Jazz Moreton reflects on her Nest Residency

Having graduated with First Class Honours in Fine Art from the University of Gloucestershire in 2017, I spent years finding my feet and doing little bits of (mainly unpaid) work in the arts. After moving back to Warwickshire, I began to network with artists in Coventry. When somebody mentioned the Nest residency in a meeting, I knew that I, as an artist with multiple disabilities, had to go for it!

My residency was jointly supported by Talking Birds, Coventry Artspace, Coventry Biennial, and Disability Arts Shropshire, and would lead to whatever my outcome might be being exhibited in Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art 2019.

I proposed that I, as an artist who had never worked with or edited sound, would create a sound-based piece that showcased the abilities that people with disabilities have, in the face of a government, and a wider society, that discriminates against us in many ways (my bugbear since graduation was that people still often assumed that I was stupid due to my neurogenic stammer and dysarthric speech) and, after a nerve-wracking interview with a gatekeeper-esque panel of arts professionals (who, upon getting to know them throughout my residency, turned out to be some of the most delightful people I’ve had the chance to work with), I was thrilled to receive the news that I had been selected.

My piece, which I titled ‘Discursive Ability’ at the point when somebody asked me what it was called for an interim exhibition, was my first proper socially-engaged work. Making it involved me inviting people that I either knew personally or had found through networking to my studio or going to public venues, workplaces, and houses and recording one-to-one conversations about their experiences as people that have disabilities.

I have lived with multiple disabilities caused by a ‘massive’ stroke when I was thirteen, and I have faced a huge amount of discrimination in most situations. However, it was easy to feel saddened, shocked, appalled by the discrimination- and even abuse- that other people told me, during our recorded conversations, that they had suffered, and do suffer, week in, week out, in Coventry. It is absolutely vital to remember that the issue of Disability Discrimination, inequality, and abuse exists in every locality across the country if not the world, and the sample of Coventry people that I selected were mostly not connected (apart from in the respect that they all knew me). It’s a bit sad that it takes an artist to start to talk about this, rather than world leaders, but there we are.

After recording a long series of fascinating conversations, I had the huge task of editing them onto one soundtrack (which took about ten times longer than holding all the conversations). Thankfully, Derek of Talking Birds is a sound-editing pro (amongst his other talents), and he was able to offer really useful advice, such as switching to a different piece of software (it’s lucky I’m a fast learner)!

It was fantastic to have a studio space that I could use for up to eight hours a day (based on bus timetables) to edit in. At the time, I was living on a narrowboat and didn’t have facilities (or, in fact, electricity and broadband) to make any sort of digital work, so the Nest enabled me to work in a way that I otherwise would not have had the chance to.

I showed the final version of ‘Discursive Ability’ in Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art, which was my first major exhibition. Having my audio work displayed in ‘the Row’ has led to other opportunities, and I am currently working on an engagement project for the Midlands Arts Centre, for which I was head-hunted after their curator heard the work that I made in residence during the exhibition.

I’ve also been working really hard on scoping out other opportunities, and I have one or two personal projects at quite a conceptual stage. All I can say is that I will be back!

Jazz Moreton (see Jazz’s AxisWeb profile here!)

I first learned about Talking Birds when my friend told me about her Nest Residency at Eaton House. I decided to look them up online and was pleased to discover that they aim to make residencies more accessible to people with disabilities and conditions like myself. I graduated from Coventry University in 2018 with an MA in Contemporary Arts Practice and, until my Nest Residency began, hadn’t had access to a space to be able to make work for a whole year – so I knew that this would be a perfect opportunity for me and was so pleased when my application was accepted. My residency began in December 2019 and finished in February 2020, during this time I was able to further explore the effects that Narcolepsy has on my life. In 2012 I was diagnosed with the chronic sleep condition Narcolepsy, this causes me to experience Excessive Daytime Sleepiness and so I can have a sleep attack at any time anywhere. Due to my constant fatigue I often don’t leave the house for weeks at a time and so to have a work space away from home was a great motivation for me to actually get out of bed because I knew I had the chance to actually make work again. During my residency I felt content in the knowledge that I could take naps and not be disturbed, I was safe inside the studio space, I wouldn’t be in anybody’s way, taking naps allowed me to gain just that little bit more energy to then continue to make work once I’d woken up.

This residency has allowed me to further explore my ideas in relation to time being wasted due to Narcolepsy. For the past 5 years or so I had often used raising awareness for Narcolepsy as the main idea for my work but once I had graduated this all came to a sudden halt. Being in a studio space has allowed me to spread my work out across the floor and experiment with different ideas, having this space gave me the motivation to push myself further with my work thus I created 366 clay circle ‘time tokens’, had I not had the studio space I wouldn’t have been able to do this because creating something like that isn’t too easy on a cramped bedroom floor!

