With our newly launched Young Curators’ Programme, we’ll be helping five Kirklees artists take the next step. The programme will develop talent and leadership amongst the music programmers, promoters and curators of the future: as well as receiving training and mentoring from the hcmf// team, our Young Curators will also have the chance to develop new works that can be tested within the region, and presented to audiences at a future festival. Ahead of their collaboration with hcmf//, we’ll be profiling each of our Young Curators and getting to know their work. This time around, we talked to Claye Bowler, a Slaithwaite-based artist. Bowler creates work concerned with the archiving of history; he also runs the community space Yonder.
There are reasons certain people are remembered, and others aren’t. There are questions to ask about the histories we’re taught. A multidisciplinary artist based in Slaithwaite, Claye Bowler’s work investigates archiving, collection and canonisation, considering the political priorities of history. Why are certain people locked in, and others out? Bowler asks these questions through his art, using himself as a test method through what he describes as ‘self-archiving’: ‘I collect, record and archive my own experiences, that of a disabled, queer and trans person, to subvert the ways people like me are not held as valuable.’ Archiving is a conscious decision, inextricably tangled up with motive; through his work, Bowler seeks to assert a new kind of ‘value’, for those who have never been given it.
Bowler’s work is expanding: an experienced artist, he is now trying out a new role as curator. He moved to Slaithwaite as part of an artistic reboot, seeking new ideas and fresh focus. The result was Yonder, an arts venue run out of his new home. After an intensive period of time spent making Yonder into a proper space to both live and make art in, Bowler has taken on his debut curating role, ‘overseeing what’s happening in the space and supporting artists to make new works on their practice’. Through the art made at Yonder, and the structure of the space itself, Bowler addresses many of the ideas found in his art, placing importance on those who aren’t deemed so historically – and giving them a chance to assert themselves.
Yonder is a community space, and it was built as one: upon moving in, Bowler worked with friends old and new, inviting people to come over and lend a hand on odd chores. Over forty people contributed to Yonder, spending days painting walls, cleaning the space and clearing out the garden. For Bowler, it was crucial that the space start this way; through the exchange of skills and formation of new friendships, the space has become a haven for queer artists living in West Yorkshire. Yonder is more than just a residency space for artists: it’s a hub, Bowler placing importance on supportive scenes and community organising.
The things that helped Yonder on its way are still prevalent in what Bowler does today. He describes the residencies as more than just about making traditional art, but also ‘digging up potatoes and planting flowers’, each visitor putting down permanent roots in the space. Artists find a creative outlet in Yonder, but they also feed into that outlet, growing it for future residents. It’s a marked contrast from the artsworld as a whole, where physical spaces are often intimidating and elitist, and set up to replicate the models of other industries. Just as Bowler’s art rethinks how we collect history, his work with Yonder takes a critical look at how art spaces are set up, and for who. It was created in direct response to the formats that exist today – and how they shut out queer and disabled artists.
As people stream their way through the Covid-19 crisis, navigating art spaces virtually, Bowler sees an opportunity for the industry to address its failings around inclusion. Galleries and exhibitions are inaccessible spaces, a boundary blocking off art rather than an entrance into it; ‘The way people have been housebound now is making people aware of people who are housebound all the time, and the ways that galleries are not accessible to those people ever.’ For Bowler, the question is whether these creative online alternatives will be used going forward: will live streams and virtual galleries exist as physical spaces open again, for the people who have always needed them? Can physical spaces learn lessons, too?
Though sound has rarely interacted with Bowler’s visual work, he also makes music, working with traditional folk music and sound art. He runs Trans Yorkshire Choir, connecting singers across the region who want an environment to explore their voice in. Bowler is constantly exploring sound, and finding it in the movements of nature – ‘The way that I use sound in my life, the way I copy the sounds in the street, harmonise with the drone of a bus, imitate my cat’. Part of being a Young Curator at hcmf//, for Bowler, is being able to shift the focus of his visual work, to pair it with the music of his life. These two sides of Bowler’s art have been moving forward in parallel; He feels that now is the time for them to connect.
Bowler set up Yonder with the idea of curating in mind. Working with other people on their art was a key focus of the space; he hopes to offer residencies that wouldn’t be replicated in other art-making environments. The Young Curators’ Programme has come at the perfect time for Bowler, launched just as he was setting up his space, as he was starting to think more about what it means to interact with the art around him. ‘I saw myself as the curator of Yonder, so to have this mentorship is very fitting as someone who is just entering into curatorship, and seeing if that’s something I want to do’. Bowler wants to find out what exactly curating means, for him, and what kind of mutual processes curators and artists have with one another. ‘I want to know whether I want to go down this line, or be the one who wants to be curated instead’.