Exhibitions
Sam Francis : Let the Idea Travel
A new exhibition by Sam Francis created in response to a beguiling Land Art project from Arnolfini’s past.
As part of our 60th anniversary programme in 2021, Arnolfini invited artist Sam Francis to respond to the performance piece Somerset – A Year in the Life of a Field, by Lizzie Cox, which was shown at Arnolfini in 1981. The original piece left few traces in our archive, beyond a handful of images and a title, which seemed intriguing enough to warrant further exploration. One year on, and Francis has shown this to be very much the case through a number of text-based and image-based pieces she created through 2021.
Let the Idea Travel will focus on a new film work by Francis, ‘In here dreaming’ alongside text pieces and a handmade book created during a residency at UWE’s Bower Ashton campus (where Cox taught for many years). Experimental and elegiac, created in dialogue both with Lizzie Cox’s artwork and through connecting with people who knew her, and rooted in direct experience of a range of sites in Somerset, Francis’ work reminds us of the richness of the Land/Environmental Art movement, then and now.
In addition, alongside Francis’ work, we will be presenting work by students from Weston College, who worked with her last autumn, exploring Land Art histories and practices, and reflecting on what the landscape means to them.
Let the Idea Travel will focus on a new film work by Francis, ‘In here dreaming’ alongside text pieces and a handmade book created during a residency at UWE’s Bower Ashton campus (where Cox taught for many years). Experimental and elegiac, created in dialogue both with Lizzie Cox’s artwork and through connecting with people who knew her, and rooted in direct experience of a range of sites in Somerset, Francis’ work reminds us of the richness of the Land/Environmental Art movement, then and now.
In addition, alongside Francis’ work, we will be presenting work by students from Weston College, who worked with her last autumn, exploring Land Art histories and practices, and reflecting on what the landscape means to them.
CREDIT
