Walker & Bromwich

A ritual performed at Roskilde Festival in Denmark 2018

Channelling the ancient Serpent Goddess, symbol of creation and regeneration the artists devised workshops and a ritual that invited audiences and participants at the festival to think about the strangle hold of Capitalism on our society and what the alternatives might be. The processions become a kind of ritualistic act that called on the Serpent of Creation to shed its skin that has become corrupted by capitalism and to take on another form

The original image of The Serpent of Capitalism is found in an anarchist poster from the 1909. The ritual was devised following conversations with Britta Lillesøeand Nils Vest members of Solvognen the influential activist theatre collective based in Christiania, Copenhagen in the 1970-80’s

Oh, Great Serpent you that are the sacred umbilical cord that joins all humans to Mother Earth [..]. 

Oh, Great Snake .. guardian of the mysteries of fertility, birth and regeneration. Oh, Goddess of the Life Force we call upon you to shed this tired, corrupted, skin and heal humanity through this act of regeneration

'Llechi A Llafur // Slate or State’ explores the problematic power relationships between a Penrhyn Castle a Stately Home in North Wales and the ex-quarrying community of Bethesda 100 years after the longest strike in British Industrial history. 

The Great Strike of Penrhyn Quarry 1900-03 caused great suffering and fractured the local community for generations, it was also a key battle in rise of labour movement. However is story little known outside of local area and was not told within the Castle.

Walker and Bromwich worked with the people of Bethesda, Penrhyn Choir and poet Rhys Trimble in order to construct and process a great quarry sculpture into the castle, placing the missing history of the strike determinedly into the heart of Penrhyn Castle. The accompanying film work documents the project to re-awaken the Great Strike story through the voices of people of Bethesda, in proses, poetry and song

Community Workshops: Poetry, Banners and Inflatable Quarry Making

Performance: Community Banners, Penrhyn Choir, Inflatable Quarry Sculpture

Installation: Inflatable Quarry Sculpture,

Digital Video: Made in association with Culture Colony Vision (Welsh language subtitled in English)

Photography: Mark Pinder, Michael Pollard

Is one of the outcomes of Possible Dialogues a two year-long collaboration and exchange between Indigenous Leaders, Artists, Activists, and Academic from Colombia and Scotland in the lead up to COP26. Participants met in Glasgow during the COP26 Climate Conference within artists Walker & Bromwich’s immersive artwork and activity hub the Encampment of Eternal Hope, to join Minga Indígena and other Indigenous leaders, activists and artists from across Abya Yala (the Americas) in conversation, ceremony, to exchange knowledge and share a sense of kinship with each other and with people in Scotland.

Commissioned by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh for COP26

Film work presented as part of Más Arte Más Acción participation within documenta-fifteen, Kassel 2022

Possible Dialogues partner organisations: Colombia, OPIAC Organisation of Indigenous Peoples of Colombia, Minga Indígena, Más Arte Más Acción, La Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Rosario University, DAAD – German Academic Exchange Service, Feminist Exchange Network, ÚNA Festival, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, If Not Us Then Who, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, Wasp Studios, Edinburgh University, Newcastle University

Diálogos Posibles / Possible Dialogues project

In 2018 for the Great Exhibition of the North, Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich transformed Grey’s Monument into The Worker’s Maypole in an act of celebration that brought focus to the collective values at the heart of the North of England. The Worker’s Maypole paid tribute to and affirmed the North’s achievements and feats for equality

Grey’s Monument stands in the heart of Newcastle, a tribute not only to Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey who led the passing of the Great Reform Act 1832, but also as a symbol of the area’s role in supporting a fairer society. The monument became a temporary Worker’s Maypole displaying the accolades of society, health, education, science, art and fellowship for all; placing at the heart of civic space the shared principles that have been and remain significant to the communities of the North

Celestial Radio is a radio station housed within a sailing boat adorned with 60,000 mirror tiles—a glittering cosmic orb and functional sculptural object. Its reflective surface splinters light waves into Morse Code-like messages, while the FM station broadcasts sounds, music, and conversations. The Celeste travels literally across the high seas while conceptually exploring the metaphorical oceans of life's profound questions—otherworldly and microscopic.

Each time the Celeste arrives at a new shore, the artists engage with musicians, poets, communities, and knowledge holders in conversations around visionary ideas. These dialogues are woven together with field recordings and archival material to create kaleidoscopic, site-specific broadcasts transmitted from Celestial Radio, reflecting a new vision of the lands and peoples it encounters.

Origins

Celestial Radio was originally commissioned by Commissions East and Essex County Council in 2004. The project explored an overlooked and misunderstood area of the Essex coastline: the Bradwell Peninsula. Only an hour from London, this coastal stretch possesses a distinctly remote atmosphere and a fascinating history, yet remains seldom visited. Celestial Radio re-mythologized this landscape by capturing the spirit of Radio Caroline, which once frequented these waters, and the visionary thinking of those who populated this landscape—past and present.

