bramthomasarnold@gmail.com
Organisations I have worked with include:
| Eden Project | Kestle Barton | TATE | Beaconsfield Gallery |
| South London Gallery | Chisenhale Gallery | Central Saint Martins|
| University of Cambridge – Centre for the Study of Existential Risk |
| HM Treasury | Bath University ICIA | Grizedale Arts | Littoral Arts |
| Falmouth University | Dartington Arts School | Field Notes |
| University of Exeter | Arnolfini, Bristol | Resonance FM |
Dr. Bram Thomas Arnold is an artist who started with walking and kept going into performance, drawing, installation, writing, academia and broadcasting: he is currently Lecturer at Dartington Arts School in the Poetics of Imagination and Fine Art at Falmouth University. He is also an Honorary Creative Fellow at the University of Exeter’s Environment & Sustainability Institute. He studied the worlds first MA in Arts & Ecology at Dartington College of Arts, and in 2016 finished his PhD with University of the Arts London.
A practice-based study into walking, writing and performance, developing an ecological form of subjectivity: a way of being in the world whereby an individual exists within and amongst places: ones social, geographic and political contexts. This philosophy expresses itself through a practice, Romantic in its outcomes and Conceptual in its methods, that does not restrict itself to traditional boundaries, mediums or modes of practice, a responsive way of being and making that is composed of and by its present context.
Selected CV.
| 2016- present | Lecturer in Fine Art, Falmouth University.
Self-employed Artist – Pedestrian – Writer and Radio producer. |
| 2020 – | Lecturer, Dartington Arts, Dartington.
Working on the new MA programs in Poetic Imagination and Arts & Place. |
Qualifications
| 2016 | PhD. University of the Arts London & Falmouth University.
Walking Home: The path as transect in an 800km autoethnographic enquiry. Practice-based PhD undertaken under the tutelage of Prof. John Hall and Dr. Simon Persighetti. Examined by Dr. Carl Lavery, Dr. Neil Chapman, Spring 2016. |
| 2008 | MA Distinction. Arts & Ecology, Dartington College of Arts.
Practice-based MA taught by Alan Boldon, Tracey Warr, Chris Crickmay, Brian Goodwin and Stephan Harding amongst others. |
| 2003 | BA 2:1. Contemporary Fine Art, Oxford Brookes University.
Prof. Shelley Sacks and Dr. Tracey Warr coordinated Fine Art at Oxford Brookes. My studies included several undergraduate modules from the Ecology BA including Introduction to Fieldwork and Gaia Theory. |
Exhibitions – Commissions – Practice
| 2020 | Cambridge University, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. | Dasgupta Review into the Economics of Biodiversity. Commissioned to produce a number of podcasts into the intrinsic value of biodiversity as part of a governmental review for HM Treasury. |
| 2020 | Back Lane West, Reduth. | Bibliotherapy for the Quarantine. A Gallery based residency in Redruth culminating in a presentation for Culture Declares Emergency in collaboration with the Eden Project and University of Exeter. |
| 2020 | Arts & Culture, Exeter. | Towards Field Station. Commission to produce a triptych of radio shows for Exeter emerging out of the research project A Transect for Trelowarren. |
| 2019 | University of Exeter. with Trelowarren & Eden Projec.t | A Transect for Trelowarren. Long-term research project with a Cornish Estate and a team of scientists examining rewilding, regenerative agriculture and landscape. Currently on show at the Eden Project until 2020. |
| 2019 | Plymouth Art Weekender, Back Lane West. | Bibliotherapy for the Anthropocene. An iterative performance reading group for our new geological epoch, a cross between a quaker meeting and a reconvening of the Dead Poets Society. Ongoing. Forthcoming in 2020 with OD Arts Festival, Somerset. |
| 2019 | Goonhilly Village Green. | Cardinal Points. 4 channel sound installation displayed across a 4 square km site on the Lizard peninsula. FM broadcast with found sound, field recording and spoken word. |
| 2019 | SoundCamp @ End of the World Garden | SoundCamp. Annual outdoor event for local public audience and broadcast internationally via Resonance FM, the world waking up, 24 hours of perpetual dawn chorus. With camping, performance lectures, wild food and foraging. Annual event. |
