Homegrown is a testing ground for new ideas, a four month long artist development programme for West Midland artists working with experimental performance.

There will be 4 talks by experts in the field of Producing Live Art, Making Art, Documenting Live Art & Funding. This is the third:

Making by Ria Jade Hartley

ON MAKING: setting up the conditions

What do we need to make live art?

I identify my practice as a ‘contextual life enquiry’ and predominately work with autobiography. I often enquire into how my intersecting identities and experiences can be communicated in multiple forms through creative processes. I consider how my work can transcend my body to reach others bodies. There is always an urgency when I approach making, I cannot make anything that I do not feel is urgent and that is not in line with present intentions. I live my politics through my practice. I set up the conditions for praxis, where embodied knowledge is acquired through applied research. I work as a solo artist, and so I invite many other artists into my processes to journey and share with me. The live art communities nourish my creativity and expand my thinking, I stay close to our live art family. I work with partners, organisations, charities, venues, development schemes, non artists, academics, activists. Each year I train in other artists methodologies, and each year I workshop an share my approaches to practice. This, for me, informs my interdisciplinary approach and multidisciplinary practice. I also train to support my health and well-being (mental, physical, emotional), self-care is now core to my approach to making. I regularly experience different artists work across forms. I visit exhibitions, talks, symposiums, conferences. I buy a lot of artists books. I look at artists websites, videos, images, writings, online work and documentation. I contact and meet with artists regularly. I learn about artists work. I connect with international artists from all over the world. All of this informs my making.

This talk offers the conditions I create to make work, how I value my work and my making, what I have learned I need in order to make and how I ask (demand) my needs as an artist.

Ria Hartley is an interdisciplinary solo performance artist, researcher and educator based in the South West of England. Working within the mediums of devised theatre, site-specific and durational performance, live art, installation, video, photography, one-to-one performance and socially –engaged art, her practice focuses on exchange, memory, interaction and communication, by constructing temporal, spatial and material encounters with a public, often to blur the relationship between performer and audience, space and situation. Her current research is autobiographical and investigates the retracing of her diasporic identity through (re)locating her absent, representational, material and genetic body. Each of Hartley’s works pay close attention to memory, identity, human relationships, and shared narratives and often invites participation and exchange between herself and her audiences.Hartley has taught as an associate lecturer in BA Theatre at the University of Falmouth 2010 – 2013. She has delivered various training in devised theatre, media and performance and site-specific theatre. She was a visiting artist lecturer at Plymouth University in 2012. Hartley is currently working with performance writing, spoken word, and dubtheatre for her solo performance Matilda and Me (Spring/Summer tour 2014). Recent projects include SUBJECT I (2013), The Self- Marriage of Ria Hartley (2013), Tension/Release/Transformation (2012) The Train Project (2011), Myself Archive (2011).

www.riahartley.com

This project has been made possible with the support of Jerwood Charitable Foundation (JCF) and Arts Council England.