Summer

Rituals:


Ritual d'été/Summer Ritual


Every year for 6 years, during August, I carried out a series of ritualistic actions that confront the human position to live daily life as a tourist. There is an auto-biographical base that retraces my feelings of being perpetually caught between two identities and generally the complications of having emigrated from the UK. These actions are often aware of the specific geographies of my environment. 


The first three actions were specific to the South of France.
The actions have included, the demand for lost sunglasses in bars and restaurants in the south of the country with the use of phrase book french . Getting lost under the scorching heat and make engravings of the landscape on pairs of sunglasses. A hunt to get photos of the British flag worn as an accessory. A song about
soils in different countries. And ofcourse, tanning tattoos of French words made in Whitley Bay for ArtHouses 2018.




Summer Ritual 

#4

2016

Summertime Soils


Norfolk, Bretagne, Cinque terre, Dalmatia

NORFOLK/Bretagne/ 5 terre/ Dolmatia

4 : The euro vision inspired the mega mix. After travelling between four EU countries, France, England, Italy and Croatia, I had a glimmer of sunshine and enough material to write an 8-minute mega-mix representing the soil of each country. Using a mixing technique, I swapped styles and languages to achieve a crossover effect. An Italian disco section was sung in English and was performed by my little sister, a folk song from Norfolk (English region) was sung in French, a French sea song in Croatian and a Croatian rock/pop song in Italian. I made CDs that I gave to drivers who were working for a summer art fair driving gallery owners, critics and journalists. There is also a Youtube video with a montage of footage of the seaside places I visited. In Norfolk, I filmed crabs running and protecting themselves on a stretch of sand trying to reach the water and not get picked up by a seagull. There were also brightly coloured maps of the soil types in the different areas.. LEAM was also the character of sunburnt tourists singing along. And we also see the earth artist/walker Richard Long wearing his bandanner and tapping mud on a wall in rhythm with a pan flute chorus.