Nature Calling Conversations #2: David Blandy, Daniel Locke and Dr Lena Grinsted

As part of the National Landscapes Association’s Nature Calling arts programme, six artists commissioned to produce pieces in collaboration with National Landscapes teams and local communities will be talking about their practice with specialists from other fields for a special webinar series: Nature Calling Conversations. 

The second Nature Calling Conversation will be between David Blandy and Daniel Locke, commissioned artists for Surrey Hills National Landscape, and Dr Lena Grinsted, Senior Lecturer in Zoology at the University of Portsmouth. Places are free and you can book on eventbrite.

David Blandy and Daniel Locke have been working on their project Dawn After Night, Spring After Winter for the past eight months, spending time with the community of New Addington, Croydon to develop their ideas and embed local experience into real life choose-your-own-adventure game trails, close to the community in Hutchinson’s Bank and around Box Hill in the Surrey Hills.

David Blandy has exhibited and performed at venues nationally and worldwide, including Tate Modern, London; Serpentine Gallery, London; Towner Gallery, Eastbourne; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Art Tower Mito, Tokyo, Japan; Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland & PS1 MOMA, New York, USA.

Daniel Locke’s graphic novel Two Heads, was published by Bloomsbury in the UK & Scribner in the USA. He has collaborated with a wide range of researchers and artists on a diverse series of projects, including Scribner, Bloomsbury, Nobrow, The Nib, Arts Council England, The Wellcome Trust, NHS, and The National Trust.

Dr Lena Grinsted studies the evolution of group living. She is interested in understanding how animals have evolved to reap the benefits of living, feeding, and breeding in groups while minimising the inevitable costs of competing with group members for limited resources. She primarily studies group living in spiders, something only found in a small number of spider species. Within these groups, spiders show a range of fascinating behaviours such as hunting together, sharing food, building their silken nest together, and helping to protect and feed each other’s young.

David, Daniel and Lena expect their conversation to cover community building in human and non-human groups as well as the acting, improvisation and the potentials of play that occurs in role-playing games. They will look to discuss how art and games can address climate change and the ways that we will have to change to adapt to the new world that we’ve created, and how environmental and social justice are inextricably linked.