Emily Tracy - London based public artist & participatory projects

COLOUR WHEEL

Cardboard CD sleeves, discarded objects.

The protective sleeves for now obsolete CD Rom storage technology forms the structure of this wheel of objects arranged and matched to commercial paint colour charts. The objects are all items which have been rejected as worthless and obsolete by their owners. They are given a new purpose or order, referencing archive processes of museums.

CAROUSEL NO.1

Collage, slide projector, card.

Carousel uses a slide projector carousel to house 80 images of Canary birds.

I am fascinated with the human desire to collect and amass objects and knowledge and the constructs which enable this; Museums and libraries and systems of classification. When I first started out, any research to create something new was done by going to a local library and searching for images or text relating to my theme. Sometimes I was lucky and found what I needed, other times I didn’t find anything, but found something else, and sometimes, nothing at all, returning home empty handed. Now all we need to do is a quick search online and a myriad of images pops up. Our lives are now image saturated. Within seconds we can search up anything and everything, we are highly attuned to comparing, contrasting, selecting and judging images. Carousel no.1 is the first in a series of works which looks at desire for knowledge, systems of taxonomy and our relationship to the natural world. The deliberate use of an outmoded, obsolete information-sharing technology, reflects upon our museum-obsessed culture in western history.

Photo credit: Floro Azqueta

LET’S STICK TOGETHER

‘Let’s stick together’ will explore the process of collage, using found image and sound, and how it might reflect our lives currently. It will bring together visual and participatory artist Emily Tracy, writer Line Langebek, radio producer Sarah Cuddon from ‘Library of Change’, The Bromley By Bow Centre and inspired by The Rotherhithe Picture Library, to experiment and investigate the creation of a Covid-safe project for older people. The outcome will take the form of a ‘Mail Art’ project, sending out 500 postcards, inviting each recipient to ‘Please forward’. Each card will share jointly created images and link to three sound pieces in podcast format, reflecting on stories, sound and interviews.

Interested in joining in?

We’re all staying safe at home, and looking forward to the time when we can see family and friends, and get back to enjoying the activities we usually do to keep us happy.
Perhaps you have a friend or family member that you haven’t seen since Covid? Perhaps you are missing out on arts groups you usually go to?
This is an opportunity to do an activity safely together online or in your own time.
Join us to create some collages which reflect your time during lock-down, and where we are just now. Connect with other people across the country, and share your work through a fun and friendly group.
We are offering two sessions which will introduce you to making collage, and give you some ideas to get started. Get in touch if you would like further details.

This was is made possible thanks to public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

(SPACE) Gallery, Hackney, London.

SORTING

2018

(SPACE) GALLERY,

Participatory project

Discarded objects, Horticultural colour charts published by The British Colour Council (BCC).

‘Sorting’ is a participatory presentation of discarded objects classified into colour and matched with horticultural colour charts. The arrangement mimics a formal scientific or Museum display, but is made through participation, using colour matching and also audiences aesthetic or personal decisions. ‘Sorting’ invites the audience to be the buyer, the collector, the curator and the museum visitor, skills that we are all familiar with as adept consumers. The changing and evolving arrangement often throws up new links between objects and provokes conversation around our relationship with materialism and our uneasy relationship with plastics.

The piece reflects upon the conventions of museum collections and their classification systems, and draws attention to notions of value, our relationship to objects, and our addiction to accumulation and display as a method of making sense of chaos.

The objects were collected by open call from local Hackney homes.

Photos: Floro Azqueta

'Mondays' artist book. Books, collage, found and archive image.

'Me Automatic' artist book. Books, collage, found and archive image.

MONDAYS

‘Mondays’ and ‘Me automatic’

Commissioned by Mantle Arts, Coalville, Leicestershire.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund

Collage, artist books, sound.

2020

Working with recorded memories of local people, collected and archived by Mantle Arts, two artist sculptural books were created in responses to interviews by two women from different time periods. The interviews focus on their work as maid at Coleraton House and Housewife in Coalville.

The piece is made with piles of old books referencing the piles of laundry, tidying, mending, folding, ironing that the interviews describe. The books as containers of information or stories, piled like this, represent lives, with only a slice of stories being revealed at one time. Bookmarks using text from the transcripts, mark other unheard stories from the Mantle Arts interviews, and hint at others un-told.

The work will be exhibited around Leicestershire in 2020/21.

The original recordings can be listened to here: https://soundcloud.com/mantle-arts-1/sets/nw-leicestershire-voices

Photo: Floro Azqueta

THROUGH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES

TIDEWAY LTD, BRIDGET SAWYERS LTD, ART CONSULTANT

2018- 2020

HOARDING, 2.5 X 24M

Medium: COLLAGE.

