That was the year that was - Somewhere's 2009 *round robin

Dear Friends of Somewhere,

A belated review of 2009 for those of you who - like us - blinked and almost missed it:

January 09 kicked off with a couple of US screenings of our second feature doc Living with the Tudors in the windy (and apparently also freezing) city of Chicago. The movie continues to be distributed in the US by Indiepix on both download-on-demand (something we hope to get going on this here website too in the near-ish future) and also on DVD. It's not exactly a box office smash but trundling along nicely, as is our first film Bata-ville which on direct-from-us DVD sales reached 200 in 2009!

Film-wise 2009 was a big year of R & D for P & G: irons in the fire include new projects on cat breeding, Jaywick, service stations and the Mass Observation Archive. Can you see the theme emerging? No. Nor can we - so if you can email us and let us know. The first two are now proceeding apace, having met our feline guide the lovely Anthony Nicholls, a cool young cat breeder from Camberwell and - in Jaywick - having been recruited as Essex County Council's lead artists for an far-reaching project what termed 'Jaywick Parklands' and consequently getting to spend a lot of time on the Essex seaside. And its not as sunny as you'd think, by the way ;-)

Speaking of Jaywick, this project focused on forming longterm concepts to improve access to and quality of the neglected green (and brown) spaces in and around this unique coastal town, indisputably down-at-heel now but with a fascinating history and a loyal community who love it.
Working closely with ECC Built Environment's landscape architects was a first for us and really productive - they seemed to enjoy our left-field input and we enjoyed their sensible translations of our ideas, which included a social enterprise plant nursery, a bespoke seed-mix that can be used inexpensively to improve empty spaces immediately, and the mass planting of 1950's style 'garden escape' plants in the wilderness around the town.
Through this project we also got to work with the excellent Anwick Forge on a temporary roof garden of native plants we placed on Jaywick's Martello Tower, and with James Hitchmough, a meadow expert from Sheffield University whose work we'd admired for ages. The project concluded with a rare Somewhere exhibition at the afore-mentioned Martello Tower, including some glorious flower arrangements by Clacton Flower Club, dozens of miniature gardens by kids from Frobisher School and several hundred hydrangea plants.....

An exciting and unexpected turn in the legacy of Somewhere came in the form of the acquisition of our 1999 piece 'An Artist's Impression' by London's Science Museum. The piece toured the UK extensively after its ICA premiere as part of the Cap Gemini Digital Art Award (ah, I still recall Terry Gilliam's opening speech - he had to stand on a crate to be seen and heard...) Departing from its damp Lakeland storage barn, we were very happy for this vast installation to head south to the latex gloved conservators, and have to thank Tilly Blyth and Charlie Gere for smoothing its path. We have an appointment to visit it again in its hangar this summer, of course we will take flowers and chocolates.

Karen finally brought 6 years of planning permission battles and trips to Travis Perkins to a merciful end as she and partner Adam got their little Lake District house, the Love Shack, finished. And lovely it is too. She moved for the third time in 18 months, back into her house at Grizedale Arts' HQ Lawson Park, opened her garden there for the second year in the National Garden Scheme - it rained - and said garden was acclaimed by both Eric Robson and Nick Serota. Get in! Karen continues to work on web development and graphic design for Grizedale Arts with a lot of gardening on the side too. Her Exmoor National Dress was exhibited in Somerset and Devon throughout 2009 and is now in Newcastle, and her films made with inmates of HMP Preston were shown at the Harris Museum in Preston.

Somewhere hopes to team up with Grizedale Arts, public works, myvillages and Dorian Moore on an running an online version of our multitude of honesty stalls this coming summer. In the meantime our lovely multiple 'Titchy / Kitschy' can be bought very reasonably on our website shop....

Nina took a trip back to the Czech Republic with Bata-ville passengers Joan and Mike for the excellent Zipp conference "Utopia of Modernity: Zlín" - it's nice to be the film stars of a conference! We are now featured in the excellent publication produced following the event. She also continued her long running teaching post in the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art. The '09 batch of students were great ,making a full range of work from The Cloud Project (think nanotechnology meets cloud seeding from an ice cream van) to an automated coin flipper and the all-time over ambitious student project Open_Sailing.

Undoubtedly Somewhere's fattest 09 project was What Will the Harvest Be?, a public art commission from Newham Council a stones throw from the London 2012 Olympic site....Propelled by the energetic Friends of Abbey Gardens we defiantly went on site despite many last-minute logistic setbacks and against most advice (Councils are very 'sensible'). So in early 2009 there was a mad dash to turn the neglected site into a productive 'harvest garden' by summer. It worked. Again Anwick Forge came up trumps with our bespoke raised beds and thousands of seedlings were brought on by novices in their back gardens. Kilos of vegetables poured forth. Somewhere new recruit Chris Cavalier ably led the onsite garden club and Sam Clark of Moro fame fed the 5000 (ok, more like 200) at the project's first Harvest Festival. A fantastic portakabin was customized inside and out. Phew.
And it all starts again in a few months time - that's Mother Nature for you.

We were invited to propose a project for the Tatton Park Biennal with Manchester's Castlefield Gallery and curators Danielle Arnaud and Jordan Kaplan. Unfortunately after much to-ing and fro-ing with potential partners (let's name them - it was Moto who run Knutsford services - the ultimate Somewhere site - discuss?) we had to admit defeat, but the insightful tour of Tatton Park's majestic gardens by the old-skool head gardener remains a highlight of the year. We hope to work with Castlefield in the future so all is not lost....

That's all folks - onwards into 2010!

* round robin definition here!

Posted Friday 19th February, 2010 at 10:33 am by Karen