Evolution

Since its maiden voyage, Celestial Radio has toured numerous coastal sites, broadcasting site-responsive sound works tailored to each new location. Celestial Radio mutates to embody the essence of each site, reflecting and projecting its character. In doing so, the Celeste has become a social sculpture, re-visioning sites and locations through its presence.

Selected Broadcasts & Locations

·       Phosphorescence Song (2012) MCA, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, Australia

·       Celestial Slye (2011) charting the Gaelic Renaissance on Isle of Skye, ATLAS Arts, Portree Harbour

·       A Celestial Odyssey (2009) Praxis, Biennale 2, Thessaloniki Greece

·       Celestial Radio A Visionary Journey (2008) Kent Tour commissioned by Turner Contemporary, Margate, including Folkestone Triennial and Whitstable Biennale

·       Celestial Radio MIX TAPE (2009) Breakfast of Champions, London with Resonance FM, 2009

·       How the Universe Synthesised Itself into Being (2006) River Tyne, AV06 Festival, Festival Commission, Newcastle upon Tyne

·      How the Universe Sang Itself into Being (2004), Bradwell-on-Sea, Dengie peninsula, Essex, Commissioned by Commissions East for Essex Council

2012, Encampment of Eternal Hope was first staged at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. Operating both a sculptural installation and a live site for events, talks, film-works and festivities in the run into the end date of the Mayan Long Count Calendar in Dec 2012. The project examined increasing current environmental and societal challenges while prefiguring new models for a post-apocalyptic society.

In 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic the project was recommissioned by the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh in the lead up to COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow. Participants were able to come together outdoors to take part in a wide range of activities which aimed to consider our relationship to the natural world while finding hope and resilience in the terrifying face of the climate emergency.

The Encampment operates as a field laboratory for cross-disciplinary collaboration, it unites experts in diverse fields including ecology, economics, and the arts. The talks and performances programmed with these leading practitioners aims to respond both to the immediate environment the work inhabits, and to reflect upon a wider global context.

As a nomadic settlement the Encampment grows organically and is reconfigured in response to each specific use. The structures connect directly to the collective associations of encampments as temporal sites of protest, revolution, displacement, and social change. The project aims to investigate the potential of a sculptural installation to create an alternative environment that can engender debate and assesses the extent to which an artwork can become an active agent within a contemporary society.

Dragon of Profit and Private Ownership (2017),

A large inflatable sculpture sits at the centre of a series of actions exploring the ideas of late radical thinkers at the turn of 20th Century, who sought to find alternatives to the dominant capitalist model William Morris, Walter Crane, and Patrick Geddes, Edinburgh town planner, social activist and environmentalist. The dragon was taken into the streets of Edinburgh in a symbolic procession which draws on a rich tradition of street theatre, stretching back to the Middle Ages.

Working with the mythological archetypes in-order to examine the distribution of capital Walker & Bromwich brings back to life ‘The Dragon of Profit and Private Ownership’, which first appears on the Northumberland Mineworkers Banner 1924. The artists worked with actors, poets and the children of Canal View Primary School on the outskirts of Edinburgh to realise this contemporary reworking of the folk play

A Leap into the Dark opened at Queens Park Railway Club in March 2020. Almost immediately after opening, the exhibition had to be closed to the public due to safety issues surrounding the COVID 19 pandemic. A Leap into the Dark is a work that takes a personal approach to the idea of participation. At the time of making, this work aimed to conjure up a liminal space, between worlds, between the real and the imagined, between the seen and the unseen, between memory and forgetting, between life and death, extinction and consumption. Working with Walker's 88 year old mother who suffers from dementia, the work traverses an interior world while touching on a wider planetary terrain. The film now takes on very different connotations watched within the uncertain world we now inhabit and as such has an oddly prophetic resonance.

Two nights that brought together a maverick troupe of performers for Glasgow International 2016. Starting its life in the ruins of the iconic Greek Thompson Church, the Circus appeared out of the darkness as if was an encampment has arrived in town. The performance hovered somewhere between the first hints of a circus performed on village greens and the sentiment of death metal. Circus Between Worlds featured workshops, and talks and was free-form learning environment, bringing together artists and art students across the spectrum of their creative development – creating an open framework for expression.

