garden of synchronicities part 1 was a practice based installation using text, photography, creative conversation and focused walking to investigate ideas and experiences around concepts of chance, coincidence and synchronicity.
harnessing a bespoke library of art, science and literature as research material, covering references on the potential constructs of time, surrealism, death, dream philosophy, jung and Blake as visionaries, to prompt investigation of the residency’s critical question.
What is Synchronicity?
once we enter (the labyrinth), ordinary time and distance are immaterial, we are in the midst of a ritual and a journey; we do not know how far away or close we are to the centre where meaning can be found until we are there. the way back is not obvious and we have no way of knowing as we emerge how or when we will take the experience back into the world, until we do.
Jean Shinoda Bolen, Crossing Avalon, 1995
“it’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.”
Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
garden of synchronicities, part i
live installation / research based residency, brompton cemetery chapel, 2021
as the inaugural artist for friends of brompton cemetery residency, garden of synchronicity, part 1 was devised as a semi participatory, studio practice and research installation.
conceived as a period of enquiry within which to explore both the cemetery and carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity. the walled grounds or ‘garden of sleep’ that is this victorian cemetery, provided a perfect canvas.
Inside the rotund and austere chapel at the heart of brompton cemetery, sheer gauze suspended across the interior interrupts its architecture, creating an inner veil.
Garden of Synchronicities, excerpt, digital video, 30s 2021, (audio collaboration with Derek Collie)
an analogue typewriter mobilised as method for the recording of nightly dreams, produced one long continuous hand typed, path of recollection.
alongside this, a daily practice of intentional walks through the cemetery grounds by the artist (waking sleepwalks) formed a series of opportunities, openings to synchronicity.
public engagement through conversation, using prompt cards investigated creative exchange and experiences, around topics of chance, coincidence and synchronicity, through the real and dreamed experiences of participants.
what are our beliefs, or our imaginings. is there something other, being articulated between the veil and presence.
