Cover, Attention, Unearth
In ‘Cover, Attention, Unearth’, Katie documents the repetitive actions and thoughts of her first year at an allotment-studio in Milton Keynes, and provides the framework for others to participate in these processes and rituals. During the Groundwork Weekender visitors will be invited inside a temporary structure that invites people to engage with the notion of sacredness and sanctity, and partake in three actions that symbolise the core of Katie’s practice; to Cover (restore, nurture, rest), to give Attention (focus, sense, observe ), and to Unearth (work, discover, reward). Each action reveals aspects of her wider experience of living and working in MK; a life exploring and discovering the city through spaces and objects, and through places green, old and quiet.
The specificity of the collective actions and collated materials evolved from a workshop Katie ran in August. Here she invited people to her plot, a site that has evolved to function as a workspace, construction site, laboratory, farm, garden, temple and retreat. In this multifarious space visitors were offered their own place to work, observe, reflect and restore, catalysing conversations that revealed other sites of ‘sacred green’ in the city. These revelations have informed the shape and structure of Cover, Attention, Unearth, enabling to function as both an outdoor installation offering sanctuary for rest, focus and reward, but also as a space of shared action, ritual and engagement.
Over the Groundwork Weekender people can engage with Cover, Attention and Unearth as a participatory event, however people can also return to the site following this event to view and engage with the collection of materials and undertake these actions of their own accord.
This work has been commissioned by Tracing the Pathway as part of their project Groundwork, a cross-arts platform and research project for and about Milton Keynes.
Katie Fields 