| 2018 | National Trust SWOF, Devon | Transparent Modular Specifics. Performance installation as outcome of NPIF Research Fellowship with Falmouth University and the National Trust. |
| 2017 | Plymouth Art Weekender. | The Park Bench Reader. Commission of social sculpture piece for PAW festival. |
| 2016 | Artisterium9, Tbilisi, Georgia. | Kill Your Idols. Performance installation funded by British Council. Two channel video, text, banners, wall drawing and live performance. |
| 2016 | Cornwall. | End of The World Garden. Initiating a large scale, long term, ecological project with Artist Paul Chaney at a field in Cornwall that has been a forest garden for 10 years. A place for ecological and dialogical practice exploring art, life and living in precarious times. |
| 2016 | Newlyn Gallery, Cornwall | Taking My Own Advice. Solo Exhibition as part of the experimental Transition program. |
| 2016 | Secret Garden Party, Cambridge | HIDE. Performance installation. Bird hide with dual floor to ceiling projection, 1hr looped soundtrack and 2 performers. |
| 2015 | Venice Biennale | The Ecological Thought is Thinking. Solo performance. |
| 2015 | Fish Factory, Falmouth. | Walking Home (Again). Solo show for practice element of PhD. Performance, installation, works on paper, film. |
| 2015 | Plymouth Peninsula Gallery. | Plymouth Contemporary Open. How to Walk (Parts 1-9). Text/drawings on paper. Won the Audience Choice Award. |
| 2015 | Secret Garden Party, Cambridge | Dawn Chorus. Three radio shows Secret FM. Mixing recordings of the dawn chorus taken at the festival site with live extracts from the festival. Layering places. |
| 2014 | Outlandia, Scotland and via FM in London | Actions For And Against Nature.
Series of performances for radio broadcast in collaboration with Resonance FM & London FieldWorks. |
| 2012 – 2015 | Trail Mix[ED]. SourceFM. | Trail Mix. Fortnightly radio show produced for Source FM in Falmouth, Cornwall. Subsequently Trail Mix[ED] developed for projects with ResonanceFM, London, Secret Garden Party and Kestle Barton. |
| 2012 | Sideways Festival, Belgium | A Belgian Transect. Collaboration with Eleanor Wynne Davis at, traversing Belgium throughout August 2012. |
| 2012 | Artisterium, Tbilisi. Georgia | There is a photograph I have taken that I cannot show you.
Performance installation in the wake of an 1,100km journey across Uzbekistan to the dying sea floor of the Aral desert. |
| 2012 | Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol | When I think of the Artist Yves Klein. Performance for spoken word and vinyl record. |
| 2009-11 | August Art, London | Iteration. A two-man show of new drawing and sculptural works born of place. Subsequent projects and representation. |
| 2008 | Conflux festival of Psychogeography | The Park Bench Reader: An English Library in New York. Performance Installation and live site-specific actions in New York, USA. |
| 2005 | Deptford X Festival, London | Open Season. Participated with arts collective Discotheque in a series of walking performances around Deptford, London. |
| 2003 – | Chiltern Sculpture Trail, Oxford. | This is the Future. Site specific installation consisting of removing a car parking space’s worth of forest floor out of a forest, and infilling the site with hardcore, tarmac and paint. |
Selected Residency Projects
| 2018 | Time & Space. Metal. Southend. A week-long self-directed residency, walking, writing and resting, a week is never enough. |
| 2017 | Place Exploration. Kestle Barton, Lizard. Cornwall. Convened and directed a residency for 17 international artists interested in Place and Socially Engaged Practice. Funded by ACE. |
| 2017 | The Bothy Project. Inshriach. Cairngorm. A week-long self-directed residency composing a publication drawn from my PhD. (Forthcoming in 2019 with Folded Sheet Press). |
| 2014 | Outlandia, Scotland. Participant on London Fieldworks collaboration with Resonance FM and Creative Scotland. 40 artists, a remote radio station, and broadcast performances. |
| 2012 | NIDA, Lithuania. A week-long residency coordinated by the European League of Institutes of the Arts. 26 international PhD students and artists. |
| 2011 | Outlandia, Scotland. One of the inaugural participants of a series of self-directed residencies at London Fieldworks New field station in Glen Nevis, Scotland. |
