Lauren Craig’s Residency- blog post #1

Lauren Craig is a London based multimedia visual artist and Fresh Milk’s current International Residency Artist. During her time on the platform, she will continue her live performance work, ‘Cleanse‘.

Photograph by Lauren Craig

Through ‘Cleanse’, the artist is extending an invitation to the Barbadian public to explore what they no longer need or would like to let go of as well as what they want to keep while exploring the potential for where you want to be. Interactive sessions will examine mental and creative blockages that build up through busy, overworked lifestyles. Because bodies do not discriminate against what information they retain in daily life, Craig says they act as repositories or ‘palettes/palates’ that accumulate everything, becoming overloaded with unnecessary or negative information.

‘Cleanse’ participants will be encouraged to bring objects to their sessions, symbolizing what they want to share. They may also leave objects including drawings, poetry and photography. Participation is not limited to visual artists.‘Cleanse’ will offer a safe environment for participants to engage with Craig.

Sessions will be held at Fresh Milk and are being offered individually or in groups. Appointments for October 28^th are already full but openings are available on October 27^th, 29^th, 30^th and 31^st from 11 am for one-hour sessions.

The group session will take place on Saturday November 1^st between 2 and 4 pm.

Please email the artist at lauren@thinkingflowers.org.uk to make an appointment stating your available dates and preference for group or individual session.

The objects will also be available for viewing by appointment.

For more on Craig’s residency experience, read her first blog post below.

I arrived in to Barbados feeling fluey and pretty much run down with blocked ears and a lack of balance. The sea helped me recuperate and settle in to the warm slow waves of the island’s pace. I started my residency a week later and the first days were filled mostly with words and sounds. The things I heard and how they made me want to speak and write was the strongest impulse. I followed that. It’s come together in the hyperlinked text that I am sharing here, making connections with more of what I am seeing. The poem is inspired by something Annalee said about the stud’s job (on the horse farm where the residency flat is located) being just eating and having sex. The studio is a place of words with a beautiful library where I found Kamau Brathwaite’s Barabajan Poems.

Lauren Craig at Fresh Milk

There are so many other books I would like to tell you about – maybe later. I’m probably working on too many things at once, but what is new there? Here is a piece that came about called Formation.