Project information:
“One for Sorrow, Two for Joy” at The Ice House, Great Yarmouth – 18.7.25
“Eleven Magpies” at Sweet Briar Marsh, Norwich – 19.7.25
Artist Statement
My practice centres the body, not separate from nature, but as material within it. My projects – anchored in ethics of care – foreground the deep interdependency and fragile interconnectedness inherent to all living beings. Working across disciplines – video, performance, social experiment and installation, I approach art as a socially engaged practice — actively cultivating care. Using the body as material, my work challenges convention and centres disabled bodies as a vital antidote to ableist values.
Through collaborative, community-driven processes, I reveal narratives of wildness, using natural materials, objects, sounds and video gathered from the margins, and elements that have been foraged, found, or discarded. Each project allows thinking around speculative possibilities for coexistence, where vulnerability is not a deficit but a source of transformative strength. My practice invites participants and audiences to reconsider what care means. My art is an ongoing experiment in radical with-being: an invitation to witness and nurture the shared fragility and resilience of our intertwined lives.
Context
This project is one body of research with two outcomes, both of which celebrated wild spaces and disabled bodies. I held a day of art experiences called “Eleven Magpies” at Sweet Briar Marsh, Norwich and, to facilitate a fully accessible event, I presented an immersive moving image exhibition with participatory elements in Great Yarmouth called “One for Sorrow, Two for Joy”.
My research engaged with wild and disabled bodies, interrogating the ways culture seeks to impose tameness on unruly forms—whether landscapes or bodies—and explored the intersections between so-called “normative” and wild. In my research I saw a parity between wild spaces and disabled bodies: refusing tameness, persistently resisting, subjected to regulation. Yet, in their resistance, both spaces and bodies become sites of generative possibility, where interdependence is not lack, but a way of being.
Through participatory events situated at Sweet Briar Marsh, an overlooked city corner on the edge – the margin – my project engaged communities in acts of collective being and listening. By using natural materials and discarded objects to create installations to show alongside the video screenings, the materials, like the bodies that gathered them, bore narratives and traces of interdependencies. By weaving these elements into installations and performances, I aim to make visible the networks of care that sustain life at the margins.
One for Sorrow, Two for Joy- documentation
Overview of “One for Sorrow, Two for Joy” which brought the wild “in”, allowing disability access to wild immersion.
Video capture of performances “Together I Can” and “Standing on One Leg Together”
Please see all of the videos I created for this project, centring disabled experience and wildness, screened at One for Sorrow, Two for Joy on my YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@clair egebbett8836?si=wvS6T2KJhqxtrHnm
Eleven Magpies- documentation
Public engagement with installations at “Eleven Magpies” – a passerby listens to the sound installation at fallen oak, participants take up the invitation to stop, rest and listen at the hospital blanket and visitors’ responses to the tree are displayed on the fence.
The soundscape at “Eleven Magpies”, shown below with BSL interpretation accessed via a QR code at the tree. For general passersby, people accessed the soundscape via headphones, allowing for quiet, individual contemplation with sight of the tree. I encouraged people to really listen to what the tree was telling them and respond with a message back (displayed on fence).
Eleven Magpies hosted events specifically for disabled bodies: the mobility scooter ramble and the mindfulness session. See the picture below and the video, giving some context to the group mindfulness exercise.
Special Thanks and More Information:
Many thanks for watching and engaging, thanks to my participants, my volunteers and the support network of my family and the staff and my peer group at Falmouth University. Thanks must also go to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust team, especially Matt, Mark and Sarah who work at Sweet Briar Marsh, and the team at The Ice House. Thanks to both organisations for believing in my vision and aiding me in delivery.
This project is not over! To follow the continuation of this project and to think more about radical with-living, please follow me on instagram @clairegebbett_art and watch out for future events and art happenings. The videos screened at One for Sorrow, Two for Joy are available on my YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@clairegebbett8836?si=livkdLi5roLWC65s