2021: Dovetailing new series

Please click on thumbnail for larger image. For provenance of titles, please scroll down the page.

: of the rain, trees, birds

: of the rain, trees, birds

: of the rain, trees, birds

: this tree’s scroll

: this tree’s scroll

: this tree’s scroll

: moving, moves with light

: moving, moves with light

: the other’s echo

: the other’s echo

: making shadows

: making shadows

: making shadows

: a ring of the sun

: a ring of the sun

: a ring of the sun

: set you sail

: set you sail

: set you sail

: floating over one another

: floating over one another

: floating over one another

: in music you can see yourself in your dreams

: in music you can see yourself in your dreams

: in music you can see yourself in your dreams

: spooling out of nothing

: spooling out of nothing

: chasing the energy

: chasing the energy

: peace dovetails

: peace dovetails

: in this together

: in this together

: in this together

: block to root, sap to sun & back again

: block to root, sap to sun & back again

: block to root, sap to sun & back again

: between black and white notes

: between black and white notes

For Dovetailing Responses, the concept was to create a space in which the unknown can emerge; a magic evolving out of collaboration.

The installation was staged in a new way in a different venue, with a number of suspended sheets of light diffusing paper on which the film was projected from two projectors. The mobiles were hung throughout the room, creating a forest of shadows and light through which visitors took their own path.

Within and alongside the installation was responsive work. Funding went to commissioning a new composition performed by a trio, contemporary dance performances, improvised fiddle playing, and work with a highly renowned poet. All visual arts and poetry which was submitted to us was exhibited in the gallery upstairs and impromptu improvisations took place. In addition, an experimental movement responsive sound app – Movuku – was trialled at the exhibition. Details, images and footage of all these activities can be seen on the Dovetailing Responses page.

Dovetailing Responses took on a life of its own in which the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Coinciding with COP26, the exhibition celebrated natural and human interaction and community; the cumulative strength which comes from creating in reciprocity.

“Dovetailing routinely transformed its audience into artists themselves…There is no word for “nature” in Old English, we learn from Hana Videen, only “sceaft”, creation, in which we are all one and the world of this new venture seemed very like that…a strange and generous physics hosting multiple universes of creation…”

— Ian Duhig, Dovetailing Responses, November 2021

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Most of the titles given to the mobiles are taken from responsive poems and texts to the Dovetailing installation which were exhibited and read at a poetry reading. Ian Duhig wrote a series of poems and also guided a workshop for a number of people who are currently supported by Bradford Refugee Action. Magic Museum Music Boxes is the group poem emerging from that workshop, and A Tree of Children’s Hands is Ian’s poem in response to an artwork which the children made.

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Featured image above and images below are selected from the Dovetailing website (click for full image)