Cut here …………… - Melanie Thompson

A residency in Portland, Dorset, 17th – 26th September 2010

Part of B-side festival 2010 – 8 min film now on You Tube and B-side.org.uk

Portland is almost an island – cut off from the main land.

This work is about creating circumstances to cut through the everyday into the magic and strange that is lurking just below the surface. And to reveal what we have forgotten is there.

The act of cutting is very decisive; once you have made the cut you cannot go back.

Reg Paveley has been a tailor for over sixty years (his father was the first tailor to fit a zip in trousers) Reg’s business is to cut the cloth for each individual he meets. Each encounter is unique and specific, the shop is a place where people meet and things are made. I will create an ongoing miniature installation in Reg’s shop window over the residency from objects found and created over the residency.

Victoria Gardens cut through the landscape of Fortuneswell 100 years ago, what was once a common became a formal park. I will inhabit the gardens and surrounding areas and meet and talk to people about their relationship to Portland with my assistant Claire.We will ask each person we meet to cut out an individual tailored figure, color it in, write on the back and add it to the collection which will be placed in the mortuary to become part of that developing installation.

The green grass bowlers sustain the formality of the park; the clubhouse stands as a memory to those slower days. The act of bowling cuts through time. I will meet and talk to the bowlers and festival visitors, show a film about my work and green grass bowling, and from that meeting create a installation /response to their game on the bowling green.

Strangers cemetery is a closed cemetery, a resting place for many drowned souls. It is now surrounded on all sides by the modern world, forgotten and unseen. The mortuary was a resting place for the physical body. Each body was unique and specific. I want to cut the ivy from the overgrown graves and take the ivy to the old mortuary to add to the ongoing installation of light and images honoring memory and reflection.