The St Ives Community Orchard and many other people in the community, collaborated with the Tate and their artist in-residence, Adam James throughout April 21 - Feb 22 on his project called KEMENETH – the Cornish word for community.
Due to Covid travel restrictions, Adam had to do his entire residential while living in Sweden so he came up with some ingenious ideas to make this work. Thanks to online platforms like zoom, he had many discussions with various people around St Ives. He wanted his art to be connected to places in and around St Ives that were more off the beaten track as well as being collaborative with the people who lived there.
Adam had his first 'virtual visit' to the Community Orchard on zoom, chatting to Tate's assistant learning curator, Annabel Wilkes and Orchard Director, Elise Langley while they showed him around the orchard. He even had a walk up to the top of Penbeagle hill to see the spectacular rocks and views. Through Adam's chats with various people, he ended up choosing two sites, our very own Orchard & Nature Reserve and the Island in St Ives Town Centre.
He created an online 'Play club', where he invited local people to meet regularly, create art and form characters. Local folk, Through their interaction, created art pieces that were used as augmented reality (AR) 'invisible' sculptures that could be found in locations through an app which could be downloaded to a mobile phone.
Together, the online playgroup created two fictional community collectives which embodied solutions to individual, local and national needs.
One collective, The Fiery Foraging Warriors, based around ideals of ‘living off the land’ as equals, chose the Orchard & Nature Reserve as their home.
The other, The Inclusive Isolationists Society, proposed a creative community on a fictional ‘island of strange events’ based on St Ives Island.
Both shared an interest in moving away from the social isolation and reliance on technology they had experienced since March 2020, in favour of more cooperative and fair modes of living.
Adam designed outfits for all these characters and invited local textile makers / workers / hobbyists to join the 'Kemeneth Makers Collective' to help create these wearable outfits and celebratory banners. This group created these incredible tapestries that depicted the two locations and these were hung up in the Tate exhibition.
The Creative collective also made all these incredible full-size outfits, one for each person involved in the play club based on their personalities.
Adam made all the head gear. These looked amazing hanging from the ceiling in the Tate exhibition.
The Playclub, the Makers Collective and the Community Figureheads who were invited to collaborate with Adam on the project, all had their names on the Tate wall as part of the exhibition and were invited to the private view, to meet Adam who had finally been able to come over to St Ives for the exhibition.
