Target reached!
Any extra monies raised will go towards the realisation of: MTP Prologue - a happeni...
More Than Ponies - Contemporary Art and New Forest
South Baddesley, England, United Kingdom
Aim
MTP invites artists and audiences to engage in new ways with the New Forest. Help us unlock our funding and make our launch programme happen
More Than Ponies (MTP) is an artist-led programme of contemporary art projects, events and interventions in the New Forest, UK. We have been awarded an Arts Council National Lottery Project Grant, but we need your help to unlock it!
With your support we will develop and present: 2 permanent art works, 4 artist commissions, 1 exhibition, an alternative ‘guidebook’, 2 schools workshops and a series of community events. This programme will be the first stage of what we hope will become a regular series of contemporary art events in the area.
Initial confirmed artists include Giorgio Sadotti, Rachael Champion, Ox Art, Harry Meadows, Simon Bayliss – and more to be announced soon. More Than Ponies has been initiated by Laura Eldret in collaboration with participating artists and curator Mary Cork.
MTP explores ideas of people and place, generating artworks for and about the diverse populations of the New Forest. Like the animals that live here, MTP will roam, moving across multiple sites and venues. Looking beyond the infamous ponies MTP seeks to discover what makes this a special and resonant place today.
Any extra monies raised will go towards the realisation of:
- MTP Prologue - a happening exploring humanity's relationship with our natural environment, curated by Mary Cork.
- MAKE sessions designed in collaboration with commissioned artists that invite participants to get hands on in co-creation.
- An artist's publication by Giorgio Sadotti cataloguing the content of his exquist corpse exhibition.
- And more community engagement activities!
IMAGES:
Above: MTP Tote Bag, 2019.
Left: Annabel Pettigrew-MacPherson, Sybil's Cape, 2019. Glazed ceramic, 15 x 15 cm.
Below: Rachael Champion, Tropospheric Terrestrial Bodies, 2019. ( indicative image)
The New Forest is rich in contexts, histories and stories that can be highlighted and enriched through contemporary art. The New Forest is a National Park, one of ‘Britain’s breathing spaces’, protected as a place of outstanding beauty and special interest. It is a highly inhabited environment with over 13 million international visitors a year, plus 35,000 residents. It is a unique place of expansive large open spaces of forestry, coast and heathland. As a ‘common’ land, donkeys, pigs, cattle and New Forest ponies roam freely.
Mary Cork joined Wysing Arts Centre in December 2018. With over 12 years’ experience in both not-for-profit and commercial contemporary art, her career has included creating, curating, university lecturing and delivering art projects, and devising support for arts organisations such as Block Universe, Whitstable Biennale, Open School East, Auto Italia and Studio Voltaire. Mary was the former Director at Pilar Corrias Gallery (2016–18) and The Approach (2011–16). Mary holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Rachael Champion’s site-specific sculptures and installations explore relationships between industry, technology and nature. Often large in scale, her dramatic constructions question our interactions with the natural world and architectural space. Rachael has exhibited widely and her work has recently been on show at Hales Gallery and the Whitechapel Gallery.
Laura Eldret's work explores social forms by looking at the ways that people come together to perform and perpetuate cultural identities. She works across art forms including installation, textiles and video work. She has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions including at Karst, Plymouth (2019); Drawing Room, London (2019); Firstsite, Colchester (2018); Turf Projects, Croydon (2017-18); Tannery Projects, London (2016); Centre for Contemporary Art, Derry, NI (2016); Fig-2 50/50, ICA, London (2015).
*Limited Editions - please note that Rachael Champion's limited edition and the thank you postcard edition by Laura Eldret will be made in response to research for the MTP programme that they are currently undertaking. Therefore we are not able to provides images at this stage, we hope you are excited by this surprise element!
MTP is a supporter of fair pay for artists https://www.morethanponies.info/artists
This project successfully funded on 30th October 2019