Beneath The Trees Festival
Coventry

Applying To Be Part Of Beneath The Trees

Beneath The Trees was the first time I had worked with Coventry Arts Collective. I applied to take part as one of the artists and was accepted, then a few weeks before the festival I went to Naul’s Mill Park for a site visit. I was shown the pitch I would be working from and told that whatever I made needed to be collaborative and capable of being strung between two trees. The wider festival ran from noon until 8pm as part of Coventry UK City of Culture’s Green Futures programme, so although my activity occupied one part of the park, it sat within a much bigger day of music, food, performance, workshops and environmental activity.

I quite like being given a practical problem like that. I knew where the work had to go and that people needed to be able to contribute to it, but I still had to work out what I could actually make.

A Bit Like Ready, Steady, Cook

My art can be a bit like ‘Ready, Steady, Cook’. I look at what I already have and work out what recipe I can make from it. My next door neighbour had given me a large curtain, I had an old ironing board cover and other pieces of fabric in my stash, and I had been given blue denim offcuts from a jeans factory. Those materials became the starting point rather than going out and buying everything new. I did buy some old hessian sacks so people had something to sit on while they worked on the grass, but most of the artwork grew out of things I already had or had been given.

The phoenix came from Coventry itself. A few weeks before I began working at the Herbert, I had seen the tiny surviving fragment linked to Coventry blue in the museum. Coventry has been connected with the colour for centuries, although the exact original shade is uncertain and the surviving fragment has changed over time. When I was given denim factory offcuts in all sorts of blues, I rather liked the idea that surely one of those shades must be somewhere near it. It was a playful connection, but it helped the denim feel right for the wings. The phoenix, one of Coventry’s symbols, gave the whole thing its shape.

That way of starting with what is already around me, rather than automatically buying new materials, has continued to grow through my practice and is now something I talk about much more explicitly in my Manifesto.

Building The Phoenix Together

I collaborated with mural artist Katie O, who I had met previously, and she agreed to paint the outline of the wings onto the large cloth I had prepared. She painted them in black on the day, giving people a clear shape to begin working into.

People passing through the festival stopped and joined in. Some cut pieces of denim into feather shapes and frayed the edges, while others stitched the feathers onto the cloth. Because the banner was hanging vertically between two trees, attaching them was more difficult than working flat on a table. Managing a making area as well as the large hanging cloth was useful learning too. The weather was kind to us, people could sit on the hessian sacks on the grass to work, and the wings gradually changed as more hands added to them.

I had also designed the wings with photographs in mind. I wanted the phoenix to work as a selfie backdrop, so people could stand in front of it, stretch out their arms and become part of the image. That gave people another way into the work even if they had only stopped for a short time. If people shared the pictures afterwards on their socials, Beneath The Trees could travel beyond the park and people could also find their way back to me and the work I was making.

The day also brought together some of the relationships that were beginning to grow around my work in Coventry. Gayle Bradley from Coventry Arts Collective was there, and the Mayor of Coventry and his wife also came to see the work. One of my favourite photographs from the project is a slightly strange and wonderful group portrait in front of the phoenix. It captures something of the character of the day far better than a formal event photograph ever could.

A Phoenix In A Park Being Renewed

Looking back, the phoenix fitted Naul’s Mill Park more closely than I realised when I first designed it. The park had been through a difficult period, particularly around its former boating lake, and by 2021 work was underway to renew the landscape and naturalise parts of it. Just days before Beneath The Trees, the nearby Radford Brook had begun flowing above ground again after more than a century.

I had chosen the phoenix because of Coventry, but looking back there is something rather lovely about making it in a park that was being renewed at almost the same moment. Even further back, the area has a connection with textile production through a historic fulling mill, another layer of the place that I only came to appreciate more fully afterwards.

An Artwork That Can Carry On

We did not finish the phoenix that day. I had intended to, but I do not see that as a failure now. The unfinished piece means it still has somewhere to go. I have kept it and would like another community to continue adding to it if the right opportunity comes along.

There was denim left over too. Rather than throwing it away, it was passed on to artists working on Walking Forest, another Coventry Green Futures project. I like the fact that the material did not stop being useful when my part of the programme finished.

Looking back, Beneath The Trees feels like one of those projects where several parts of my practice were beginning to join up: using what I already had, working with other artists, making it easy for people to take part and letting an artwork carry on beyond a single day. It also happened only a few weeks before I started at the Herbert, which opened up a much bigger period of work for me in Coventry.