A one-year collaborative research project, with artist Anya Bowcott, focused on feminist ecological approaches to performance making in and around Scottish tidal sites.
I am interested in the sea, it’s tides, shifting and ephemeral tidal sites, Scottish and Irish myth and folklore. I’m excited to create new rituals and radically reshape extinct or endangered traditions in order to access a deeper understanding and care for the world around us: for the more-than-human.
Deeply rooted in our collaborative practice is the desire to find an intuitive approach to making work. We are interested in bodies of water, how they affect us, the land and our idea of time. We are excited by the ways in which the movement of water and the shifting of the tide can inform our research and creative processes.
Follow the project @seekingspaceseroded
This project is supported by the Bruce Miller Graduate Fellowship award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
This new audio work is an exploration of reflection on past process: on past ritual.
i n m y c h e s t a n d i n m y b o n e s
This project was made with support of BANNER, a programme of support for recent graduates delivered by Artsadmin, Live Art UK, Goldsmiths and Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. It is a refection of a previous work, I Just Go On And On And On, a collaboration with women from the Dundee Gaelic Choir. Combining choral soundscapes, discords, original vocal scores and moving image, this live performance was an experimental reshaping of traditional, female-led laments or keening.
Thank you to the women from the Dundee Gaelic Choir and sound artist, John Bryden.
I decided to present this work as an audio piece so that you can move, travel or stare out the window while you listen.
We murmur and it becomes something else.
I am working with six women from the Dundee Gaelic Choir. We are exploring the history of women-led spaces of grieving. We use our voices to explore. We work to open up a space of ritual for ourselves to share loss and grief while supporting and being supported. We have taken influence from keening rituals, Gaelic song and myths. We work with our voices and bodies to find a way of communicating that which we often struggle to articulate.
Performed as part of the RCS’ Contemporary Performance Practice festival - Into The New at The Pearce Institute. March 2019.
Yas Mawer, Anya Bowcott & Sinéad Hargan
Performance - 27th July - 7-9pm - Embassy Gallery
FUCK
AAAAAHHH SHIT
OOOOOHHH FUCK NO
MMMMMMM YES YES YESSSSSSS NO
This performance is an exploration of our collective femininity and the theatricality of gendered performance. Taking influence from the work of Cindy Sherman and her ideas around female identity, we use our voices and bodies to celebrate our grittiness and find a sense of personal grounding. We embody the tropes of feminine constructs and identity through exhaustive repetition. Dancing, swearing, screaming, laughing, playing, supporting, sharing a space.
This is cathartic.
Workshop - 28th July - 2-4pm - Embassy Gallery
In this workshop we will explore an intuition-led style of performance making which encourages us to slow down and listen. We will work with our bodies and the space around us as materials which will be our departure point to generate palpable imagery and physical interventions. We will work indoors and outdoors.
Part of the Bless Your Heart programme at Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh
Land Claim is a collaborative film and live performance devised by Anya Wigdel-Bowcott, Sinéad Hargan and Yasmin Mawer.
Deeply rooted in the work is the desire to find an intuitive process-led approach to making contemporary performance. The project attempts to understand the world through materials, the body, landscape and human interaction. Land Claim explores the idea that artistic interventions in rural Scottish landscapes can act as forms of feminist protest, empowerment and celebration. We intervene in the imagery of the landscape in order to present feminist testimonies and strategies for rethinking learned narratives around women and wild lands. We take it as our role as artists to highlight our frustrations with the current social climate that breeds passivity, disengagement and isolation. We take our bodies into pre-conquered landscapes and we re-conquer them.
Land Claim has been shown at Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh and Paper Mountain as part of Fringe World Festival 2019 in Perth, Australia.
A site-specific performance at Civic House in collaboration with Anya Bowcott.
We’ve been thinking about life after graduation, our current jobs in the service industry, impending funding applications, looming rejections and our fears of the future. We’re surrounded by work, we’re worried about work, all we talk about is work, we’re trying to make a piece of work …so this show is about work.
Through theory, autobiographical text, imagery and actions, we consider what work means to us in this place at this particular time.
We use the history of the building and the surrounding area as our departure point for this piece of work. Civic House was formerly Civic Press (c. 1920-1970), a hub for the Glasgow worker’s rights movement in the 1920s and The Forth & Clyde canal, passing through this area, was a centre for trade and labour. At one point this area was the most densely populated in Western Europe. Outside Civic House stood Phoenix Park until the motorway was built in the 1960s; the area is now a place of business and work rather than tenements and public parks.
Part of PROPEL - A programme of progressive performance from BA(Hons) Contemporary Performance Practice at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland http://contemporaryperformance.online
With thanks to Civic House