“Harvesting empathy and coping with ecological grief through touching”

Thursday 7th July – 2:00pm-7:00pm – Open to all, drop in anytime during these times

Sunday 10th July – 2:00pm-7:00pm – Open to all, drop in anytime during these times

At Fishing Quarter Gallery. Brighton Seafront

We are delighted to invite you join artist Arabel Lebrusan (a recent Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics) for a workshop that uses clay to explore themes of extractivism and ecological grief. Arabel is exploring the act of handling “extractivist soil”, from Parys Mountain in North Wales, an abandoned mine site for copper mining which closed in 1890. In a context where touching “matter that matters” plays a crucial role in engaging deeply, through the workshops she will be testing this idea with members of the Centre and the University of Brighton, and also passing citizens and tourists at the popular Brighton seafront location.

In these drop-in workshops, held throughout the day, participants will be safely handling and sculpting super-concentrated ferrous clay, an old scrap product from historical copper mining, while learning about the origin of this soil and its relationship with recent mining disasters, like Brumandinho in Brazil, in January 2019.

The clay workshops further expand themes that were developed during Arabel’s Visiting Fellowship with the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics, through her project “Toxic Waves” , which explored if art making, through embodied thinking, can instinctively activate our empathy.

Image: “raw clay, dried clay, fired clay”/ credits: Arabel Lebrusan