Horsebox Studio

Spring 2016 – Summer 2019

From 2016 - 19, Peak delivered a number of artist commissions and projects in our Horsebox Studio. Peak was given a small grant from the Brecon Beacons Trust to purchase a Horsebox, and to convert it into a mobile studio which pitched up across the Black Mountains and beyond including at Green Man Festival, Abergavenny Food Festival, Diffusion Festival, Royal Welsh Spring Show and The Mon and Brec Canal.

Some selected commissions include:

Working Landscape/ Tirlun Gwaith at The Royal Welsh Spring Festival

The horsebox studio housed a mini-museum of tools from 19th and 20th century agricultural life, selected from historian, author and dry stonewaller Stuart Fry. We invited farmers and smallholders to talk with us about their experiences and memories of working on the land. We were joined by poet Jonathan Edwards who created a poem in response to each individual’s story.

Jonathan Edwards was born and grew up in South Wales. He has an MA in Writing from the University of Warwick and currently works as an English teacher. His poems have appeared in many magazines including The Poetry Review, The North, Poetry Wales and New Welsh Review. His first collection My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014) was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize 2014 and was the Winner of the Costa Poetry Prize 2014.

TOTEMIC, Pete Fowler at Green Man Festival

Artist Pete Fowler was commissioned to undertake a residency with Peak in 2017. As a result, Pete created TOTEMIC – Beasts of the Black Mountains, a company of fantastical beasts that live and breathe within the features of the terrain. Pete unleashed the Canal Hydrus, Table Mountain Shaman, Alder Wood Sprite and River Usk Nymph at Green Man festival. Audiences were invited into the unique portal of the Horsebox Studio over the course of the festival weekend. During the festival, this portal grew and mutated as families and folk created their own interpretations of the beasts through creative drawing and writing workshops.

Pete Fowler (born 1969 in Cardiff) is a Welsh artist best known for his artwork for the Welsh band Super Furry Animals and his Monsterism toys and goods. He is a freelance illustrator and "monster maker" inspired by animals, music, folklore, myths, psychedelia and super nature. He has also worked on a number of other projects in the UK and Japan, such as television advertisements (Kia Picanto), as well as having art exhibitions in the UK and abroad. Fowler works in a variety of media, including drawing, painting, animation, printmaking and sculpture.

The Little Cage, Susan Adams at Abergavenny Food Festival

Peak commissioned the artist Susan Adams to create new work for the 2018 Abergavenny Food Festival.

This work centred on harvest - the time when the whole community headed to the fields to bring the harvest home is long gone, however most people have memories of harvest celebrations in school, in churches and community halls. The making of a “corn dolly” was an ancient custom and traditionally made from the last sheaf of corn to be harvested, where it was believed the corn spirit was hiding. The corn dolly was often ceremonially destroyed to represent the death of the old and the beginning of new growth in the spring.

In Wales and the borders the corn dolly was known as the hag, the neck or the mare. A corn dolly at St Fagans National Museum of History, made by farm-worker Thomas Minton of Shropshire referred to his as “the little cage”.

Peak’s Horsebox Studio at Abergavenny Food Festival became home to a reinvigoration of the corn dolly, reflecting on harvest customs and what is sown and reaped now as part of modern farming processes and the broader impact on biodiversity. Susan worked with young people on Peak’s projects using contemporary and traditional methods to make corn dollies and sculpture.

The Horsebox Studio was exhibited on the Castle grounds and featured drop-in, family-friendly craft and creative writing workshops throughout the weekend.

Susan Adams studied painting at Norwich School of Art and the Slade, going on to study Electronic Arts at Middlesex University. She uses a range of media including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and video. She has lectured widely and held a number of prestigious Artist in Residency positions including those at Gloucester Cathedral, Millay Colony for the Arts New York, Welsh National Opera, Bardsey Island and Shaftesbury Abbey.
www.susan-adams.co.uk

Caban Crefft (The Craft Cabin) was a two year Arts and Wellbeing initiative at the Old School, Peak funded by the Health Lottery offering weekly creative sessions for groups of young people in Abergavenny aged 16 – 25.