourced materials creating sculptures and 3D installations accompanied by an extensive range of related drawings. In addition to his studio works he creates works ‘on the move’, site specific works in exhibition spaces and ephemeral pieces made and photographed in natural locations outdoors.

Steve is an alumnus of Castlefield Gallery’s bOlder programme and has a studio at Castlefield Gallery New Art Space Warrington. He is currently exhibiting in Portals at Pyramid Arts Centre, Warrington.
https://www.sculpturejourney.online/

Walk info
Please note – the walk is optional and you are very welcome to just join us at 11. However we’ve been finding that the walks are a really fertile time to exchange info and ideas. A contact phone number will be circulated on the day in case anyone has problems finding the walkers.

Unfortunately there’s no wheelchair access to the canal path at Timperley. Wheelchair users can join the canal path at Brooklands and meet the rest of the group at Timperley, or can join the walk halfway along the route, at approx 11:30, at the junction of Canal Road and Deansgate Lane (WA14 1SP).

We will make the phone number of the person leading the walk available on the day.

SPARK #10 follows on from Castlefield Gallery’s SUSTAIN programme focussed on low carbon artmaking and from our first nine SPARK sessions at Manchester Art Gallery, Rogue, The Birley (Preston), Eccles Friends Meeting House and Manchester Museum. The SPARK sessions are intended to help seed a new Greater Manchester/North West-based network of artists with low carbon practices.

SPARK #10 is supported by AIR Gallery and Castlefield Gallery and by funding from Full Circle Partners, Altrincham

Image credit: Photo of bamboo fibre by Tamaki Sono, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.