‘Through Kaleidoscope eyes’ is a public art commission for Tideway which is constructing the immense Thames Tideway Tunnel, a major new sewer, urgently needed to help protect the tidal River Thames from increasing sewage pollution.

The completed piece represents a body of work responding to the ecology of King Georges Park, Wandsworth, and reflects a public programme of events in November 2017. The participatory programme, managed by the artist included an opportunity for families and children attending The West Hill Childrens’ Centre to engage with a local bee keeper, The Wandle Trust, and The Garden Classroom. Local residents were invited to create their own collages, generate ideas, gather reflections and stories about King George’s Park.

Using the kaleidoscope as inspiration, the act of looking and examining the park and its ecology became the focus of the workshops. Through a series of events, participants explored the plants and animals, and also the human activity, past and present within the park. The result was 6 site specific collages with a Kaleidoscopic form, interspersed with unfolding geometric forms, inspired by the science of Kaleidoscopes.

Public Artist Tom Pearman created and arranged the digital artwork and designed the geometric forms.

Photography Floro Azqueta

18.5 x 18.5 x 0.1 cm. Collage. 7" Vinyl record cardboard sleeve. £120. + P&P. Unframed.

37 x 37 cm Collage. 7" Vinyl record cardboard sleeves and found image. £240. + P&P. Unframed.

18.5 x 18.5 x 9cm. 7'' single card sleeves and found image. £290 plus P&P.

37 x 37 x 0.1 cm. Collage. 7" Single card record sleeve. £240 unframed & P+P.

18.5 x 18.5 x 0.1 cm. Collage. 7" Vinyl record cardboard sleeve. £120. + P&P. Unframed.

SHOP

Buy original artworks

‘Mountain View’ no. 1-10.

‘Record’ no. 1-5

‘View’ Tunnel book.

7” vinyl sleeves, collage.

From a series using objects which store and archive information, in this case sound, these artworks use single vinyl record sleeves and collage.’Record’ I & II reflect on our changing relationship understanding of our environment, and our deepening loss of security. Record II reflects upon landscapes and resources we once took for granted and are now threatened or dwindling. ‘View’ takes the form of a Victorian tunnel book, except the view is obscured.

Framing on request.

Untitled

Queensbridge Shopping Centre, Peterborough.

CLUTTER BANK

Planet B Festival

Peterborough Environment City Trust, Metal (Peterborough).

2017

Planet B was a two- week programme of events which encouraged discussion and debate on sustainability. Clutterbank set out to count the number of objects owned by Peterborough households, and to have conversations about our posessions, how they come into our lives, collecting habits, material accumulation, and the effect it has on the environment. Collections and consumption can be seen as a way of creating order to ease insecurity, a quest, or a way of presenting ourselves to the world.We all have a relationship with objects and an understanding of curating, valuing, arranging, systemising, rejecting, articulating and reasoning why certain objects are important to us.It is these very familiar activities which this project attempted to re-frame within issues around climate change, inviting shoppers to create a unique collection of objects, displayed with personal stories and reflections. The discarded, obsolete, pre-loved consumer cast-offs were displayed side by side resembling a mini museum of stuff. These were all labeled with reflections and personal stories confronting our own consumerist behaviour. The project programme included workshops at a local primary school, a car boot fair and an installation at Queensgate Shopping centre. Participants were invited to take a survey which estimated their total number of posessions, known as a ‘Clutter-rating’, and to donate clutter, share their thoughts and stories.

The average number of posessions oned by Peterborough households was calculated as 152,613. (Figures are completley unscientific and added up with a complicated 1970’s calculator which had lots of unknown buttons on it.)

Photo credit Sandra Keating

Artist interview

DOT-DASH

HACKNEY COUNCIL

2019

Light installation Hackney Town Hall inspired by the Art Deco architecture and interior of the Grade 1 listed building. 180 lanterns created with local children and young people and paraded during the annual Lights On event.

MAKE CLUB

Make Club is a project which takes constructing, experimenting, testing and making art objects to young people. Make Club is a weekly club in an artist run space, and pops up at a wide range of schools, festivals and museums to make, learn and question. Make Club has appeared at The End of The Road Festival, The Bloomsbury Festival and Bletchley Park for Big Draw 2019.

Mondays: online Zoom classes 4-5pm.

Tuesdays 4.15pm- 5.45pm (6-11yrs) New live classes starting soon. May 2021.

