So excited to share with you the 22 amazing art pieces we’ve got coming to Brainchild. From kaleidoscopic forests to mutant plants to a tribute to the ugliest fish of the sea, there’s lots of weird, wonderful and wacky installations that offer shade, chill-out time, fun, participation or time for reflection.
We also asked our contributing artists to share a few thoughts with us about how they feel about bringing their work to the festival, and why these spaces are such cornucopias of arts and creativity…
ALEX WEIR
FOOD TENT
‘Festivals are the perfect environment for blending all types of creativity – art, music, performance and even food – and collaboratively creating a place that is a little bit more surreal, colourful or fun for people to enjoy for just a few short days.’
Alex brings his playful and humorous work to Brainchild, work that is always, in some way or another, related to food. Most of the time it is simply the aesthetic qualities of a certain food that engage him (he’s likes painting fried eggs), but it’s also social environments like cafes, restaurants and kitchens where people gather that excite him.
Website: smexart.com
Instagram: @smexophone
Amy Bairstow
Zig.Zag.
‘I think the role of art in festival spaces should encourage this self expression by creating small worlds that are allowed to be as mad, as imaginative and as far removed from normal life as possible.’
Zig.Zag is a zingy space to lie down, chill and chat. A metal zigzag structure made up of giant paintings, reversible patterns and hand dyed tassels that encourages people to crawl inside the colour and take shelter, away from the crowds, music and the sun.
apastoreality
Khloris in the Woods (The Shack)
Sonia Magdziarz and Egmontas Geras, otherwise known as apastoreality are designing THE SHACK DJ Stage this year. Look out for more news about their exciting brand new design soon.
apastoreality.com
Instagrams: @egmontas, @soniamagdziarz
Cathy Van Hear
Sail Shades
‘I believe that everyone should have access to creativity. Making things is really good for you; it makes you happy, it builds your confidence, and making things with others builds community and empathy.’
Sail Shades is a bright and colourful community made canopy, created for sunny days lounging in the field. Cathy is a textile artist who makes community driven artworks with an emphasis on play, collaboration, and group learning. Sail Shades will be created in a playful series of workshops with young people who face barriers to the arts.
www.cathyvanhear.com
Instagram: cath_vh
Works in Process
Floom
Floom is part of an ongoing investigation that aims to rethink the narrative and purpose of ordinary objects. By day you see floating flooms but at night these tubular forms begin to glow with ambient light. This strange space invites people to sit, interact and relax.
Works in Process is a platform that showcases works that visualise the possibilities of materials, objects and narrative, through process heavy solutions.
Collective Names
Charlie Boyden – charlieboyden.xyz
Jack Boyden
Daniel Beaven – danbeaven.co.uk
Eat Your Own Hands Collective
Drift-off
Ellen Nankivell, Gabriel Healy, Loukis Menelaou, Nick Collee, Josef Stoger
In Drift Off colourful meshy fabric panels provide an experience both from far away and within. With subtle glimpses of openings beyond this translucent wall, festival goers can brush their way through the fabric to the inside or walk through it. Enjoy endless combinations of colour from different viewpoints that will constantly shift in the breeze and changing light of the day.
Instagram: @eatyourownhands
ebb
Matter That Settles
‘Festivals can be political acts of agency where a community or society is created, with its own common motives and modes of living.’
Repurposed polystyrene, plastics and pulped waste destined for landfill are formed into giant moveable boulders. Come and touch, roll and mount these large balls of waste, and form your own rocky terrain. These masses serve as monuments to the struggle to find solutions for a more sustainable Earth.
ebb is a recently formed collective comprised of artists Lisa Darrer, Claire Pritchard and Rosalind Wilson.
lisadarrer.com
clairepritchard.net
rosalindwilson.com
@ebbcollective
Ed Haslam
Nothing to be Frightened oF
‘It’s fantastic to install this work around THE SHACK stage, in that it can attach itself to the ritualistic commonality of dancing. The Brainchild festival experience is a unique one, in that partying, thinking and feeling are served in equal measure, I think it will fit in well here.’
Nothing To Be Frightened Of responds to recent personal experiences of grief. A series of flags, symbolise each moon cycle of life expectancy, questioning the fear of what’s beyond and initiating thought & conversations about life and death.
Ed is a visual artist who collaborated on The Garden of Earthly Delights installation in the woods at Brainchild in 2017.
Georgie Robertson
Orb Land
Orb land is a warm and colourful space to lie and chill in, a big old geodesic womb pod where you and your friends can smush as the festival whirls on around you.
Georgie is an artist from South London who spends her time making colourful things. She teaches children how to make colourful things whilst also helping out with installation pieces for other wonderful artists.
Insta: gjrobertson
www.georginajrobertson.wixsite.com/georgierobertson
iiish
Brain Blub
‘The ambition for this piece is that it’s both visually pleasing within the festival space but also a hub for comfort and trippy dreaming.’
The Brain Blub is a further exploration of the world of Blub. It will be a comfy womb to relax and dream. A soft sculpture that is a vision for the eyes and a comfort for your bums. iiish is the creator of Blub. She makes squishy and colourful solutions for the unnecessary need to make your space into one that Dr Seuss would be proud of.
Instagram: @sophmoly_iiish
In Situ
monumental.net
Monumental.net is a tribute to the Internet. The view from most angels is a clutter of pixels and overload of information, but when viewed from a specific point, the picture comes together to reflect the great connecting potential of the web.
This piece wants to inspire you to foster DIY movements at a local and global scale.
Set up in 2015, In Situ are a design studio championing youth culture with a commitment to engaging with and supporting young people.
Insta: @insitulondon / www.insitulondon.com
Josephine Chime
Follow Your Heart
‘Festivals are a place to experience the new, weird and up-lifting. It’s a glorious cauldron of pitch perfect and hot messes.’
