Promenade Exchange: Caroline Wendling Artist in Residence
Caroline Wending stayed at Promenade Exchange from end of August for 2 weeks. This is what she says:
I liked to describe the residency by starting with the back garden door opening to the sea. I have never stayed so close to the sea. The garden frames the view to the world beyond the walls and door. The sea provided me with time to walk along the shore after long days spent at Edinburgh Printmakers. Time to contemplate and watch the colours change. I loved finding seaweed with shells still attached to it; some made their way back to the garden. I took daily care of the flax gathering. Each day a few more got ripe, they were added to the growing bunch that I took in to dry. The flax seeds were part of Christine Borland’s #Lineation, lockdown flax project. Christine sadly passed away earlier in the summer, caring for the flax became an act of respect for Christine; my garden responsibility.
Over several years now I have been developing a body of work exploring our relationship to plants. I find myself gathering plants often in the form of a few leaves and flowers in every place I spent time, in the surroundings of my place of residence. I translate the plants into drawings, prints, embroidery and installations, creating botanical images with futuristic imagining. Plants have been gathered by humans first for survival, then for production through cultivation and more recently for pleasure with colonisation and greenhouses. The seeds are disseminated around the world not only by insects and birds or through transport but by the interest and often the greed of the human race. I often find the same plants in places thousands of miles away. For Promenade Exchange, I was keen to develop a visual language using monotype techniques. I made large prints of several gatherings and also one of Claudia’s garden including Christine’s flax. All produced at Edinburgh Printworks within their artist in residence scheme.
Caroline Wendling is a French artist living in Cambridgeshire, where she listens to the land and follows its stories. Through walking, drawing, printmaking, sound and performance, she explores belonging, friendship and the possibility of greener futures. Her work grows from encounters with people, plants and places, weaving together myth, memory and imagination. In 2015, she created White Wood with Deveron Projects in Huntly, planting the seeds of a living artwork. Since then, her projects have travelled from Cambridge to Finland and Portugal. Her recent work, Taking Plant, celebrates the intimate, sometimes surprising relationships we share with the botanical world.