Maria Fusco, Francis Thorburn, David Sherry, Urara Tsuchiya, Sion Parkinson, Richard Whitby & Sooyon Kim, Emma Finn, Stasis, Jedrzej Cichosz, Edwin Li, Graham Mack, Michael Owers, Hazel Powell Astrid Newman & Francesca Hawker, Ollie Hawker, La Malle des Indes, Sally Hackett, Peter Jarsdell Ltd, Bisan Abu Eisheh, Anya Gleizer, Fiona Berry, Anna Danielewicz, Martin Darbyshire, Charlie Dearnley, Michael Di Rienzo, Stella Dixon, Deanna Smith, Zoe Griffin, Lorna Stubbs Davies, Sarah Grundy, Adam Hussain, Aaron Jose, Rachel Lee, Serafima Mehhovits, Nuclear Jelly, Maryanne Royale, Helen Shaddock, Ayshia Taskin, Olivia Turner

With students from Edinburgh College of Art, Glasgow School of Art & Newcastle University. Supported by Newcastle University Institute for Social Renewal, Newcastle University; Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh, Hosted and facilitated by art organisation WAVEparticle as part of their Open Spaces project.

circusbetweenworlds.org

Sci-Fi Hot Tub is a floating hot tub contained within an inflatable iceberg. It is designed to cocoon participants within warmth and comfort whilst floating amid sublime and sometimes hostile environments. On entering Sci-Fi Hot Tub the participant is invited into an environment that is intended to improve their state of physical and emotional wellbeing

 As part of this project, Walker & Bromwich worked work with staff from Phase One Drugs Trials Unit at Hammersmith Medicines Research. The medical team, led by Dr. Mark Down, collaborated with the artists to devise a scientific methodology that examines the relationships between artworks and audience. The project explores through scientific and artistic means whether the work of artists can improve the wellbeing of the audience encountering the work

 The results of this investigation were presented in the performance lecture ‘Panacea Casebook’ at Tate Britain, Baltic, John Hansard Gallery, Modern Art Oxford, CCA Glasgow. The book ‘Panacea’ documents the project. Project exhibited at Cornerhouse Manchester, Victoria Baths Manchester 2006 and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki 2012 

 Sci-Fi Hot Tub was created in partnership with Kielder Art & Architecture and Cornerhouse Manchester and funded by a WellcomeTrust Production Award and Arts Council England Touring

Weave is a work made during a micro residency Shift and Spin at Stanley Mills, Perthshire. The residency was set up by Zoe Walker and Susan Mowett as part of their pedagogical practice at Edinburgh Collage of art which finds ways to bring students and staff together in unconventional sites and situations to make work in response to context.

Weave was a live performance devised by Walker & Bromwich that takes it’s choreography from the workings of the mill and plays with the power structures of both communities the community that populated the mill and the community that is a student body. The work speaks to relationships to work, automisation and physicality in a collective movement that traces the actions of a shuttle on a loom. Inspired by the role play re-enactment workshops led on site for school groups that map the movements workers would have had to make while working in the mill during the Industrial Revolution. 

Game for Change is a discursive tool by way of an artwork that is also an interactive boardgame. Through game play mechanics, conversations around change are instigated and players are invited to envisage alternative ways of being

Initially inspired by the site of Orkney, the game is set on the fictional island of ‘Orcadia’. The design draws on Orkney’s rich mythological heritage but also reflects upon the island as a location undergoing significant developmental change

Game for Change was developed out of a residency held across 2013 - 2014 with charity management consultant Mark Butcher, in which creative strategies used through professional consultancy on change were discussed in relation to wider community. Through this collaboration Game for Change acts as a functional training tool as well as a considered artwork in a gallery setting

The unique development process has resulted in an immersive installation that marries objective business strategies with a subjective creative approach, to bring about new considerations as to how we co-exist and navigate change whilst also exploring the role of art as a practical tool for change in society

 Game for Change was shown and played simultaneously at the Pier Arts Centre, Orkney and at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland between June and September 2014

 Game for Change was commissioned as part of ‘Buying Time’, a project curated by Nathalie Levi that ‘embedded artists’ in the commercial world, and supported by ACE

Siege Weapons of Love is a series of inflatable sculptures that combine potent symbols of war (tanks, missiles, guns) with flowers and organic forms. In this sense these machines of violence are rendered impotent, and instead blossom into symbols of peace and unity. 

 Siege Weapons of Love form part of Walker & Bromwich’s ongoing artworks, performances and installations, which encourage love, peace and acceptance

 The works have been shown across the globe, notably as part of a live action in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2007, at Turner Contemporary Project Space, Margate in 2008, Royal Festival Hall, London as part of Southbank’s ‘Festival of Love’ in the summer of 2014, and Cultybraggan ex-Prisoner of War Camp, Perthshire, 2014, SOUTHEAST ASIA + Triennale of Art at National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta 2016

School children from Sunnyside School of Conservation, gather in a woodland on the edge of Glasgow to participate in The Council of All Beings a communal ritual to heighten awareness of our connection, belonging and interdependence within the natural world. In handmade masks they set aside their human identities to speak on behalf of other nonhuman beings that we share planet earth with. Giving voice to the voiceless, they tell stories of suffering and loss of our natural world through human activity, as well as the power of interconnectedness with all life that future generations of humans will never see.