Classes held following Covid guidance at Finch Cafe, 12 Sidworth St, Hackney, London E8 3SD.

To book any classes email emily@emilytracy.co.uk

– FOR MORE INFORMATION FOLLOW INSTAGRAM OR FACEBOOK

ALL ALONG

Greensands Country

Lottery Heritage Fund

2020/21

A residency exploring the ‘Greensands country’ a unique landscape running across Bedfordshire, Cambridegshire and Buckinghamshire. Drawing upon local archive and conversation, this project will uncover its historic parklands with local people, to create a series of constructed artist book sculptures. Commencing in February 2021. Exhibition Greensands Festival May 2021.

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BUREAU OF LOST AND FOUND

Up Projects

Totally Thames Festival

2014

Emily Tracy and Lizzy Hobbs created ‘Bureau of Lost and Found’ which was presented during Totally Thames Festival with Up Projects. The artists transformed the interior of the Floating Cinema into an imaginary lost property agency for lost and found articles from the Thames shoreline.

Participants were allowed rare access to the Thames foreshore with historians from The Museum of London. They were invited to search for items along the shore, which included anything from Roman pot shards to modern day objects. The Bureau hosts welcomed participants on board the boat and invited them to share or examine mud-larking finds with them. The hosts handed out the official paperwork, asking for a drawn record of findings, and imagining the story that may have brought the item to the shores of the Thames. The participatory process inspired visitors to imagine who may have owned it, how far it had travelled and how it ended up in the river in order that it could be re claimed by it’s owner. The process was an amusing journey through bureaucracy, forms, rubber stamps and carbon paper, alongside accurate archival observation and drawing.

ARTIST BOOKS

The Bloomsbury Festival

Partners: U.C.L and AGE U.K

2016-2019

Paper, collage, dictionary.

A selection of artist books created for Bloomsbury Festival.

Festival in a Box is a project that offers people who can’t get out to the Bloomsbury Festival an opportunity to participate in an enjoyable cultural event. The project was conceived in 2013/14 and was a collaboration between the School of Advanced Study, University of London, University College London, Bloomsbury Festival, and Age UK Camden. Artists, together with trained staff from Age UK Camden’s Dementia Befriending Service visit participants in their own homes and during these visits participants are encouraged to engage with different art forms. The project offers participants an opportunity to share their knowledge and stories of the area. Some participants have lived in the Bloomsbury area for many years, so the project is not only an opportunity for them to actively engage with community life, but also to participate in re-narrating the history of Bloomsbury itself. The constructed book acts as a starting point for conversations and activities, and acts as a memory jogger. Memories are added to the book as it travels around so that they are shared and recorded.

X-RAY DEPARTMENT

End of the Road Festival

2019

Participatory installation

Many different cultures use animals as a way of reflecting upon our lives. Examples include Medieval Bestiaries, Aesop’s fables to traditional fairy tales. Many cultures including Native Americans believe we have a spirit guide in the form of an animal. They provide guidance and wisdom in difficult times. The Institute of Animal Spirit Guides is inspired by this tradition.

Playing with our desire to know, order and understand our chaotic world, this project moved around the space between our rational and irrational selves. This participatory installation invited the festival audience to take part in a personality quiz which picked out their animal spirit guide, create a cardboard accessory and step behind the X Ray machine to reveal and commune with their inner animal. The installation was both a day and night time event.

POP UP PICTURE PALACE

Wood Street Inside Out

London Borough of Walthamstow

2012

Tracy & Hobbs

Inspired by the former film studios and cinemas on Wood Street, Tracy & Hobbs created a site-specific film and screening event for Wood Street E17. The artists set up a studio at Wood Street Indoor market where local residents were invited to contribute to the film being made. Workshops took place to work with Woodside Primary School who worked on live action and animation.

The 10 minute film and installation conjures up a snapshot in a time of 1917, Wood Street and attempted to remake The Ware Case one of hundreds of lost films made by The Broadwest Film company.

The final event for the film included a pop-up cinema event. The film was projected into the end wall of a two storey building on Wood Street.

WHITTON SMALL PRESS

Residency

Richmond Literature Festival, London borough of Richmond

Arts Council funded

2015

‘Whitton Small Press’ was an artist in residence project for Whitton Library, London Borough of Richmond, undertaken by Tracy & Hobbs.

