ART and
Poetry-in-Progress
'Six Days Good-bye Poems to Ophelia'
- film and bacterial painting project by Wellcome Trust artist
JoWOnder
www.jowonder.com
Inspired? Telephone 0207-183-9366 with your own poem for Ophelia
Day Four, with poems, including Ophelia, This is Your Mother by Purple Poet Bithi Das
and Ophelia (the person you are calling) by Kim Morrissey first
shown at the Purple Poets' Camden Heroes
National Poetry Day Celebration
Camden Town Hall
October 8th 2009
other credits: www.jowonder.com Dr Simon Park is a senior lecturer
at the University of Surrey, where he teaches
Bacteriology and Molecular Biology. As an internationally recognized molecular
bacteriologist, he has published over 60 papers in international refereed
journals, books and other periodicals. His wider activities and practice
are driven by the common misconception that microbiological life is primitive
and always detrimental and that, through collaborations with artists, the
real nature of the microbiological world can be revealed. In this context,
he has been widely involved in many collaborative projects with artists;
Wellcome Trust-funded collaborations include Sixty Days of Goodbye Poems
of Ophelia with Jo Wonder. Composer Milton Mermikides produced the music
that underlies the piece from the genetic code of bacteria that colonize
the gut.
Jo
WOnder
(multi-media artist)
-will be making a collage of Purple Poets Found Poetry
Quaker Peace Testimonies reading
April 22nd 2010 (2:30-4 pm, Quakers Centre, Euston Road)
Jo WOnder was the Special Guest Artist
accompanying the Purple Poets
on our National Portrait Gallery Tour The Indian Portrait 1560-1860 Exhibition
(workshop led by Fran Wilde (NPG) and Kim Morrissey)
18.03.2010, National Portrait Gallery, room 34.
-National
Poetry Day 2009
showing of her video work-in-progress:
'Six Days Good-bye Poems to Ophelia'
(supported by the Wellcome Trust)
Camden Town Hall
PURPLE POETS AND PEACE
Artwork created by Jo WOnder
donated to Quaker Library
HISTORY: In a writing workshop held for
the Purple Poets on January 21, 2010, at the Quaker Centre, Euston Road,
poet Kim Morrissey explained the Found Poetry technique, and librarians Beverley
Kemp and David Irwin provided background information about the Quaker
Library, History and Quaker Testimonies of Peace. Beverley and David acted
as resource people for the project, enabling the Purple Poets to put the
material into context.
A second workshop was held by Kim with the Fitzrovian Women Writers Group
on February 8, 2010. A third workshop, attended by Miriam Halahmy and
artist Jo WOnder, was held by David and Kim on March 29, 2010. For those
poets not familiar with the technique, further one-to-one workshops will
be held (in person and by internet) leading up to the event, and Quaker poets
will be invited to write their own 'Testimonies of Peace' for the reading.
The Third Age Project's drama group TAD will workshop some of the
poems,under the direction of their tutor, Gary Kielty, over the course of
the project
The method of making the work involved looking at the text as an object as
well as something to be read, so I cut it up and piled it all up and photographed
it many times. There was a pile of photocopied and printed text on my table.
I liked how some of it had been underlined and marked by people who had looked
at the wording in more detail than me so that there was a sense of some of
the lines having special significance (see the Purple Poets' found cycle,
TO ALL WOMEN ).
The found poetry collage I would like to call NEMOW.The
original text was written by women making a desperate request for peace during
the First World War. The word to me means 'everyone' the hands at the side
of the collage represent a reaching upwards to the planets which are more
in number than we can possible imagine. In our humility and insignificance
surely we all want peace.
The snowflakes represents the beauty of nature its impermanence and fragility.
Women are ideal campaigners for peace because we experience our humility
in the face of nature with our monthly flow of menstrual blood and the changes
that our bodies provide for us through out life.
We each understand the world in a different way and as a visual artist who
often spells peace, P.I.E.C.E. -like a piece of cake, we need to find as
many languages as possible to speak of, NEMOW, purple and peace.
Purple is the color of good judgment. It is the colour of people seeking
spiritual fulfillment. It is said if you surround yourself with purple you
will have peace of mind. Purple is a good colour to use in meditation.
Purple has been used to symbolize magic and mystery, as well as royalty.
Being the combination of red and blue, the warmest and coolest colors, purple
is believed to be the ideal color. Most children love the color purple. Purple
is the color most favoured by artists. Thursday's colour is purple.
April 22, 2010 TO ALL WOMEN | NEMOW collage
by Jo WOnder 22"X17" in inches, perspex box frame, framed by the
artist.
................................................................................................................ PURPLE POETS Special Guest for National Poetry Day 2009
Camden Town Hall
JoWOnder, artist
DAY 4 with
Poems
first shown at the Purple Poets' Camden Heroes
National Poetry Day Celebration
Camden Town Hall
October 8th 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-rEcC04ZCk
JoWOnder's 6 Days Good-bye
Poems to Ophelia YouTube video shows Day 4 of a living a painting created
by bacteria* telling the story of Ophelia's death as a beautiful form of
transformation a return to the landscape.
