Rural Facets, 2024. Artists edition by Laura Eldret. Words co-authored with Alexa de Ferranti, Alys Scott-Hawkins, Andy Parker, Emily Hawes, Eugenia Ivanissevich, Fiona McDonald, Fran Farrar, Gemma Gore, Hannah Rose, Hector MacInnes, James Aldridge, Jenny Staff, Jessica Potter, Jinny Jehu, Kasia Garapich, Laura Hopes, Liz Clifford, Lynne Williams, Melanie Rose, Rae Turpin, Rachel McRae, Sarah Filmer, Simone Einfalt, Simon Lee-Dicker, Tamsin Loveday, Tracy Dovey, Vanessa Rolf. ©️ 2024 distributed under Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA.

This edition maps and forms part of the experimental knowledge commons created by participating artists in Rural Facets - a trio of gatherings for critically engaged artists who identify with the / as rural or any of it’s many facets. Intended for artists to network, share practice and amplify our own narratives of the rural.

Words were harvested from conversations, shared artworks and activities from/between participating artists. These are presented as a weaving of descriptors, solids, fragilities and possibilities of our rural facets. The edition is freely available to all under a creative commons license,  and as a limited number of print versions via MTP (for the cost of P+P).  

Rural Facets was supported by VASW as part of their programme How can I stay?

• A limited print run of 200 + 50ap’s has been printed on 170gsm recycled, carbon free paper. These are being distributed with three options: folded and posted as a letter for £3 (UK), unfolded in a hard back envelope £6 (UK) or £10 ( international).

• Hi-res downloadable no-cost copy of the edition here

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Composite Drawing #3: Timberland is a limited edition artist print created by Ben Deakin specially for MTP. The orginal drawing was created by charcoal made in the New Forest and features composite parts of New Forest landscapes including the Portuguese Fireplace.

In 2020 Deakin spent time in the New Forest exploring histories of William Gilpin’s picturesque. Going on to present Augmenting Landscapes a vitual event as part of TeleVistas that was about finding a fresh approach to drawing the landscape from a distance and a sideways look at the Picturesque. This edition featured in Dappled Light in March 2022, More Than Ponies first IRL exhibition (due to the pandemic).

Ben Deakin, Composite Drawing #3: Timber Land. 2021.
Digital print of 100 + 4ap, 20 x 15cm.

New Forest Goods is a contemporary collection of artist-designed merchandise and small-scale art works. Artists are paid an honorarium for their work. All profits from sales go towards contemporary art in the New Forest (MTP).

Benjamin Deakin (b.1977) lives and works in London. He studied at Kingston University and Central Saint Martins college of Art and Design respectively, gaining an MA in Fine Art in 2006. Recent exhibitions include: Reimagining Nowhere: The William Morris Society, London (2019); Betwixt and Between: Arthouse1: London (2019); Contemporary British Painting Prize, 2018, Huddersfield Art Gallery; Subsumed, St Marylebone Crypt, London; Defining Structure, The Cello Factory, London. Seeking News From Nowhere, The Concept Space, London (2018) We are Building a New World, Studio 1.1, London, (2017) Making the Nature Seen, Tannery Projects, London (2016) and Screen, Turps Gallery, London (2015).  A survey of his recent work entitled Reimagining Somewhere and Nowhere with an accompanying essay by Stephen Baycroft was published in 2019.

Key to Deakin’s artistic interests are his experiences from various travels to remote parts of the world. In 2013 he spent three months cycling through the Andes visiting ancient Inca and Wari ruins. He was recently awarded an artists residency at PADA studios, Lisbon, 2018. Previous residencies include: Joya Art+Ecologica, Andalucia, Spain (2017); Listhus, Olafsfjordur, Iceland (2015); The Klondike Institute of Arts and Culture in Dawson City, Yukon, Canada (2008), University of Kathmandu, Nepal (2005), Hospitalfield Trust, Arbroath, Scotland (2002).

This tea towel is a collaborative artwork intended to infiltrate and intervene in daily life created by PaP (James Aldridge, Gemma Gore, Laura Eldret, Annabel Pettigrew and Alys Scott Hawkins). It celebrates laughter as a collective act, as something that is produced by bodies and between bodies, something that binds groups, forms trust and hints at practices of breath and grounding.

PaC is a peer group for artists. Together we carry out creative investigations into the New Forest area and create a forum of support, sharing, caring and exchange to strengthen one another’s practice. We meet IRL to walk, sit, talk and often eat together. PaC was known as PaP at the time of the creation of this artwork.

The phrase “Laughter is a kind of breath work” was generated from a conversation between PaC members reflecting on what it is that we do together and advocating for others to do it too. The phrase is accompanied by illustrations of our time spent together in the Forest, legs on land, a mossy mule, hands in earth, sitting cross legged in circles.

50 x 80cm screenprinted cotton

New Forest Goods is a contemporary collection of artist-designed merchandise and small-scale art works. Artists are paid an honorarium for their work. All profits from sales go towards contemporary art in the New Forest (MTP).

Read more about PaC here

Art and the Rural Imagination features writing by key academics and artists and explores how contemporary art can help to reimagine the rural as a site of contemporary thought and experience. It reflects on a diversity of issues, from post-pandemic landscapes to farming, tourism, sustainability, productivity, as well as issues of gender, sexuality and decolonisation. At the heart of the book is a concern with both people and place, as well as expanded engagement with animals and ecologies. The scope of the book is international with contributors detailing a wide range of rural experiences and concerns. The book is the outcome of a conference in 2020 titled Art and the Rural Imagination, and also features a selection of commissioned artworks that expand on the core themes of the main essays.

Editor: Colin Perry

Contributors: Adam Chodzko, Katarzyna Depta-Garapich, Catherine Elwes, Laura Eldret, Feral Practice (Fiona MacDonald), Paul Finnegan, Jenny Holt, Anna Sofie Hvid, Victoria Lucas, Deirdre O’Mahony, Harry Meadows, Colin Perry, Rosemary Shirley, Julian Stallabrass, Standart Thinking (Javier Rodriguez), Marina Velez Vago and Zoox .