Performance in Landscape, Catherine Heard, Somerset

My Body. My Place

I sometimes respond to my habitat with my body - forming direct contact with the natural environment - this feels like a precursor to a painting - a 'getting to know you', before I put brush to paper. Working on a farm with rewilding at its core, I respond to what I find rather than staging elaborate interventions. These gestures are often minimal: pressing, holding, balancing and mimicking. There is a tension in the work between control and surrender, intention and accident. Moments of play, awkwardness and sometimes humour sit alongside a more focused, bodily awareness. I’m not trying to represent the landscape, but to enter into it briefly, to test how my body can sit within it, resist it, or become entangled with it. This work, is a continuation of performative work - carrying on from Hedgebank summer 2025.