SPARK #32: Artist Diagrams as part of Modernity’s end-of-life care

Diagrams have power. They can show relationships, dynamics, mechanisms, compatibilities; they have the potential to dehierarchicalise information and help us grapple with complexity; they can upend our understanding of the world we live in. Right now we are breaching multiple ecological limits while the authoritarian right becomes ever more powerful. To paraphrase theorist and artist Simon O’Sullivan, what diagrams do we need to get us out of this impasse?

In her 2021 book Hospicing Modernity, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira describes modernity as a worlding story, one that presents itself “as a general project of civilisation that seeks to engineer society through humanism, reason, science, progress, and technology” but that rests on a foundation of violent extraction, exploitation and ecocide that is leading to climate breakdown. We need to enable modernity to die a good death in order for something better to be born, but we will only be able to create something genuinely different if we first become aware and suspicious of what modernity allows us to desire and imagine.

Drawing on de Oliveira’s idea of the diagram as entity, something that moves things in the world, artist and SPARK co-ordinator Jane Lawson leads a session in which we will ponder and draw our way through how diagrams can be a part of modernity’s end-of-life care, touching on core questions such as:

• Do we need to imagine the future before we can build it?
• In what ways can diagrams help us face our reality with humility and accountability?
• How can diagrams show multiple contradictory truths?
• Can new forms of diagram help us visualise a new kind of future?

-----------------------

Bring things that you enjoy drawing with and on

-----------------------

Jane Lawson works with diagrams in order to understand the structures and processes that shape the world we live in, and with fungi to try and loosen the grip of capitalist realism on our collective imagination. She is influenced by the US Radical Mycology movement which posits that close contact with the resilient and interconnected lifeworlds of fungi can help us learn how to come into better relations to other beings and the world around us.

Jane has exhibited nationally and internationally since graduating from the University of Salford in 2012. Recent projects include Being Fungal (UK Fungus day event for Heart of Glass, 2023); Detox to Delish (part of A Modest Show, 2022); a poster for Jade Montserrat’s publication Tender Order (for Precarious Straits, 2021). In 2023 she completed the MA in Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths, where she focussed on bringing people close to fungi through as many senses as possible.

Before training as an artist, Jane was a climate activist and a writer-researcher for Ethical Consumer magazine. Jane was part of the ten-strong group that co-curated Manchester Art Gallery’s Climate Justice gallery in 2021/2, using the Gallery’s collection to highlight narratives around colonialism and extractivism. She is also Artist Environmental Lead at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, where she leads on the gallery's environmental reporting and action plans, provide enviro data for our funders and stakeholders, feeds into various aspects of the gallery's activities, and co-ordinates SPARK.

Her badly-in-need-of-updating website is https://www.janelawson.co.uk/ and Insta is https://www.instagram.com/msjanelawson/

SPARK
The SPARK network was set up by Castlefield Gallery in 2022 to facilitate a Greater Manchester/North West-based network of artists wanting to intervene in the climate crisis. The gallery initiated SPARK in response to the high demand for places on the 2021/22 SUSTAIN programme focussed on low carbon artmaking. 

SPARK #32 follows SPARK sessions at Manchester Art Gallery, Rogue, The Birley (Preston), Eccles Friends Meeting House, Manchester Museum, AIR Gallery, Paradise Works, Editional Studio, Cadishead and Little Woolden Moss, Gallery Oldham, the John Rylands Library, Dunham Massey, Lindow Moss, Castlefield Viaduct, Gallery Oldham and The Atkinson. At the end of 2023 SPARK held a group exhibition, also called SPARK, and events programme at Rogue Studios.

Castlefield Gallery continues to provide admin and co-ordination support via its Artist Environmental Lead, Jane Lawson.

https://www.instagram.com/sparkartistsnetwork/

Directions
Castlefield Gallery is 3 minutes walk from Deansgate rail and Metrolink stations; directions available here https://www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk/visit/

The gallery is wheelchair accessible

Image
Jane Lawson: Design work for Soil Fungus Carbon Care poster for Tender Order (2021)