Georgina Watson

Primarily, The Place Exchange was a sharing of a missed place through writing and spoken word. However, through its many layers, it was also a sharing of loss, grief and hope as each participant reflected on and shared their intimate thoughts and feelings about a place they miss and would like to revisit once the restrictions allow.

Mercurial Mist was conceived as the writing-strand of Everything Forever, March 2021, and was co-programmed and edited by Anita Marante, Effy Harle and Georgina Watson.

Across all iterations, Mercurial Mist remains a collaborative and de-hierarchised bringing together of text, images and language. First, the works were piled into the online blog (mercurialmist.tumblr.com), while a daily earmarked text appeared on the Everything Forever website before unfolding into a print-at-home iteration. Across all iterations each work took up the same amount of conceptual space, sitting next to each other, ready to be moved, scratched, folded, torn and rearranged. The formats required participation from the reader, inviting a sense of usership that took the act of reading further towards manipulation of language.

Sitting alongside the publications, three workshops activated the publications’ approach to language. First, a poetry workshop with Hana Noorali and Lynton Talbot, focused on ideas of authorship, collaboration and productivity to explore how poetry can be a counter-hegemonic technology. The second event was a writing and poetry share organised with Elena Lo Presti and Hannah Charlotte, artists from the RCA were invited to bring along their unfinished/finished, rough/polished and legible/illegible writing to share in small groups before discussing their own and others writing. The final event was the print-at-home iteration launch, organised in collaboration with Hattie Morrison, the founder of Scrawl.writing. This generative event showcased the publication while also generating more responses and writing, expanding the themes of collaboration and mutation beyond the pages of Mercurial Mist.

A collection of four poems, each written to, from and around a different photograph from Georgina's childhood. Through a difference in time and knowledge between the then and now, she reflects on her relationship with rurality, place and family.

The collection of four poems, which form Moments in Landscape, have been made into a limited edition of 25 hand-bound and letter-pressed books. Each B7 size (87mmx125mm) book includes all four poems across 24 pages, is printed on high-quality 118gsm paper and is bound using hand-dyed linen thread. Alongside each of the poems sit a series of pencil drawings that are unique to each book within the edition. Through these delicate drawings, Georgina hopes to emulate her feelings towards each of the places and moments that the poems explore.

The edition of 25 are available to purchase via Shopify at the link above and will be shown at Cromwell Place between 21-25 July 2021.