The following is a construction and analysis of ‘Common Values’ as a continuing search to better understand and construct a sustainable and generous social soil.
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Where a Place Becomes a Site: Values (part 1), 1995–2013
In 1995 I constructed a faithful reproduction of the ‘Riddler’s’ jacket. The work was made out of specially dyed and printed Merino wool. With its ubiquitous black question marks against a lime green background the piece brought together my childhood fascination with the Riddler. With extravagant public expressions as clues of nefarious activity, each gesture seemed to me to make that place a site of the intention. It sharpened my lifelong fascination with questions as a ‘fuel’ of human achievement, imagination and thought.
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Hedley Street: Notions of Value, 2013
This is one of several similar works in relation to value that I am forming. I am interested in how values may change in differing places, cities and countries. This may be one of emphasis but may also reveal extremely different values between communities that may be only a few miles apart.
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A Garden of Walking Sticks, 2011–2013
A part of a larger installation piece by John Newling, From A Garden of Walking Sticks is to be divided up and given away to eighteen lucky winners of the prize draw for a unique usable art piece.
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Common Sense (Thomas Paine’s Soil)
I was asked by Robert Blackson, curator of the Temple Gallery in Philadelphia, to make a soil project. After some research I found out that Thomas Paine, after a meeting in London with Benjamin Franklin, emigrated to Philadelphia where he worked and published many pamphlets that were both visionary and revolutionary. I decided to construct soil from copies of Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’ and ‘Common Sense’ texts. Published in 1791 this book along of other Thomas Paine texts are acknowledged as revolutionary texts.
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Lungs, 2012
Installation /performance Invited artist for Contexts 2012 - The 2nd Sokolowsko Festival of Ephemeral Art., Curator, Malgosia Sady; Supported by the IN-SITU Foundation.
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Moringa Oleifera with Seed (Moringa Oleifera), 2012
Invited artist, Royal Academy Summer exhibition, London.
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Miracle Maps
I constructed this series of 3 works using many fragments formed from the studies and works of the Moringa Oleifera Trees. Leaf by leaf, over a period of 2 years, the works became a contemplative act of constructing an imagined cartography.
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Transfer: The relic of a Miracle 2011
On Wednesday the 9th of March I planted some 18 Moringa Oleifera ‘Miracle Tree’ seeds in small pots and placed them behind the curtain in the study room at Nottingham Contemporary. On Friday 18th of March the first shoots of the germinated trees were seen. Of the 18 seeds planted 14 germinated. It was from one of the 4 failed seeds that the ‘miracle tree’ tattoo emerged.
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Miracle Trees - Nottingham Contemporary 2011
In March of 2010 John Newling was approached to develop a work in collaboration with Bronislaw Szerszynski of the Department of Sociology and the ESRC Centre for the Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen), Lancaster University.
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688 Days: Remembering the Lemon Tree
The Lemon Tree & Me evolved as an intense co-relationship where the material expression of the work was the result of that relationship; a working from life; a love song; sung for 688 days. The Lemon Tree and Me (Tuesday 24th March 2009 - Wednesday 9th February 2011)
Read MoreSinging Uncertainty
Singing Uncertainty continues the thread of an earlier work. In 1994 Locus+ commissioned the project ‘Skeleton’ for All Saints Church, Newcastle Upon Tyne. A principal element of this project was a hymn book that had been edited to show only the questions that were written in the hymns.
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Redistribution / Permanence - Peterborough Soil (final phase)
The 4 phases of the Peterborough Soil project
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The Clearing (final installation)
“My hope is that the clearing will be happened upon by many and that the site will become a poetic convergence of material and meaning; a place of peace and illumination; a sited work that becomes a place.”
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Redistribution / Permanence
Redistribution / Permanence Peterborough Soil [final phase] Phase 4 of the project saw the constructed soil returned to the City of Peterborough. The soil was placed into the fabric of the newly constructed St Johns Square. The live event of this action ‘Redistribution’ saw the soil becoming a permanent element of the nourishment of the grassed area that people will stand, sit and walk across in the square. In this manner the soil that is metaphorically and actually a soil containing the images and texts of Peterborough submitted by people from Peterborough will forever be at a border between people and the earth, a kind of live archaeological presence; an intelligent soil enriched with a renewed belief in the values of us.
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Singing Uncertainty
A public artwork by John Newling. An a capella choral performance piece involving 150 members of the public explores the nature of doubt and the struggle for faith expressed in the Methodist Church’s hymn book.
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The Clearing - Part II
Read More'The Clearing is a space defined by nine Beech trees growing in soil constructed through the histories of their hinterland. My hope is that the clearing will be happened upon by many and that the site will become a poetic convergence of material and meaning; a place of peace and illumination.’JOHN NEWLING
The Clearing – A Notebook, 2010
"Gathering knowledge is something that our forebears have done for generations in pursuit of the spirit of the clearing. I hope that this notebook will encourage you to gather your own."
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Singing Uncertainty – The Fragility of a Longed for Certainty, 2010
Singing Uncertainty – The Fragility of a Longed for Certainty Published in 2010 as part of John Newling's commission for Sideshow 2010. Designed by Joff & Ollie
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Synthia II - code/soil/life
The work records an experimentation that is a relationship of meaning and materiality constructing, cultivating and reviewing a poetics of responsibility. It is a relationship that advocates an intelligent ecology based on values that are immanent in the complex workings of nature.
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