Participatory Art

Social, participatory and performative artistic practice

Circular charcoal line and text art with area removed

Ad Memoriam Charcoals

The Ad Memoriam Charcoals and Clocks are an opportunity to manipulate the mechanism of the clock and to put it to our own uses. How can we use the mechanism of the perpetually turning clock to build a better relationship with time?

The Ad Memoriam Charcoals were created by members of the public through group workshops exploring the relationships we have with time through memory. Participants were asked to select a section of the drawings to preserve, and a smaller section to erase. These smaller sections were then placed on the Ad Memoriam Clocks – kinetic devices which run using a clockwork mechanism. These gradually erase the charcoal marks through the duration of the exhibition. Similarly to memory itself, the marks on the paper are never fully erased, but rather smudged, distorted and faded.

Through this process of preservation and erasure, participants are invited to be intentional in how they engage with their own personal histories by choosing what memories to preserve into the future.

Sculpted vessels of found materials in white Jesmonite

Kairos Relics

The Kairos Relics are artefacts to the qualitative, non-linear experiences of time; moments of falling in love, of grief, of self-sabotage, epiphany and redemption. Utilising the objects that signify these moments in our lives – letters, souvenirs, mementos - the Kairos Relics invite us to take these objects from our present surroundings and to assign them to our past. Kazan and Higham discuss the significance of keepsakes and mementos in their ability to “materialise” memories and experiences that define the identity of the audience (2019, p 143). In response, the Kairos Relics ask us to be intentional in which experiences we define our identities against: which of our keepsakes have relevance in our present; what will we carry into our futures? The appropriate place for some mementos is in our pasts.

Through the Kairos Relics, these mementos are subjected to the processes of time – crushing, heating, compressing – and are reformed into new forms reminiscent of heritage objects, transformed from a marker of an identity to a marker of an historical event.

Something Good

Something Good is a public art project about kindness and nurturing connections within the community. Launched in London in 2021, Something Good is an award-winning participatory sculptural intervention which provides a dedicated space for gift-giving and sharing between strangers, friends, businesses and passers-by.

Growing Giants

Growing Giants is an environmental public arwork on the Greenway path which links the towns and villages on the Isle of Axholme. The Growing Giants sculptures feature plant species native to the area, and provide places for the community to place wildflower seeds in built-in stores within the sculptures, activating the natural landscape and creating a positive legacy on the local ecosystem.

Fabric voile painted with voile, with marmite image, map and text

Engramographs

Engramographs use the visual language of cartography and place to trigger memories for documentation. Building on the ideas situated in critical cartography, Engramographs ask us how a landscape has shaped us as individuals; what places and times hold personal significance and whether the language of maps can communicate an alternative landscape. The results are maps which cover the same, repeated physical locations but which are layered with memories explored through text and image.

Working with communities to explore memories of place, we can identify how the places and people around us have shaped our identities and how our perceptions of the past continue to shape our futures.

Image of hands creating charcoal artwork on paper

Workshops

Anna designs and creates workshops for specific projects. These workshops use creative and artistic methods to explore varied themes, and often include sound, free-writing, sketch and exploration. The aim of the workshops is to extend dialogue around different ideas, to create connections within the group and to understand nuanced and personal experience. These often lead to participants creating their own artworks or contributing ideas to a larger projects.

ANNA MASTERS