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Images:

Rachel Pimm Allotment, Photo by Ruth Bridget Brennan

Tara Florence Smith, Courtesy NN Contemporary Art

Sensing Place

 ground / break / ing by Rachel Pimm

This was a creative writing workshop to engage with the ways and reasons we extract from and modify the ground around us. All places are ecologies made of parts working together. How can we best represent their complexity? We used prompts to observe the environment and then borrow strategies from disciplines including mining and factory trades, etymology, geology and biochemistry to re-trace, break down into pieces, reform and evolve images and words into new arrangements and meanings, exploring value, language and storytelling. 

Rachel Pimm works with words, objects and photography to research material stories with a focus on the animal, vegetable and mineral as they transform. They draw on de-colonial, feminist, sick and queer theory to unearth the politics of materials. Recent UK based work, most of which is collaborative, has been in programmes including The Serpentine Galleries, and Whitechapel Gallery. Residencies include Loughborough University Chemical Engineering, Gurdon Institute of Genetics at Cambridge University, Rabbit Island, Michigan, USA, and as Whitechapel Gallery Writer in Residence 2019-20. Rachel is Associate Lecturer at Camberwell College of Art and has a forthcoming solo exhibition with Arts Catalyst in Sheffield, UK.