Worm Wood - An exhibition August 3rd to September 3rd 2017
Kensal Green Cemetery : Dissenters Chapel
Paintings, found objects, artefacts and new collaborations exploring the historic, hidden and idiosyncratic in Kensal Green Cemetery, and its connection to disppeared and ever disappearing London. This exhibition came about after a two month residency in the cemetery and is the first paintings exhibition for SJ Fowler. The exhibition is one of many facets of Worm Wood, a collaboration between Tereza Stehlikova and SJ Fowler, one that the artists begun in 2015.
Scroll below for all the events held during this exhibition
Exploring the specific history of the cemetery and the part of London where it resides, as well as death and the culture of cemeteries specifically, and all the notions of geography and city that this entails, the project also explored London's painful development boom. The cemetery lies as the eastern border of the new Old Oak development, one of the largest ever in London, beginning its terraforming just as the residency took place. www.theenemiesproject.com/wormwood
On closing the exhibition - August 24th 2017
One final event marked the end of this culmination of two years of collaborating with the brilliant tereza stehlikova, and the end of the summer, one spent with many days and nights in the chapel and grounds of the east end of kensal green cemetery. There was a palpable sense of emotion during some of the performances, all of those many artists who have contributed to the programme seemed to connect their new works often to their experiences of grief and death, and again, some of the works were very intense in a beautiful way. Perhaps its because these events have been intimate, 20 to 30 people and in such an amazing space. tony white, thomas duggan, susie campbell, iris colomb and more, they were all very generous about the project and to share their time and works. tereza and i plan to continue to work together on Worm Wood, for the foreseeable future, especially now it is so tied into the coming old oak development and the disappearance of the parts of west london we set out to explore long before we know old oak existed.
New paintings 'Cemetery Portraits' for Worm Wood
A series of portraits, of people who, at the time of painting, were buried in the place the paintings were made - Kensal Green Cemetery, the first of London's magnicifient seven, as part of the Worm Wood exhibition.
#3.4 Poetry at Worm Wood - August 16th 2017
Set in the beautiful Dissenter's Chapel as part of the remarkable and historic Kensal Green Cemetery, over a dozen London poets will read mostly new works responding to Kensal Green Cemetery or something to that effect. Readings from Eley Williams, Fabian Peake, Joe Turrent, Michael Zand, Ariadne Radi Cor, Clover Peake, Adriana Diaz-Enciso, Ahsan Akbar, Alex MacDonald, Lavinia Singer, Richard Scott, Giovanna Coppola and an audio installation performance by Pascal O'Loughlin. http://www.theenemiesproject.com/dissenterschapel
New paintings 'Cemetery Portraits' for Worm Wood
A series of portraits, of people who, at the time of painting, were buried in the place the paintings were made - Kensal Green Cemetery, the first of London's magnicifient seven, as part of the Worm Wood exhibition.
Portraits of Harold Pinter, James Ballard, Charles Babbage and Isambard Brunel amongst them.
The series was made under the constraint that I could only paint them on site in the Dissenter's Chapel with materials found in the chapel, the catacombs, cemetery stores and in the cemetery grounds.
#4 Worm Wood Old Oak / published by Sampson Low
A piece of beautiful ephemera, a limited edition pamphlet by Sampson Low, founded in 1793, which was made to mark the moment of the Worm Wood residency specifically, and tells the ambiguous and quixotic tale of a property developer. My first work of fiction published for some years, it is available to buy here for £2.60
https://sampsonlow.co/2017/07/14/worm-wood-old-oak-sj-fowler/
From Worm Wood Old Oak ...
"All development is a matter of structure. It is a word that might be used in learning to live the well lived life. You might find the word self before the word development. You might hear the words Take a moment to think about the words I am saying. The developer is active in ordering, aiming to make some sequences of events more likely, at the expense of other events. Happy, joy filled living will increase, the statistics will show this, concrete facts, and less resonant of existences will fall away. Maybe one day, it will be extinguished? If that would happen anywhere, it would be in old oak. In old oak the business of anticipation is thriving. It will be a few years yet before the stubborn presence of things resistant to such resonance uncovers the limit, if there is one, to the ordering intentions of development, but that’s fine. Nothing happens overnight. This is a long term deal. We’re thinking in centuries, aren’t we? Those, shall we say revelations, might not reveal the feebleness of such organisation for a few years after project completion. Then those outlandish outliers will become merely a crevice in the old oak, through which chaos will be, reluctantly and depressingly, sighted, from some eighth floor glass balcony. Too late then, isn’t it?"
