AER Conversations: GroundWork Gallery (2021)

AER Conversations Programme While the residencies were temporarily paused due to the Covid-19 restrictions, Art for the Environment (AER) Conversations series was created. With the aim to offer a platform in which ideas and experiences are exchanged. Within the current climate emergency, AER partners, residents and UAL alumni come together to reflect on the impact and legacy of their practices and to reflect on their creative role in envisioning a world of tomorrow. This series of conversations is organised by Camilla Palestra, AER Curator, Centre for Sustainable Fashion, in collaboration with UAL Post-Grad Community. On Tuesday 2 November, Veronica Sekules, director at GroundWork Gallery, and Rebecca Faulkner, researcher, writer and spatial practitioner, UAL alumna and selected resident for AER 2021 at GroundWork Gallery, UK spoke for the AER Conversations Series. This event is part of Carnival of Crisis at University of the Arts London. Veronica Sekules has more than 30 years’ experience working in art galleries. She has curated exhibitions, worked on projects with artists, engaged with schools and the general public both in the UK and internationally. Her long-term interest in the environment which informs GroundWork Gallery stems from a formative period working for Friends of the Earth. As a result of this, she wrote the Friends of the Earth Cookbook, published by Penguin Books in 1980. Veronica’s main career followed at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, scva.ac.uk where she was first a curator, then Head of Education and Research and Deputy Director. From there she ran many international and local projects. Rebecca Faulkner is a self-professed researcher, writer and recent spatial practitioner graduate from Central Saint Martins. An architect in training who ‘borrows’ from other disciplines - from spoken word to movement practices - she employs critical writing and performance-based work as a research methodology, ranging from themes around the gendering and governance of public space to the extractive process of finite resource mining. Her performance, The Act of Loitering: A city awakening, was the first introduction to sand as a medium, in which large, wearable sandbags were fabricated to constrain and liberate the female performers' bodies - momentarily gifting stillness in the city. A continued fascination with sand over the past 18 months led to her being the latest recipient of the UAL AER residency, hosted by Groundwork gallery and part of Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss. Harnessing the tools of performance, situated drawing, site-writing and WARM-DATA collection, she seeks to engage in other ways of doing things, encapsulating complex issues into digestible and emotive formats. GroundWork Gallery is Britain’s only gallery dedicated exclusively to the environment and art. Its regular programme of exhibitions, artists’ residencies and the discussions arising from them, examine threats and dangers to our physical world. Addressing climate change is the world’s biggest challenge. Environmental change is constant and is crucially affected by human action. GroundWork Gallery exhibits work by artists who care about the environment and enable us to appreciate its special qualities. Innovative ideas promoted through art, can help us to move closer towards our goal of environmental sustainability so that we can act more purposefully to address local and global environmental issues. GroundWork Gallery’s partners include wildlife charities, the Woodland Trust, the Civic Trust, Climate Change groups such as XR, Culture Declares Emergency, Friends of the Earth, and KLimate Concern; heritage organisations such as Norfolk Coast Partnership, local government: King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council, and above all with concerned individuals.