Performance – Creative & dance journal

Residuals #11 Charcoal making in a kiln

On 26 May, I visited the Warburg Reserve in Oxfordshire – a beech woodland which is managed by the wildlife charity BBOWT. It hosts a charcoal kiln in which wood is made into charcoal /wood biochar. I joined the staff and volunteers in charcoal making which included the log I’d cut into sections for my charcoal sculpture and a ready-made sculpture too.

Sea ice and mass flow

I travelled overnight from Stockholm to Helsinki on February 5 across the Baltic sea by ship to the Skiing on Skin 2026 dance festival. This year is much colder than last year, and the sea ice is more extensive. This mass flow of ice on sea, makes me think of movement and dance. Here’s photographs and thoughts.

Feeling and Sensation Installation

In August 2025, I completed a design for an installation in the Feeling and Sensation series including producing the materials for it. Since I had nowhere to exhibit it then I created a virtual animation using CAD software which is shown here. This installation focused on homelessness, cruelty and the anaesthesia which we endure for it to exist.

Residuals #8 Apple picking

The apple harvest of 2024 was one of the most prodigious I’ve known. Dancer Jo Dyer and I performed a dance to celebrate the apple harvest on 12 September 2024 . We picked apples using them as a movement and drawing construct. Not unlike the dancing/dance drawing with potatoes in Residuals #4, and Residuals #7 but now apples. (Pomme rather than pomme de terre!)

Residuals #7 Draw Potato Harvest

In 2024, I conducted a crop trial of potatoes and bio-char (charcoal) in my allotment garden in Oxford, UK. In September, it was time to harvest the potatoes and entact a performance: drawing the produce from the soil through dance and movement; and creating a drawing – a potato drawing. The performance was with the Unknown Performer – a person who prefers not to be named, from 19 August 2024 and other days in August/September 2024.

Residuals #6 Shadow Mirror

The Residual series #1 – #5, had all used charcoal on paper for mark-making, or as we might otherwise say, charcoal was used for marking the performance!

In Residuals #6 then shadow was the mark-making element. It was performed at OVADA, Osney Mead, Oxford on Tuesday 13 August 2024. The idea of a mirror dance is partly based on the notion that individuals in social relations naturally mirror each other resulting in symmetric patterns. It’s also such a simple dance that it hardly seems like a dance at all – which it is!

Residuals #5 Blocking & Exclusion

Like all of the residuals performances, Residuals #5 was co-created – but this time with an artist who prefers not to be named, and who I’ll address in this article as the Unknown Artist. The idea of blocking movement – which in the visual arts would be ‘masking’ – also has a social narrative too. This performance was at OVADA, Osney Mead, Oxford on Tuesday 6 August 2024.

Residuals #4 – Integrated Research Practice

On Sunday June 2, working with students and volunteers in their community garden at Schumacher College, Dartington, I combined planting potatoes for research into potato yields with the residuals practice of dance making and mark-making. I call this an ‘integrated research practice’ as the residuals practice is a research too.

Residuals #3 – Landscape

On 20 April, the third residuals performance was held outside in the gardens of Dartington Hall, Devon. The four artists including me, had worked together on the second residuals performance but the exterior setting for the third performance brought it into the landscape and closer to nature. A film of the performance was produced by Sean McGrath.