#3.2 The Ecchoing Green - July 13th 2017
The second event as part of my residence at Kensal Green Cemetery, Worm Wood, a really resonant and communal night with Tom Jeffreys and Chris McCabe, all three of us sharing somewhat deeply intertwined reflections on London, cemeteries, psychological interactions with space and history. I took folk down into the catacombs during my reading of my new limited edition short story publication from Sampson Low - Worm Wood Old Oak. I am really happy with the little chapbook, its beautifully done and this was the right place to share it with the world. https://sampsonlow.co/2017/07/14/worm-wood-old-oak-sj-fowler/
The Ecchoing Green was an event celebrating London and its landscape, most specifically its cemeteries. It featured three contemporary writers engaging with this notion in different but complimentary ways, with an exploration of Chris McCabe's ongoing publication project with Penned in the Margins, following In The Catacombs and Cenotaph South, with new work responding to Kensal Green Cemetery. This event also saw the launch of Worm Wood Old Oak, a new pamphlet of poems by SJ Fowler, published by Sampson Low, written about the Cemetery and its impending neighbour, the Old Oak development. And finally this event explored Tom Jeffrey's Signal Failures, published by Influx Press, which provides, through a walk along the proposed route of HS2, a wide-ranging critique of humanity’s most urgent failures.
#3.1 Celebrating Erich Fried - July 6th 2017
The second instalment of a new series of innovative events bringing to light, in London, the work of writers fundamental to the unique Austrian contribution to world literature in the post-war era. // Erich Fried, one of the great political and love poets of the post-war era, whose strikingly beautiful and immediate poetry found no contradiction in those themes, was celebrated on the grounds of Kensal Green Cemetery, where he rests, and it was wonderful to have so many of his family come and attend this event. www.theenemiesproject.com/illuminations Photographs by Madeleine Elliott.
#2 Landscape Learn : Growth and Decay - July 15th 2017
A dynamic public facing project from J&L Gibbons, Landscape Learn is an exciting venture that Ive been able to be involved with through my residency and tie into my time at Kensal Green Cemetery, with Tereza Stehlikova, with this event. A one day mix of cemetery tour via geology and lost rivers, to talks on the bones of the city, the urban mind, neuroscience, landscape architecture and finishing with a screening of a film I have small part in, made by Tereza. Tickets were sold to a group of nearly fifty and the day felt really communal and engaged, I met so many really interesting people, all of whom shared a complex and intensive interest in their city and its changing environment - often changing for the worst, as the discussion of the nearby Old Oak Common development seemed never too far from the discussions. It's inspiring for me to work with people such as Jo Gibbons and Neil Davidson, this is the kind of day that feeds into my work, takes it into new places, where it needs to be, always growing.
#1 Origins of the Worm Wood project
Began in 2015, the primary outcome of the project is a film which fuses the industrial and reclusive landscapes of these areas of London with poetry and text, as well as live events, installations embedded in the environment, an exhibition of these works and a publication forthcoming.
Worm Wood crosses artforms, is fundamentally collaborative across concept, text and image, and aims to be as nebulous and striking as the landscape it celebrates.
"We should see if we can get permission to use that shed on stilts as an installation. If not, locate something hidden in the spiderweb of the stations grounds, or a part not used often, or something small, unreachable through the fence on the long walk to Harrow Road.
Pulling a handful of hair. Uprooting a small tree.
This place is not obsessed with itself. I think there’s a difference in that, one we’ve both noticed. There is one stop here, located momentarily. A fusion that spills out in eight directions, spiders legs. Our favourite is the snipers alley off the Harrow Road entrance, where we will enter."
