Clare Whistler MA

Interactive exhibition, film, text and objects reflecting three years as Artist in Residence at Bunces Barn, East Sussex

Clare Whistler www.clarewhistler.co.uk listentoair.wordpress.com clarew@dircon.co.uk 01424 892 304 / 07775 600 618

Listen to Air How does one weave an experience into art? when the experience is in nature, in landscape, without technology, in beauty an empty barn in the middle of flower meadows, three years of being there making there, sharing, writing, dancing, photographing there in all seasons and weathers, inside and out

Collection Vaults

Listening to Air (film)

Meadowbook

these are the materials

so I have taken these materials and tried to transform them into the experience of being at Bunces Barn and I want to share these experiments with you

and I have woven that wire, that ‘air’ into words, into meadowbooks, spilling out their poetry, half readable, indecipherable words into wire, into flowers in the air

please follow the instructions

and these meadowbooks are pictured at Bunces Barn so you know these objects

seeds ideas, new life, roots and stems growing outwards above and below, potential green ribbon a metaphor for blades of grass wildflower painting the petals of wildflowers and weeds from Bunces Barn, painting on the wall one day a week since June wildflower books knowledge, illustrations and poetry gold wire a moving, transient material, like a line in space, my material for air I go through trials, finding and sorting all the seeds, searching the grass for four-leafed clovers, sleeping on a living earth that whispers wishes and warnings

to transform the ephemeral into something solid is the impossible quest, but like any fairytale, the journey is the experience and the outcome ever changing

have felt the ground, the weather, heard the sound of birds, that they hold that experience too and after lying pillowed on the floor to see the sky a glass of sparkling elderflower, wildflower mementos, an envelope with a wish and a seed to take with you

every wild flower has its myth and story, use and magic, the rose prick of enchantment and straw that must be woven into gold Clare Whistler