Follow Your Heart is an interactive piece that reminds people to be kinder to themselves. Using a pathfinder maze board, come and play at a women’s heartstrings in this piece about finding your way through the labyrinth of life.
Josephine is an East London-based mixed-media artist who challenges accepted beauty constructs throughout her work.
josephinechime.cargo.site
Instagram – @jaccartist
Twitter – @JACCartist
Chlorophyll Collective
Kaleidoscopic forest
‘Festivals are spaces which evoke feelings of inclusion and community – a collective experience. They aren’t the hedonistic spaces sometimes assumed – they are a testing space of new ideas, a taster of old community living ideals and a space of limbo where we can create a little bit of magic. Maybe the experiences we have here can mould things back in ‘real life’ after we leave the Brainchild fields?’
Kaleidoscope Forest filters light and shadow with colourful frames which adorn the trees. Enjoy a filtered, magical view of the forest, that’s much less transient than an Instagram filter.
‘In creating this piece we aim for people to look up, to see what’s already there but in a dissimilar context. Not to change the forest, but to compliment its magic.’
Inst/Website: zed.owie / lucyhdrawings / eleanorwort
Kavitha Balasingham
Sadbags
The blobfish is a very misunderstood fish. The Ugly Animal Preservation Society awarded the blobfish as the ugliest fish of the deep sea. The blobfish gives a voice to the “mingers who always get forgotten”.
The installation ‘Sadbags’ commemorates its beautiful ugliness in the form of an interactive and colourful soft play sculpture. Listen closely and you’ll hear the blobfish whisper sweet nothings.
Insta/website: @kavithaart / www.kavithabalasingham.com
klaus and joe
i tread on air and contemplate the sun
Be part of the tragedy. Be part of the comedy. It’s like having a good time but knowing it’s actually the antidepressants. It’s like scattering your grandmother’s ashes and have them plaster your face. It’s like an Alanis Morissette song.
klaus and joe are bringing the theatre to you. Walk though the set and create your story. Touch them. Move them. Honour the gods and join the chorus.
Lois O’Hara
Main Stage Design
‘Hopefully my main stage design will inspire others and get them up dancing / wiggling!’
Artist-designer Lois O’Hara from Brighton is creating a Brainstage design that will subtly remind people of the sea, allowing her signature ‘wavey’ shapes and bold colours to inspire fun, dancing and going with the flow.
‘As it’s the main stage, I wanted the colours to really sing and tell a story. The shapes of the wood are in my signature style. I hope festival go-ers will dance along with the movement of the design.’
Instagram: @loisohara
Molly Smith
Illogical Land
‘There are no limitations or rules within what art can be in a field, so the bigger, wackier and wonderful art makes festivals such important spaces for art and creativity to blossom.’
Illogical Land is an immersive and interactive art installation that imagines a future where human’s have ruined the Earth’s soils. A formula created by the government to enrich the soil results in strange, mutated plants, poisonous to touch and carnivorous too. Experience the natural world take matters into its own hands and begin to wipe the human race in order to save the Earth.
Instagram: @mollysmithdesign
Natasha Hicken
Kaleidoscopic.VisionS
‘By cutting, mixing and warping people’s experience through a colourful and fun lens, this piece becomes a metaphor for the role of festivals.’
Step inside a giant kaleidoscope – and experience a portal to a Brainchild that people have never seen before!
www.natashahicken.com / @hickenn (insta)
Seyi Adelekun
Plastic Pavilion
Enjoy a serene and sensory experience underneath a large undulating canopy. Thousands of plastic bottles will transform into a spectacular outdoor space for people to seek shade, have a moments rest and absorb their surroundings.
Lie down and let your imagination wander as you listen to the delicate chimes of the plastic bottles in the wind, allowing yourself to rest your mind and your dancing feet.
All the while, you’ll be subtly reminded of the wasteful nature of single-use plastic.
Instagram: @seyi.adele
Homage to the Playground
Natalie Seo
Inspired by The Playground installation she assisted on last year, Natalie is taking some of the structural forms that existed in the previous work, and has entirely reinvented its purpose, transitioning from active play to playful rest in a series of colourful hammocks which hang from all angles. When you’re looking for somewhere to chill over the weekend, you can bet this will answer your prayers.
Shred-It! Collective
SPORE
Instagram handle: @shreditcollective
There is something living amongst the trees, something alien, something growing…
An ephemeral life form has settled in the woods and has begun to spread it’s tendrils. Breathing in and out, reaching wider and wider, it seemingly draws on the energy of the trees and the earth below. A tranquil peace descends upon Brainchild; the cares of the party goers are drawn away, absorbed by the colourful, convulsing mass of this strange beast.
‘SPORE’ is an installation created by a series of constantly inflating and deflating forms that utilise a pump system to create a ‘breathing’ effect. Softly glowing through the night, the piece promises to become a party-worthy centrepiece.
Shred-It! Collective’s first installation was The Reef at last years Brainchild festival.
Wumzum and the Beddow n Battini Collective
The Silence: Pick Your Poison
Playing on the house of horrors experience, this life-size comic will asks the audience to walk through its makeshift open pages, and be challenged by the series of images on show. As part of this immersive comic-book experience, Wumzum will also be painting a live piece.
Beddow n Battini are an interdisciplinary multi-ethnic art collective fuelled by London life and whacky-wonderful ’what ifs’. Wumzum is a longtime member of the collective whose pieces reflect ideas of empowered Afrofuturism and social commentary.
www.wumzum.com
instagram.com/Wumzum
www.scribbleink.com/
www.beddownbattini.wordpress.com
Head to the arts installations page to read more about each of these exciting art pieces! BC x