Julie Upmeyer
Participating in We Live With The Land
I’m working towards a change in the way I think about
lifeworkmeuswespacetimeplanschildrenfuturefamilyspaceplaceproductionartworkdesigncreation
I would like to think of my ‘artwork’ as one of many outputs of a creative and engaged life. I’m in the process of bringing my various identities and roles and interests and projects together under a single umbrella, with less hierarchy and compartmentalisation.
For my artwork so far, I use what is immediately at hand, which changes a lot depending on where I am living or working. My work usually begins with an attraction to a particular material which I then subject to various transformative processes. I have a protestant addiction to labour - I love the repetitive processes of cutting, folding, sorting, assembling, layering.
For eleven years I lived in Istanbul, with my studio in the middle of the hardware district of the city. Since moving to Wales, my practice has shifted significantly, with some obvious ties back to my past artistic lives. I haven’t had ‘a studio’ in the past four years, so my work is more inspired by my surroundings than my personal ‘collection of shiny things’. I have been investigating the use of time as a legitimate process of transformation to purposefully use in my work. This is partially out of necessity – I don’t have hours and hours of self-directed time at this point – and partially out of a deep curiosity about the automatic processes happening all around me.
I have never lived in a place like Llangoed before. This particular arrangement of fauna and flora, village life, humidity, rainfall, temperature, seasonal succession, temperament. My surroundings are heavily worked lands. I’m deciphering them through conversation with my neighbours, reading and observation, learning what has been done here before, what others do and why. The purpose being to discover what is interesting and useful for me to do as an artist and family member, a steward of land and citizen of our village and region.
I am interested in production, of participating in process. From our grounds I’ve produced elderflower champaign, white wine, cider, perry, dried applies, wild garlic pesto, fig jam, plum jam, elderberry syrup and birch syrup. There is something that feels right about involving myself in this way, more so than more directive activities such as vegetable gardening. Watching disturbed patches of land fill in with growth from seeds that were already in the soil is a transformative experience. The point is not to try to designate these outputs as ‘artwork’ or deem them as such for the sole reason that I consider myself an ‘artist’, but to place value on these tasks and be inspired and and engaged as an artist in making this things.
The processes of wilding/re-wilding has also been of interest, as a way to engage with and learn from plants, animals, mycelium and other things that have found their path over the course of hundreds and thousands of years of experience.
My most recent work was a long-form livestream – a 48-hour broadcast of a melting ice block. With it came the sounds of the place, a layer, sent out to be included with the sounds of other people’s day in other people’s place.
This is a rambling document yes, but I currently find myself with interests in dozens of new things simultaneously - opportunities, ideas, people, materials, histories, processes. My strategy of bringing these together so far has been to see everything through the lens of Plas Bodfa. Lockdown helped in this process immensely, but simultaneously (and instantly) removed a lot of things I had previously taken for granted. But it was in fact a useful training ground for living an engaged and connected life in any location – urban/rural/here/there/anywhere.
I’m interested in this project because of what it is asking of me – allowing me to look at myself and my artwork in relation to a place – to THE place that I am currently. After a lifetime of travel, moving around, conferences, artist residencies, cross-cultural projects etc., this seems like quite a novel and interesting proposition. It is also asking me step away for a time, to retreat. In previous lives I would do this automatically – a few days here, a symposium over here, a project there. But to disentangle myself from this life is quite another matter. My time must be bought, traded, stolen or otherwise made up for. My absence means something now. I have to decide what it’s worth, what an experience is worth, what the priorities are.
I’m also interested in this project because there is a shared desire to make artwork. I appreciate that this is a priority. That there is a timeline and a goal. Interested in the process yes, but not an entirely open-ended process. I like projects that bring people together for a purpose with some amount of structure.