To begin I started creating work in my comfort zone of acrylic on canvas, I’ve often used text art in my previous works and so knew that this would be something that I’d be pleased with aesthetically. I worked on canvas boards and the pieces were relatively small, after reflecting on this I decided that I wanted to make work on a larger scale especially since I’d got the space in the studio and so I got some plastic sheeting and bought some clay. The image of a circle was at the forefront of my mind, based on a clock. I began by creating rings from the clay with circle cutters, then cut segments from these circles based on how much time I’d wasted napping, I then used metal letter stamps to press words in to the segments, the words were the things I’d missed out on by napping e.g. family dinners, however, despite these turning out well I knew that I still wasn’t entirely achieving what I wanted. I researched into artists that created work based around time and came across Alyson Provax, her works in ‘Time Wasting Experiment’ really inspired me, she would state how many minutes were wasted and what the time was being wasted on. I could time every single nap I’d taken but because of my condition I don’t always get to choose when I nap and sometimes I don’t even know that I have napped – it’s sometimes hard for me to tell the difference between my dreams and reality because I nap do frequently. Narcolepsy affects me all day every day so I decided that I would make a circle for every day and instead of cutting out segments I would create segments on the circles with glitter. I created 366 (as 2020 is a leap year) circles, using different coloured glitter for each month. Each circle had ’24 HOURS’ printed on to them, each a token of time that we choose how to spend, the circles weren’t fired and so could very easily break, should they break this will only demonstrate how fragile time is.

The Nest Residency was so valuable to me, I was able to explore ideas, set myself bigger challenges and my importantly create work again. I also found it very useful to be at Eaton House and attend the First Thursday Drop-in, this gave me chance to network with other artists and instead of just explaining about my work as I had previously I also got to show people my studio space to that they could see the processes I was going through to create my work.

Artist Rosa Francesca reflects on her Nest Residency:

Cinematica is a digital art project using an EEG monitor in conjunction with an XY pen plotter to create visual art. The participant is invited to wear the EEG headset and their brain data will then be sent to the plotter giving it directions in which to draw, producing in the end a ‘mind-controlled’ drawing. This project was developed during a Nest Residency supported by Talking Birds.

I began my residency at the start of June 2019, and I had applied to Talking Birds in particular after hearing about them through the Coventry Biennial open call. I was particularly impressed with their commitment to accessibility, working with disabled artists, and creating environmentally conscious work. I felt that their views aligned with my own, and in particular related to the aims of my work.

I first had the idea for Cinematica after being diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome at the start of 2018. I had suffered from motor tics and a few vocal tics for most of my life, and waited until adulthood to seek diagnosis. Although it no longer affects me as harshly as it did during my teenage years, I am a member of an online community for adults with Tourette Syndrome and can see the debilitating effects on others less fortunate than myself. One man described how he was no longer able to make art because of his motor tics which rendered his hands to unsteady to hold a pen or a paintbrush. Other members suggested that he tried digital art, but he wanted the ability to create a physical drawing. I decided then and there to create a means of physical art creation without the necessity of fine motor skills.

I had recently purchased an EEG monitor for artistic purposes anyway, and thought it might be good to put it to good use alongside a plotter, which is a robot arm that draws with a pen and paper moving along an XY axis. Through my Nest Residency, I was able to get support to purchase a plotter and to learn to manually code it and figure out how to send data from the brain monitor to the plotter to create real life brain drawings.

The residency was invaluable in that it provided me with the physical space to contain the machinery, but also gave me a space away from home where I was able to focus all of my attention on this project. Without time constraints and deadlines I was able to work freely without pressure, but the space still allowed me to stay motivated. Janet provided an incredibly useful sounding board, as did other studio holders in Eaton House where my residency was based. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet other local artists and connect with like-minded individuals, and I hope to stay in touch with some of them through the regular Artspace networking events.

I was able to present a first draft of my project at the Hello Cov exhibition for Artspace studio holders at The Row in Coventry, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Although at that point the drawings did not look particularly ‘pretty’, it was still fascinating to see how different people’s brains produced different drawings, and allowed me to build a portfolio to compare how the technology worked for different people in different states of mind.

Overall I am incredibly grateful for this residency. I feel that I have achieved more than expected in this project, and can now build on that knowledge even further.

You can follow Rosa on Instagram @rosafrancesca.art