The film reflects the disorientating feelings expressed by this group of Primary Six children in relation to the all-encompassing climate emergency and the plight of their fellow beings.

Sunnyside School of Conservation is a school in Craigend, North East Glasgow pioneering a visionary curriculum taught through the lens of the climate emergency, it aims to give children agency within this, through knowledge and advocacy.

Zoe and Neil worked with pupils and staff from Sunnyside School to develop an artwork that would embody and amplify the work they are doing around conservation issues and campaigning for other beings.

The Council of All Beings is a structure developed by ecologists Joanna Macy and John Seed in 1985 designed to ‘break free from our culture's anthropocentrism and dispel the trance of industrial civilisation, through accessing the imagination’

The Conch [Sound Studio]  is a travelling structure – part shell, part ark – that gathers the sound of people’s hopes and fears for the future. The soundtrack gives voice to diverse opinions to the challenges that currently face society and the ways these might be overcome 

Commissioned as the centre piece artwork for SHE, Scotland’s first Sustainable Housing Expo in Inverness 2010, the Conch has gone onto tour remote rural communities in the Scottish Highlands becoming a vessel for conversations, research and reflection around sustainable communities 

The Conch [Sound Studio] was commissioned by IOTA (Inverness Old Town Art) and the Highland Council, and funded by Creative Scotland’s Rural Innovation Fund.

Touring to communities in Nairn, Scrabster, Culloden, Inverness and Jupiter Artland during the Edinburgh Festival 2011

Dancing Borders documents a cross-disciplinary live event that used dancing, marching to re-create the act of pollination as means to transform and rethink attitudes to place. The performance was staged in the historically besieged border town of Berwick-Upon-Tweed, steeped in its history of battle, siege and conflict, and where the legacy of the past is still palpable in the atmosphere and physical geography of the town

Walker & Bromwich collaborated with communities in Berwick on Tweed and Mobius Dance Theatre to introduce new histories of openness and procreation in this contested territory. In recruiting participants into a local troupe of dancer. The collaboration created a new ritual for the town that stands as a counterpoint and contrast to the proliferation of military parades that regularly occur.

Dancing Borders was screened within the installation Encampment of Eternal Hope at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 2013 hand BFMAF Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival 2012

Photography Mark Pinder

a project created in collaboration with Market Gallery, Glasgow

Art Lending Library is an evolving social sculpture housing a diverse collection of artworks initially commissioned for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2012 and subsequently toured UK 2014-18. 

The project takes the form of an experimental library and public procession. Art Lending Library provides a unique opportunity for people to borrow works of art and enjoy them within their homes, work places and community centres, bringing together over 60 works by a diverse range of artists working across a broad spectrum of media. The project is made possible through the generosity of participating artists in gifting their works to the project and the population of the location where it is being shown.

 The physical library structure is made up of multi-functional wooden crates. Each crate houses an artwork and is detachable and ready for transport to people’s homes. On returning to the library the crate is re-attached to the main structural body, which operates as a display case. This modular design creates a constantly changing sculptural form that maps the lending and borrowing process. As people borrow or return an artwork they will also physically shape the library, becoming part of an ongoing social sculpture

The Clean Air Campaign highlights the need for safe cycle lanes and active travel routes in the North East of Glasgow while bringing focus to air pollution, climate and social justice. This Campaign was co-created with On-Bikes a youth focused Cycling Charity based in Molendinar, St Paul’s Youth Forum, Blackhill and Sunnyside School of Conservation, Craigend, Glasgow and Get Glasgow Moving a local people-led public transport campaign.

The project was developed in the second year of Walker & Bromwich being awarded Artists in Communities with Creative Communities, Glasgow Life, a visionary project which has placed an artist in every ward of the city. The campaign has formed an annual cycle ride which follows the route of the hidden Molendinar Burn from its source in Blackhill to where it meets the Rive Clyde in Glasgow Green. The cycle ride uses active travel and art to empower participants around a sense of place, connecting to nature, hidden histories, and engaging with the issues of accessibility from the North East to the City Centre and issues of pollution caused by the motorway infrastructure that dissects the city.

Cycling the Hidden Molendinar Burn is widening out partnerships to engage with community groups and individuals in the North of the city and into the East End sharing strategies, experiences and creating kinship and advocacy around accessibility for active travel, social and environmental justice within the City of Glasgow. This year’s cycle ride planned for April 2024 also brings focus to Glasgow City Council’s commitment to move to net zero by 2030 engaging participants, in playing a role in a fair and equitable transition.

Walker & Bromwich are currently recipients of the Green Economies, Artist in Communities award. This project is also currently being extended through a new Walking the Hidden Molendinar programme.