Sabina Sallis: Multispecies Visionary Institute: Gallery Events Programme
The Multispecies Visionary Institute (MVI) welcomes you to a programme of gallery events informed by sustainable land practices, spanning a diverse range of media and disciplines and accompanying the Multispecies Visionary Institute exhibition at the Gymnasium Gallery. You can find out more about the online events programme here.
Tickets for all events must be booked in advance via the links below. Events are free with materials provided where necessary. All participants will be required to adhere to current Covid-19 guidelines.
Every Saturday Berwick Sketchers, who meet once a month to draw together, will be in the gallery to sketch-document the events. Why not come along with your own sketchpad and join in.
Saturday 17 July 11am – 1pm
Take a walk with Mark Shipperlee, a local woodsman and permaculture designer – and look at and learn to identify the trees nearby – understanding their role, their uses, and the crucial part they play in our planet’s natural systems. Elements of permaculture will also be discussed, as will questions of how as humans we can interact with trees and assist them in regenerating land – and in particular, those trees immediately around the Gymnasium.
Saturday 24 July 1:30pm – 4pm
The Voynich Manuscript, the most mysterious codex, is believed to possess mysterious healing powers and plays a pivotal role in the The Multispecies Visionary Institute exhibition.
Participants are invited to work with the Voynich Manuscript as an object of contemplation. Through hands on drawing, making and divining we will imaginatively engage with the codex to derive our own-idiosyncratic information systems that work in the service of Apparatus for Resurgence in Trophallaxis. Can we instigate the birth of a new multispecies culture?
Saturday 7 August 11am – 1pm
Join plant ecologist Dr. Ruth Starr Keddle and Sabina Sallis for a foraging walk around the vicinity of the Gymnasium Gallery. Learn about ways to utilise and honour plants, find out about edible plant species and how we can support biodiversity and multispecies resurgence.
Saturday 7 August 1.30pm – 4pm
A walk and workshop with Sabina Sallis and ceramicists Eva Masterman and Rosie McLachlan.
Using clay to fire our imaginations into thinking about community, this workshop will explore the possibilities embedded within The Multispecies Visionary Institute exhibition as models for collectivity, collaboration and creative community building.
Participants will make their own take home clay Terra-Forming Oracle and all materials will be provided.
Saturday 14 August 11am-12:30pm
Ignite your imagination into the incredible potential of plants – discover how growing and gardening can be an act of resistance, protest and hope. Marjolaine Ryley will show you how to develop skills in basic growing/ horticulture including how to compost successfully (even on a small scale), getting started with veg, a guide to growing micro-greens and an introduction to plant propagation.
Sunday 14 August 1.30-4.30pm
This event explores how permaculture, an approach to design that seeks to work with nature as opposed to against it, can influence and shape an individual’s creative practice and the role of art in a more sustainable future.
To help us achieve this artist, Sabina Sallis will discuss how her arts practice and exhibition in Berwick Gymnasium has been influenced by permaculture and other land practices. Permaculture practitioner and leading North East permaculture teacher, Wilf Richards will give an introduction to permaculture and his response to the exhibition and creative practitioner and lead technician for exhibition, Joseph Sallis will explain how the making and materials behind the exhibition relate to permaculture.
Saturday 28 August 11am – 1pm
Uttering: A storytelling workshop with Karmit Evenzur. (Cancelled)
It is said that the earth was the first utterer, the source of prophecy, the first Oracle. It is said that she distributed her wisdom through her subterranean veins to carry and embody her energy and her knowledge.
We will explore some practices of oracular work that call forth a vocabulary that bridges the gap between the rational and intuitive minds, a language well known to oral traditions of the past – composed of embodied emotional values and pictorial image
Saturday 28 August 11am-1pm
The Threads of Venus
Meet artist Bridget Kennedy as she installs her Slow Disturbance exhibition ‘The Threads of Venus’ – a set of textile samples showing the processes that two very different materials go through in be used as a fibre for weaving: one is nettle, the other discarded electric cable.
Saturday 28 August 1.30 – 3pm
A tour of the Multispecies Visionary Institute exhibition and a conversation between Sabina Sallis and writer, curator and educator Barnaby Drabble traversing artistic research, ecology, curating and community.
The artist conversation will finish with poetry reading by artist and researcher Jim Lloyd. Jim will read from his pamphlet “Rain Wolf”. The title poem of the collection won a prize in the 2020 Rialto / RSPB ‘Nature and Place’ poetry competition.
Saturday 4 September 11am – 4pm
The Seeds of Nectar (Free, no booking necessary, except for the events listed below)
An all-day event exploring food, seeds and presenting live dyes, all within the Multispecies Visionary Institute exhibition.
Throughout the day you can meet different members of the Institute, share ideas and stories about food processes, taste food samples and make your own herb salt. Members of the MVI who will be present include: Sidney Pinsent, Hannah Christy, Maximiliane Ley, Tom Le Ruez, Erika Servin Gonzalez, Lois Robins, Sabina and Joe Sallis.
Artist Finn Hughes-Smith will undertake a durational performance entitled Freeform Dying Man based on process, transition and transformation of the self and material using tools and dyes gathered locally. The performance will take place between 1.30-3.30pm with no booking necessary.
There will also be a pop up exhibition from Mike Duckett and Berwick Sketchers who have been documenting events taking place at MVI over the past few weeks.
Plus two events that must be booked in advance as follows:
An action performance and participatory painting workshop with artist Magdalena Starska.
Magda as She-Wolf; the servant of painting and dreamer of the wild places. Visitors are invited to join her in an unfolding performance in which we recognise our own desires for a rewilded, bubbling self and how this can be expressed by painting the landscape that we are a part of. Magda will provide all the materials and a wealth of experience to support participants in painting their artworks.
Join Saskia Callaars – De Gruyter, from ‘Save A Seed’ and Sabina Sallis to hear and learn about practices of self-organising, collection, preservation and sharing of seeds. There will be some seeds to take home with you.
Multispecies Visionary Institute was commissioned by Berwick Visual Arts and has been supported using public funding by Arts Council England, Newcastle University’s Institute for Creative Arts Practice and the Polish Cultural Institute.