Grace Denton

In September 2019 I was lucky enough to be selected for the BALTIC Bothy Residency, and spent a week in Sweeney’s Bothy on the Isle of Eigg. I was beginning to explore my interest in the concept of sovereignty, and how it intersects with multiple ideologies, community, and my own AD/HD. This was a really complicated and interesting thing to be thinking about in the context of a uniquely self-owned and self-governing island.

While there, I gathered a lot of footage and inspiration. I will be developing this into a film/online exhibition throughout 2020.

You can read more about my experiences there on The Bothy Project Blog

25 January - 28 February 2019
The NewBridge Project : Gateshead
lucky wishing well figurine, quartz crystal bought from the Segedunum gift shop, white tac, turmeric. affixed to TOTALLER’s Arsenal using pulped Great Exhibition of the North pamphlets and expanding foam

part of TOT-TOT-TOTALALAZOLA! by TOTALLER

Along with 10 other artists I was initiated as a temporary TOTALLER Zealot for the duration of this project. Participants were Daniel Bradwell, Sophie Buxton, Grace Denton, Lucas Ferguson Sharp, Mark Jackson, Motsonian, Tom O’Sullivan, Dan Russell, Nicola Singh, Hope Stebbing and Sarah Stamp.

We were guided on transcendant meditations, field trips and group rituals. The work culminated in this group exhibition, and a public de-initiation ritual.

Friday 26 April, 2019
The Newbridge Project
Carliol House, Newcastle upon Tyne

A night of performance, film and music, co-produced by various artists through collaborations made up of partners, friends, lovers and family, formed through both closeness and distance, admiration and mimesis, love and care, desire and lack.

Unintimacy was co-curated by artists Caitlin Merrett King and Grace Denton. The duo kicked off the evening’s events by presenting a new experimental performance work made together but remotely between Glasgow, and Newcastle. The event featured films by McGilvary/White, Harriet Plewis & Rhodri Davies, Cherry Styles & Laura Robinson, Competition & Sophie Soobramanien, Sophie Chapman & Kerri Jefferis, Alex Sarkisian & Bahar Yürükoğlu, Yeah You, and Georgia Lucas-Going.

Following the screenings there were collaborative DJ sets by local radge pop band GGAllan Partridge, NBP house DJs You F***in Wot and local DJ duo KOLOKOL.

This event also marked the launch of Group Show Season 2, a podcast produced by Caitlin during her PMP residency in March 2019. Group Show Season 2  was released throughout May 2019 and can be heard on iTunes, Spotify, or Caitlin’s website.

29 September - 27 October 2018
The NewBridge Project, Gateshead
HD video, polypropylene stranded rope, oilcloth

Presented as part of HALFWAY TO SOMEWHERE, a final show by The Collective Studio 2017-18

Baby, I'm Nervous looks at definitions of sovereignty that refer to the personal individual, at a time when the word is more often used to incite feelings of nationalistic nostalgia. Through intimate documentation, performance and borrowed youtube monologues, the film tries to re- capture a sense of sovereignty as self-governance. The video was made with seed-funding from The NewBridge Project.

25 July 2017
film (Studio is Sudden)
The Northern Charter, Newcastle upon Tyne

A performance as part of Kathryn Elkin’s live video shoot for Shelter From The Storm, in which Dawn Bothwell, Tess Denman-Cleaver, Rene McBrearty, Heather Bonnie Reid and Nicola Singh also performed. Part of a series of events by Giles Bailey and Circa Projects.

Huge thanks to Emma Dalesman for the camera work, and to Kathryn Elkin for inviting me to perform, and for permission to share the footage. Additional thanks to Craig Pollard.

Thursday 5th October, 2017
FIX17
Catalyst Arts, Belfast

24 November, 2017
feeling yr thoughts
Culture Lab, Newcastle University

Performance including an essential oil diffuser, a tape player, and a self-recorded meditation tape. The aim of the performance is to follow my own instructions and try to relax in front of an audience. The monologue on the tape takes several tangents into autobiography.

Many thanks to Michael Pattison for the first photo, taken in Newcastle, and to Catalyst Arts for the second, taken at FIX17.

Saturday 21st October 2017
An OUTPOST offsite event
Gildengate House, Norwich

A one-night only screening event that took place inside an installation of hanging oilcloth lengths. Featuring video work by Giles Bailey, Competition, Tim Croft, Mani Kambo, Kate Liston, Mathew Parkin, Nicola Singh, Cherry Styles and Karis Upton. Curated by Grace Denton.

The title of the event references the name I gave to DIY gigs I organised with friends in the city during my undergraduate years. Part reenactment and recapturing of that optimistic, late-teen energy, part nod to my development as an artist in the last ten years.

With thanks especially to Craig Pollard, Karis Upton, Alice & Sarah Drummee-Hines, Issy Mitchell, Beatie Fox and Mike Goddard.

June 2017
PVC oilcloth, metal eyelets, two HD videos

Presented as part of I Remember Most What Never Happened, the third BxNU MFA graduate exhibition at BALTIC 39.

