North Lincolnshire Museum – Artist Takeover

To coincide with Rodrigo Lebrun’s exhibition ‘Green (Screen) Dreams’ at North Lincolnshire Museum, Invisible Dust held a series of activities to complement the work.

To start Lebrun, gave an artist talk, in which he discussed a number of his past projects including ‘The end of ‘The End of History,’’ (2015) which was part of the ‘In Case of Emergency’ at Science Museum Dublin, in 2018. The theme of speculative futures, and the similarity in animated design highlighted the wider themes of political and climate uncertainty that haunt Lebrun’s practice and especially his current work ‘Green (Screen) Dreams.’

He spoke at length about the role of context, stating how; ‘The notion of originality in art is misleading as we are all about references,’ citing his own sources as being from Arthur Jaffa, Sandra Perry, Hito Steyerl, Meta Haven and David O’Reily, and specifically for ‘Green (Screen) Dreams,’ This Changes Everything, by Naomi Klein. As well as this  he spoke about the need to embrace other cultural references, stating the importance of ‘the internet as a great source of inspiration’ and how ‘being exposed to trashy internet art is critical.’ You can see this manifested in his work with the intersection of emoji’s alongside the narrative of climate uncertainty.

The afternoon saw an artist led workshop, in which Lebrun broke down the process of creating narratives, giving the participants the chance to create and develop their own stories using a set of building blocks as an aid. Lebrun stressed the importance of how our ‘biography informs how work manifests’ and that ‘our lives are very non-linear,’ and how both issues should influence the way we create work and narratives. He explained how different aspects; such as who, what, where and when are useful building blocks to use in order to get your narrative to grow and connect together. Participants spent time creating their own stories, using an aspect of living in Scunthorpe or its environment.

There were some really interesting outcomes from the workshop. Including a story about school children that suddenly got the ability to read each other minds and emotions, and another which saw tigers escaping from a wildlife park and taking residence in Normanby Hall, near Scunthorpe. Participants were encouraged to take away their stories and develop them further, which many of them seem keen to do.

Alongside the workshop and artist talk, there was a couple of planting sessions that were put on for younger audiences. They were given a chance to decorate their own plant pots or make them out of newspaper, as well as decorate a couple of large pots that were then placed outside the museum for the young people to come back and watch grow across the year.

The seeds that the young people were planting represent the species, that are found locally in Scunthorpe. They represent a mix of 24 native wildflower species and seven species of grass, including Common Bent, Crested Dogstail, Slender Creeping Red Fescue, Smooth Stalked Meadow Grass and Yellow Oatgrass.

– Martha Cattell, Project Curator