Road for the Future: Talk by Anna Best
Powerstock Hut, Friday 9 March 2012, 6pm to 8pm,
Artist Anna Best is giving a free talk, illustrated with video and images, about the Road for the Future art project she is leading at Powerstock Common and how it supports her own practice as an established artist who has recently transplanted to rural West Dorset. The talk is from 6 pm to 8 pm on Friday 9 March at Powerstock Hut. Everyone is welcome – no need to book – refreshments are available.
In her art practice, Anna Best invites other people to work with her, and on her behalf, often in the context of public commissions. Her work takes many forms – events, videos, publications, websites – and the subjects and ideas are often disguised as something else. The complicated process of making the work is placed in the foreground, as important as the material product. The question might not be, is it art, but when is the art happening.
The Road for the Future project demonstrates this process. Inspired by the proposed Sustrans route on the old railway line from Bridport to Maiden Newton traversing Powerstock Common, Anna Best has developed partnerships with local people, the Dorset Wildlife Trust, Sustrans, the AA at Hooke Park and others, and has commissioned three artists to make new work in response to the Common. The project website, www.roadforthefuture.info, captures work-in-progress by the three commissioned artists – Anna Lucas, Judith Dean and Adam Chodzko.
Their new artworks will be shown to the public at the Common on 3 June, with a brunch and discussion event with the artists on Monday 4 June at Bridport Arts Centre.
Road for the Future is a year long collaborative project, based at Powerstock Common, which is exploring what common land means in the 21st century both as a public space and how we experience it, as well as investigating wider ideas about the countryside, transport and access, and contributing to the debate about its future sustainability. The project is working closely with the Dorset Wildlife Trust and with the proposed multi-use Trailway being developed by Sustrans between Maiden Newton and Bridport. Sustrans is currently concentrating on the Loders-Bridport section where all the landowners have given consent, and will shortly be applying for planning permission there. The aim of the Trailway is to give a safe, traffic-free 10 mile path between Maiden Newton and Bridport which will benefit residents for shopping, work and school trips, and boost tourism and local businesses.
Funding for Road for the Future has come from the National Lottery through Arts Council England, West Dorset District Council, Ernest Cook Trust, Artsway Associates and Dorset Design and Heritage Forum.
For further information please contact: Anna Best, 07810 374745, me@annabest.info