A Possible Lifestyle by Verity-Jane Keefe
Date uploaded: September 10, 2012
A Possible Lifestyle by Verity-Jane Keefe
You are invited to the premiere of “A Possible Lifestyle”, a new moving image work which explores the town of Melksham via its walking routes and a script of fact and fiction narrated by a local resident. It will be screened in an empty house within the new development to the east of the town on Friday 28th, Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th September 2012. (Plot 93, 45 Thyme Road, Melksham, Wiltshire, SN12 7FX)
Verity has spent a period of intense research in Melksham, scratching the surface to try and unpick the town’s character through its architecture, its residents and its history. She has worked with Phil Smith, an artist and playwright who had previously been commissioned to carry out research into the town to inform this project’s brief. Using five well used walking routes, a script has been developed that turns each route into an act in a play, navigating the landscape through a mixture of fact, folklore, local mythology, local encounters and archival research. Residents of the town feature as narrator to compliment the main protagonist, the landscape both social and physical.
Verity organised a series of artist-led walks through the town in the spring with residents of the town. For the open house weekend, she will again lead walks on both Saturday and Sunday, leaving from the Art House Cafe at Melksham Market Place, SN12 6ES at 11am. Please RSVP to indicate you will be joining and on which day. These walks present the opportunity for informal conversation surrounding the project and participants relationship to public space and the town.
The film will be screened to both an invited and incidental audience passing by.
Refreshments will be served and an accompanying publication will be distributed. The publication is a test edition of an artist made town guide, seeking to frame civic pride within local knowledge and the artist’s research and experiences of being in the town.
This moving image project is part of a wider public art programme that has been developed by Ginkgo Projects on behalf of the East Melksham Consortium.
The art programme aims to locate the new development site within the context of the town as a whole, focusing on the walking routes and physical links between old and new. This project will inform the creation of a series of permanent, physical artworks along the walking routes through the town.
Visit www.verityjanekeefe.tumblr.com
For more information, click here to download the press release(249 KB)