This long term project originally funded by The Wellcome Trust, uses stop
frame filming of bacteria to create an animated installation of John Milles
famous Ophelia painting.
This Work-in-Progress was shown at The Wellcome Trust Gallery, New Compounds
Gallery, Euston organised by CreateKX. The final stage of the project will
be projected onto a wall in Central London, UK, in 2009. The public during
this period will be encouraged to provide their own text contributions to
the work as goodbye poems which will appear within the installation.
The vast complexities of life processes which usually reside below the limits
of detection of the human eye.
*Bacterial research created by Dr Simon Park
and music from Bacterial DNA by Milton Mermikides.
The work in progress includes living bacteria and 'Ophelia' poems by:-
Annouchka Bayley, from her play 'Saoshyant'.
Bithi Das
Richard Niman
Kim Morrissey
Children's poems created in a workshop by Janett Plummer
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
ON SOME OF THE POETS
AND THE ARTIST (DAY 4):
JoWonder is a visual arts activist using the power of image to challenge
established notions. She works with painting, print, sound and moving image.
Her on-going project, Six Days Good-bye Poems to Ophelia is supported
by the Wellcome Trust.
source: British Women Artists Profile of JoWonder
www.britishwomenartists.com/user-view.php?user=3
Janett Plummer is an accomplished performer and a multi-slam winner.
She has performed at venues such as the Barbican, Tate Modern, Poetry Cafe
and Paradiso (Amsterdam). A winner of the Gwendolyn Brooks Annual Award (2005),
her work is featured in many anthologies including 'Flowers on a Shoestring'
and 'A Storm Between Fingers' (flipped eye, 2007). Janett is the founder
of Inspired Word - a women's writing collective, and she leads poetry
and creative writing workshops for children and adults. Lifemarks
(Mouthmark) by Janett Plummer was published in 2009.
Bithi Das is a founding member of the West Euston Time Bank Purple
Poets and a former committee member of the Third Age Project. Her work has
been read at London City Hall's Capital Age Winter Festival 2007, the Capital
Age Southbank Summer Festival 2007 and most recently, to the Mayor of Camden
at the Camden National Poetry Day Celebrations 2009. www.purplepoets.com
Kim Morrissey’s books include Batoche, Poems for Men Who Dream
of Lolita, Dora: a Case of Hysteria and Clever as Paint: the Rossettis
in Love. Mrs. Ruskin is forthcoming from Aark Arts. Kim is
writer-in-residence for the West Euston Third Age Project and West Euston
Time Bank Purple Poets in London. Recordings of her poetry are featured in
the International Literary Magazine Atlas 02 (edited by Sudeep Sen) on the
Saison Poetry Library site; as well as in various issues of painted,
spoken (edited by Richard Price), also digitised on the Saison Poetry
Library site.
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/issue.asp?id=642
Annouchka Bayley began her theatre career as part of the KyoRyuKan
Theatre Company in Kyoto Japan. She then trained in Lecoq Physical and Masked
Theatre at LISPA, (London) Roy Hart Voice Technique at Pantheatre, (Paris)
and Stanislavski & Method Acting at CityLit (London). She has travelled
extensively in Mongolia, apprenticing in Mongolian singing with the Tumen
Ekh National Folk Theatre, (Ulaanbaatar) and observing shamanic and ritual
performance across the country as a whole. Annouchka has worked closely with
the UK based company Escape Artists to develop and deliver theatre pedagogy
to socially excluded groups. She is also a founder member and an artistic
director for the Luxury Goods Group, London, which offers a platform for
new artists and outsider artists to show and publish their work in London,
(see www.luxurygoodslondon.com for more details.) She has performed extensively
in theatre and voice and has written and produced several plays and is
theartistic director of Shameless Theatre.She is the managing editor of THE
MAWLANA RUMI REVIEW, a publication of the Rumi Institue, Near East University,
Cyprus & The Rumi Studies Group of the Institute of Arab and Islamic
Studies, University of Exeter, U.K.
Good-bye Poem to Ophelia Number One (1:11)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWMRF0cU8_8&feature=response_watch
Richard Niman is a poet and artist. His work is included in British
Surrealism and Other Realities: The Sherwin Collection, mima, Central
Square, Middlesbrough (www.visitmima.com ) and his statue of Hitler, portraying
Hitler as a little girl holding a doll , has been on exhibition at the Imperial
War Museum since 1990. “The philosophy is to stand on your hear while
appearing not to and simultaneously not to stand on your head while appearing
to do so. By the same token the best art works are both the most luxurious
and also the most necessary. Thanking God for this is purely optional."
www.richardniman.co.uk
Does Ophelia sneeze? (39 seconds)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evr2C-XryWI&feature=channel
If you would like to contact the artist for more information about the project
please contact: jo AT jowonder.com
