The Institute for Imagined Futures and Unknown Lands...

Fern Thomas - When the Moon Fell Out of Orbit

The current exhibition at Mission Gallery in Swansea is When the Moon Fell Out of Orbit by Fern Thomas. Following her recent MA studies at Oxford Brookes University in Social Sculpture, Fern has established the Institute for Imagined Futures and Unknown Lands. Through her research she is exploring intuitive thoughts and visions brought through dreams, imaginative ideas and images to ask questions of our current condition in the world and what our future might hold. The artworks use texts, objects, structures, performances and actions to set a kind of transformative process into being through which she and her audience engage in an ongoing exploration of the resulting imagined material.

There has been a series of weekly performances during the show in which Fern relates a series of dreamed/imagined narratives full of poetic and symbolic triggers, through repeating these sequences she hopes to come to a greater understanding of their significance, these are active interventions into the collective imagination which is manifested through and around the exhibition.

The works are also beautifully imagined within the gallery space and make direct reference to the history of the architecture of Mission Gallery. 

The exhibition runs until 15 July 2012.

For the Bees: a song of will for the honey bee

I went to Swansea University last evening to attend the first public performance of For The Bees, an art project by Owen Griffiths and Fern Thomas. To highlight the plight of the vanishing honey bee, Owen and Fern have commissioned a piece of choral music to sing to two hives of honey bees that have been installed in the grounds of the university. The choir has been brought together from interested people (mostly amateur singers) and last night they gathered with an audience of around thirty folk, to perform the piece, composed in collaboration with Swansea's Mial Watkins.

Owen spoke to the BBC about the performance: "The idea is that this coming together to sing to the bees really is a poetic gesture to the bees, to reconnect and engage people, to see that the bees are in trouble...It's going to have a very haunting quality to it - it's like a lament to the bees." seen here

The idea behind the work is to experiment with the effect the singing and the positive intentions of the participants may have on the well being of the bees, and at the same time raise awareness of the issue.

There was also a gold painted caravan which serves as a mobile cinema at the site (nick-named 'Penny') where you could watch a film to learn about the crisis that has initiated the project.

It is a lovely project, the piece was very short, only about three minutes, but it was very beautiful, hope the bees enjoyed it...