The artists responded to the unique environment of this small library by setting up residence from a cupboard at the back of the reference section. Libraries are usually thought of as places to borrow books but this project invited participants to leave something of themselves behind. Filling the library with typewriters, rubber stamps and a photocopier they set about creating a set of small edition self published books. During the month long residency the artists offered printmaking, simple book binding, collage and other print based workshops to adults and children which explored artists books and bespoke books. A giant Praxinoscope was built for the project which was used to explore the meeting of books and animation. During the residency the artists produced a number of site specific artist books inspired by the local area and the library itself. These included ‘Whitton papers’; a collection of paper from Whitton high street, ‘A romance’; drawings inspired by novels from the romance section, a colouring book of local maps, ‘Whitton portraits’; a collection of portraits made by local children using rubber stamps, ‘Page 1’; a collection of first pages from each section of the library, ‘Removed’; a book made with rubber stamps from the library, and ‘Brian’; a collection of prints of a local cat seen at Whitton station.

MEMORIES OF LONDON

Museum of London Docklands

2020

Participatory Artist book

Museum of London’s Memories of London programme, funded by the GLA promotes the wellbeing of those affected by dementia in London, and aims to connect participants to the story of London using collections and exhibitions. This project was a series of talking and creative workshops held in Memory Cafes across London to collect conversations and memories of food, cooking and eating. Using archives held at the Museum of London Docklands including the Sainsbury’s Archive and images of food, participants collaborated and contributed to an expanding book with collage.

MIRROR BOX

Cardboard box, mirrors and Lino Cut print.

WATER FOLK

Water Folk (2013) was an Arts Council funded project commissioned by UP Projects for The Floating Cinema. This inter-generational project enabled children and older people to explore the minute creatures living in the waterways of East London together. Working in collaboration with Professor Malcolm Burrows, a Zoologist from Cambridge University, Tracy & Hobbs used high-speed imaging and animation to reveal the intricate movement and beauty of often insects living unseen in the canal.
Participants came from ‘Rays Geezers’ who are a group of older men from Bow, members of ‘Sharp End’, which is a community group for over 50’s in Hackney, and from year 4 Gayhurst Community Primary School.
Tracy & Hobbs ran a variety of workshops with the groups including boat trips with local Historian Carolyn Clark discussing the history of the canals, they worked with sound artist Tim Olden to record sound under water, they ran pond dipping sessions and a series of drawing and animation sessions. The animation workshops took place with children from Gayhurst Primary School, year 4. The children did close observational drawing, made Zoetrope drawings, flip book animations, they painted on frames from the high-speed films and tried painting onto film stock.
The engagement, participation, discussions and animation all contributed to a 4 minute film which took the audience on a journey from the waterways and through the lens of the microscope to view the water dwelling insects in a new light. The project culminated in a participatory event. Watch ‘Water Folk’ here.

A documentary recording the project here. The project involved 50 participants and had an audience of 300 to screening and events, which took place on The Floating Cinema during the summer of 2013. The project had a much larger online audience of 100,500 people.

Malcolm Burrows discusses his paper on Mechanical gears and his involvement in Water Folk here.

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KALEIDOSCOPE

2019

Mirrors and maps

Kaleidoscope attempts to depict our shifting landscapes and seas, now, and in the future due to climate change. Whole land masses and seas enlarge or disappear as the mirrors are moved.

GATEWAY

British Museum

Moving stories special event for Refugee week.

2016

Carbon paper, envelopes, correx, wood

‘Gateway’ or ‘gate’ derives from the Old Norse “gata”, meaning road or path. As part of Refugee Week events at The British Museum, visitors were invited to share their experiences of migration, whether as a recent or former migrant, or as a resident welcoming newcomers. It allowed a space for reflection on current migration and on historical migrations held in the collections at the museum. These drawings and messages of welcome were ‘posted’ in envelopes which covered the gateway to create a moving gesture of welcome. The installation provided a poignant reflection on our place in the world over the Brexit referendum weekend.

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LIGHT CONSTRUCTORS

London Borough Southwark

Output Arts/ Emergency Exit Arts

2018

Collage, LED cubes, transparencies, tape.

Innovators Imaginarium was an event created with young people in Southwark by Emergency Exit Arts and Output Arts which celebrated local innovators. This interactive artwork reflected research and drawings by children from St Georges Catholic Primary School of local artist, social reformer and innovator Octavia Hill whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities in the nineteenth century. Hill campaigned for better housing for the poor and for the availability of open spaces for all to enjoy. She said “We all need space; unless we have it we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently.” Using inspiration from block puzzles and games, each side of the cube were covered with collage of buildings and plants, geometric shape and patterns to allow the construction of buildings and gardens in infinite combinations. The cubes were illuminated with programmed LED lights and accompanied with a soundscape.