| 2010 | Kurt Schwitters 10th Anniversary Residency, Merz Barn, The Lake District. Undertaken as part of The Mobile Institute, a project with Eleanor Davis and Penny Skerrett. In collaboration with POST artists, a London based collective through which I gained funding from ACE. |
Selected Teaching / Post-Doctoral
| 2018 -present | Research Fellow and Associate Lecturer. Falmouth University. | Research Fellow in Digital Arts & Ecology. Associate Lecturer in Fine Art. |
| 2012 – 2013 | Associate Lecturer, Falmouth University. | Teaching on the Place module for BA Theatre alongside tutorials across Fine Art and Performance. |
| 2014 | Guest Lecturer, Institute for Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts. Bath. | A weeklong series of workshops entitled The Ecology of Footpaths. |
| 2008 – 2009. | Associate Lecturer, Dartington College of Arts. | Teaching, tutorials and workshops, Introduction to Ecology module on MA in Arts & Ecology. |
Selected Publications:
| 2019 | Transparent Modular Specifics, The AA Road Map. | Living Maps Review. Online at: http://livingmaps.review/journal/index.php/LMR/article/view/161 |
| 2016 | PhD. Walking Home: The path as transect in an 800km autoethnographic enquiry. | University of the Arts London. |
| 2015 | Notes After a Week of Wandering and On Remoteness. Two essays on a body of work performed in Scotland. Commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival. | Remote Performances in Nature & Architecture. Ashgate, London. 2015. |
| 2015 | A Note Upon Transecting.
Methodological essay published as part of a book exploring walking methodologies in Arts practice. |
Ways To Wander. Quallman & Hind, Triarchy Press, Exeter, 2015. |
| 2014 | A Belgian Transect: Field Broadcast in the expanded field of ecology. Co-authored paper on Field Broadcast and place-centric research practice as used during Sideways Festival in Belgium, 2012. | Digital Creativity Arts & Ecology Special Issue. Taylor & Francis, 2014.
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| 2011 | Upon St. Augustine’s Tower. Essay commissioned by Natasha Vicars to accompany her project Hackney Dawn Watching. | Longhouse Action Research Programme 2010-11. London. 2011. |
| 2009 | The Park Bench Reader. Critical essay on an on-going project that has been presented in London, Devon and New York. | Critical Cities: Volume 1. CT Editions. London. 2009. |
| 2008 | Learning to Translate Lithuanian. Artists’ text upon a project from Alytus Biennial, Lithuania. | Making Do Journal. The Translation Issue, London. 2008. |
| 2008 | The rising tide of Arts & Ecology. Essay commissioned by the New Statesman outlining a new practice of eco-logical art. | Essay published by the New Statesman online edition. |
Selected Conference Papers
| 2019 | Towards Eco-Logical Footprinting. Paper delivered in iterations at Storytelling & The Environment, University of South Wales, Environmental Arts Practice Based Research, Plymouth University, Evolving the Forest, Dartington College of Arts. |
| 2016 | What is Art? A Users Guide. How the f**k does the f**king art world work. Paper delivered at VASW conference hosted by the British Art Show, Southampton Art Gallery. |
| 2016 | Actions For & Against Nature. Performed Paper, Language, Landscape & The Sublime, Dartington, July 2016. |
| 2015 | Walking Home (Again). Performance lecture as part of Where to? The future of Walking Arts Practice. Falmouth University. |
| 2015 | Autoethnographic performance in the white walled gallery. Paper given at Story 8: How stories touch our lives. Interdisciplinary conference on story telling and practice research. Oxford University. |
| 2014 | Resting Places. Paper on walking, pilgrimage and loss presented at Performing Grief, The Sorbonné, Paris. Keynote by Prof. Diana Taylor. |
| 2013 | Performing Place : Sensing Site. Performance lecture presented at a daylong event co-organised by Katrina Brown and myself at Falmouth University in collaboration with CSM. |
| 2013 | Walking Home: Two Papers. Two performance lectures on walking and performance presented as part of a Central St. Martins program hosted by the Parasol Unit, London. |
| 2013 | A Belgian Transect. Paper on practice outcomes from Sideways Festival, Belgium presented as part of four artists papers on Being (In) Landscape. |
| 2011 | Walking Home. Paper introducing a practice-based methodology, presented as part of Transcultural Exchanges annual conference in Boston, MA. |