The Dance of the Remediators
Coal, flannelette bed sheets, reclaimed timber, cotton cord, prints on cotton rag, collage, audio narrative.
The Lock Up Gallery, Newcastle
One day, the children disappeared. An entire city of empty beds. Each child had left a note: ‘gone underground – stay safe’. Their bedsheets were gone too…
The Dance of the Remediators is an archive of a possible future; a materialised dream sequence of people being called into action by coal’s humble living relatives.
A base-camp is constructed for a revolution of intimacy, patience and vunerability. An expedition is planned to uncover dark-hard-coal’s ancestral softness. By recalling coal’s long photosynthetic memory, can we salvage the future?
Here, at the edge of climate calamity, the domestic-left-over, the soft-and-slow, the fragile and care-full are made mighty. This work prototypes earnest and absurd devices, gentle megastructures and everyday actions, for remaking the world through care, play, wonder and hope.
Download exhibition essay by Jess Scully