Three works made up my contribution to the group show:

Folly (…)
400 x 980cm
A super-sized oilcloth patchwork quilt, held together with metal eyelets and built as a partial barrier to the rest of the exhibition, which can be passed at the far end, or small children can run underneath. The shiny, colourful presentation side faces the audience as they enter the space, and a muted reverse provides a backdrop for the rest of the exhibition.

Folly (call me that halfway through)
00:08:59
Five people stand against a photographic backdrop, facing the camera with scripts in hand, and enact a reading of a group crit. They look out towards the viewer, and it is unclear what they are discussing. The video purposefully faces the patchwork piece outlined above, but the dialogue slips, providing descriptions of many possible works, or the viewer themselves.

Folly (S Comme Seule Femme)
00:09:10
Dressed in a harlequin print fabric, I clamber across rocky terrains, always moving left to right across the screen. The film is silent, however oblique subtitles accompany the image. A discussion takes place in the colour-coded text, transcribed from a conversation recorded after taking a silent walk with two friends, about the experience of walking together in this way.

February 2017, performance with chalk and PVC tablecloth
Cockshaw Burn, Hexham

Part of INHABIT, a performance art project week led by Neon Arts
Top image courtesy of James Routledge, all film stills below courtesy of Craig Pollard

The piece explored live-writing, and subsequent erasing of the text composed. The text was washed away through immersion in and exposure to the natural force of the stream. The process references those historically used at the tannery building above the burn, where they would wash tanned leather in the shallow moving water below. The PVC oilcloth acts as a stand-in for the reinforced material made in the town, but this domestic fabric has two surfaces: one protective, one soft and corruptible. This softer side was marked with my chalk words, which were not completely erased by the water.

February 2017
inkjet print on digital contact film
part of SLOWING INTO FORM, a BxNU MFA interim show at Vane
All images courtesy of Rob Bowman

A slippery list of thoughts and actions. An exercise in focus, a litany, an attempt at self-soothing, an admittance of failure, a determined striving.

8 - 11 December 2016
BALTIC 39, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Playing Myself is a BxNU RESPOND event, presented as an intervention to Pester & Rossi's exhibition, A Bodyssey Odyssey.

Denton’s group of performance videos are projected and nestled at angles around BALTIC 39’s Project Space. Each video depicts a struggle, a futile task which may never achieve its purpose. The works are interspersed between existing Pester & Rossi works and interact with the existing sculptures.

Denton’s works act as further catalyst for the ‘active lab’ space already formed in A Bodyssey Odyssey utilising any small gaps between the inflatables, props and costumes. The overlapping soundtracks add a cacophony of sound that mirrors the existing array of colour. Denton's work acts as a counterpoint to the exhibition’s joyful zenith of 'cosmic pleasure', portraying the desperate toil we often take in trying to get there. Denton 'plays herself' by performing and stylising her actions, and in doing so, invokes the urban dictionary definition of the title: she undermines herself, she reveals a weakness.

With thanks to Craig Pollard, Tim Croft and Melissa MacPherson

BxNU Respond is an ongoing dialogue between current Northumbria University post-graduate students and PhD researchers and the exhibitions in BALTIC’s Project Space, BALTIC 39. The post-graduate community based within Northumbria University’s studios at BALTIC 39 are invited to submit proposals for a public event which in some way must respond to or have a dialogue with some aspect of the exhibition.

Both things are true is a short film and zine by Grace Denton and Competition which looks at artifice and the manufacture of perception.

In a more abstract sense it hopes to explore a discursive approach [to culture] which subtly moves away from rigid either/or narratives and towards something else. Towards a space which allows [enables?] opposing ideas to exist simultaneously side by side + where the understanding of one does not (necessarily) negate the understanding or meaning of the other.

In the regard it seems important that the work exist in multiple mediums - as a film + a zine, as a projection on a wall + an upload on vimeo, as a handmade object + a .pdf - to be experienced independently, together, or not at all.

boththingsaretrue.co.uk

An experiment in the distribution of experience, home + intimacy.  A collaboration with Cherry Styles.

This ~photo blog~ loosely charts our domestic lives, and acts as a conversation or way of visually checking in with eachother. We photograph what we feel compelled to, and decided not to set any rules on what to post.

kitchensynch.tumblr.com

June 2016, 00:10:25
performance, hd video

Flare 2
14 May 2016
Gallery North, Newcastle upon Tyne

There Were Islands
MFA Performance Event
16 June, 2016
Baltic 39, Newcastle upon Tyne

A series of performances, inspired by my own distance from my English Literature dissertation. Written in 2009, it was seemingly unread by its supervisor. The piece explores neglect, and the line between self-flagellation and self-protection.

All photos courtesy of Craig Pollard.

YOU KNOW THE RULES
Interim MFA show
21-24 Jan 2016, Baltic 39

An installation and performance using plants and a fridge from around the Baltic 39 MFA & PHD studios. Exploring group responsibility, neglect, self-flaggelation and my own domestic inadequacy.

The performance, which rendered the fridge usable, lasted around 17 minutes and was broadcast on periscope.

Documentation photos courtesy of Alex Harmon.