Momentum

Momentum is the theme of Somerset Art Works’ creative programme between 2015 – 2017. We want to invite artists, curators and artist-led groups to work with us to create new work exploring aspects of the theme through contemporary visual arts and craft. We will feature new and exhilarating commissions in different locations across Somerset.

The theme ‘Momentum’ will introduce a series of topics and questions to guide an artistic journey to be discovered by artists and audiences. Somerset is fairly removed from arts centres and academic strongholds, local creativity is mostly driven by the artist community. Somerset is often referred to as the county you drive through to get somewhere else.

The project looks to open up artist-led research on cultural meanings, taking as a starting point what social, physical and economic mobility and movement looks like in Somerset.

Aspects such as: place and displacement; gentrification; ageing; rural isolation; (im)mobility and spatial (un)planning; passing through (tourism, on the road); and the challenges of global migration (itinerant work and the refugee); use and/or exploitation of natural resources (stone ie for roadstone); also creative exploration;’Ecological dispersals’ relating to the migration of plants, animals and birds etc; all could be reflected upon so as to open up a critical and creative debate on what it means to go from here to there.

Momentum also brings together the poetics of walking (drift and dreaming), of transiting and meandering, walking and trespassing, stillness and slowness, and helps build our understanding of issues regarding site-specific art and performance, sustainability and landscape.