Thank you for reading Uncanny Landscapes. This time I've got another episode of the podcast; an interview with Kirsty Badenoch and Tom Jeffreys. As you know, this is a free project, both newsletter and podcast. If you're able to support my work through a paid subscription - thank you!! I truly appreciate it. And if you're not, perhaps you can support by telling a friend (or two, or 100) about the Substack's free subscriptions and accompanying podcast.
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Links:
Staffordshire St Gallery
To an island in a loch on an island in a loch book
Kirsty Badenoch
Tom Jeffreys
Ellie Wilson (music)
Interview with Kirsty Badenoch and Tom Jeffreys; music is Unnamed Unseen by Ellie Wilson.
Falling, Fallen, Felled is an exhibition of new work made by artist and landscape architect Kirsty Badenoch and writer Tom Jeffreys, opening the 9th through the 12th of November, 2023, at Staffordshire St. gallery in Peckham, south London. The pair made this new, collaborative, ‘symbiotic’ work in partnership with the landscapes of northern Scotland’s remnant boreal forest - an old-growth forest biome that circles to top of the hemisphere. Besides the exhibition, Kirsty and Tom have created an artist’s book - ‘To an island in a loch on an island in a loch’ - also launched this coming weekend at Staffordshire St.
In our discussion, Kirsty and Tom talk about collaboration, what it means for a writer and visual artist to work together on a forest’s ‘language’, and the inescapability of human hands in even the most allegedly ‘untouched’ landscapes.
Kirsty Badenoch is: ‘An artist working with fragile and disturbed landscapes, territories, communities and ecologies. I draw, design, make, talk, write, perform and plant. I do art, research, teaching, community design and environmental strategy. I engage with interdisciplinary, alchemic and messy site-based processes. I occupy the intertidal zone whenever possible, acting as a conduit for exchange. Through all of these actions, I seek to interrogate situations of environmental injustice and advocate toward a shared ecological future.’
Tom Jeffreys is: ‘a writer and editor focusing primarily on contemporary art. He is especially interested in work that engages with ecological concerns. He is the author of two books: The White Birch: a Russian Reflection (Little, Brown, 2021) and Signal Failure: London to Birmingham, HS2 on foot (Influx Press, 2017)'. (Tom also writes a buncha stuff about art for basically everyone, which you might wanna seek out…)
The music in this episode is ‘Unnamed Unseen’ from the album Memory Islands by violinist Ellie Wilson, an extremely worthwhile album of ‘new works for violin, hardanger fiddle and electronics, which explore the strange landscape of memory and the spirit of place’. I discovered this music through Marry Waterson’s video for this piece of music, which you, too, should check out.
Coming Soon…
New episodes are in the can and comin’ at ya, with landscape-musician Cheryl Leonard, writer James Canton and - up next in just a couple o’ days - an epic walk-and-talk with Jim Jupp of Ghost Box Records / Belbury Poly, as he and I discuss our collaborative Belbury album The Path… watch this space!
Uncanny Landscapes podcast: Kirsty Badenoch & Tom Jeffreys