Sun and Stour

A video by Helen Garbett and Bill Laybourne.

Sun and Stour comes out of their longstanding commitment to working within a three-mile radius of their studio in Stourbridge in the West Midlands. In normal times together they form Workshop 24, a social art practice that engages local people to co-create artworks using formats such as museums, clubs and radio programmes. But these are not normal times and so they continue their practice separately and collaborate from a distance.

The piece follows on from a ‘derive’ with local people that took place in February this year. A derive is a way of exploring a locality or place by walking without a specific destination in mind, using chance and following abstract instructions to turn left, look at the sky, listen to the wind, with the aim of creating a different relationship to place, helping us enter an altered state.

The result is to produce an aesthetic experience, where places are changed and, through destabilising the usual and mundane, it (the place) and we (the observers) are transformed. Not unlike our experience over the past few weeks.

During lockdown Helen revisited that derive alone. Where a bridge crosses the River Stour she became fascinated by the movement of the river, the shadow of the bridge, the light’s reflections and the slowly changing position of the sun on the water. Helen filmed it and pondered what she could do with it.

Without knowledge of the video Bill composed a piece of music that reflected the rhythm of life under lockdown, one of repetition and monotony but with a quality of forward movement and slowly emerging changes, creating a sense of stillness and flow.

And so the work was by chance and intuition created collaboratively and separately, together and apart, reflecting their experience of isolation and distance that casts a new light and rhythm on the lives and places they know.

As always its about time…

More of Helen and Bill’s work can be found at workshop24.co.uk