RE:seeding, in correspondence | performance to camera by Jade Montserrat

Commissioned for performingbordersLIVE20, RE:seeding, in correspondence is a new performance to camera suggesting that there is a connection between ourselves and the earth and that this line, or connection, like our communications with one another, is drawing. 

Developed with film-makers Webb-Ellis, Jade seeks to visualise these exchanges of energy, the lines, the communications, and with that, consider, maybe on a global scale, stewarding of our spaces. 

RE:seeding, in correspondence documents processes of making virtual connections with a local community of people who have refugee status or are seeking asylum. Jade’s research topics on ownership, body and land, explored through a workshop with participants from MAFWA Theatre – an organisation in Leeds who make theatre with sanctuary seekers in Burmantofts, Lincoln Green and Mabgate – included an exchange of materials: charcoal, a sketchbook, herb seeds and materials to grow them in with the intention of locating commonality through shared connection to earth, soil, and growth. 

A development of ‘Drawing as Contagion’, a text and workshop devised in response to exhibition Instituting Care (Bluecoat; Humber Street Gallery) RE:seeding, in correspondence extends Jade’s central idea that drawing is a mode of being or a mode of operating, allowing further exploration of the question: What does it mean to survey and reclaim ‘environments’, our relationship to space, and where are potentials for reclamation or belongings? 

Watch a post-broadcast live Q&A between Jade Montserrat & Chandra Frank here: https://performingborders.live/pbchannel/reseeding-qa/

Credits

Performance to Camera by Jade Montserrat and Webb-Ellis
Engagement and Project Management by Helen Moore 
Commissioned by performingborders, East Street Arts and Counterpoint Arts for performingbordersLIVE20.
Supported by Live Art Development Agency, with funding from Arts Council England. 

Bios

Jade Montserrat is an artist based in Scarborough, England. She is the recipient of the Stuart Hall Foundation Scholarship which supports her PhD (via MPhil) at IBAR, UCLan, and the development of her work from her black diasporic perspective in the North of England. Jade works through performance, drawing, painting, film, installation, sculpture, print and text. Jade Montserrat is the recipient of the Stuart Hall Foundation Scholarship which supports her PhD (via MPhil) at IBAR, UCLan,  (Race and Representation in Northern Britain in the context of the Black Atlantic: A Creative Practice Project) and the development of her work from her black diasporic perspective in the North of England. She was also awarded one of two Jerwood Student Drawing Prizes in 2017 for No Need for Clothing, a documentary photograph of a drawing installation at Cooper Gallery DJCAD by Jacquetta Clark. Jade’s Rainbow Tribe project – a combination of historical and contemporary manifestations of Black Culture from the perspective of the Black Diaspora is central to the ways she is producing a body of work, including No Need For Clothing and its iterations, as well as her performance work Revue. Jade was commissioned to present Revue as a 24 hour live performance at SPILL Festival of Performance, October 2018, a solo exhibition at The Bluecoat, Liverpool, (Nov – 10 Mar 2019) which toured to Humber Street Gallery ( July-sept 2019) and was commissioned by Art on the Underground to create the 2018 Winter Night Tube cover. Iniva and Manchester Art Gallery have commissioned Jade as the first artist for the Future Collect project (2020).

Caitlin and Andrew Webb-Ellis are British/Canadian artist filmmakers. They use film, dance, music and installation to create work which offers ways to imaginatively access the sensual, primal and interior. Through an extended process of gathering and sifting, they bring diverse materials and concepts into dialogue to create new meaning. Coincidence and fiction play a significant role, and the subject matter is never fixed. Webb-Ellis have ongoing collaborations with artists, scientists, philosophers, family, friends and strangers. Addressing the political through the lens of the subconscious and the body, they explore human loneliness and how we live together. Webb-Ellis are facilitators of Philosophy for Children and recipients of the Jerwood Film and Video Umbrella Award 2019. They are currently working with Cement Fields on an extended educational project and new film funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation. They live and work from a converted removal truck, continually moving from place to place.