Ranch Summer Residencies 2024

The summer has gone now, but we will be launching our 2024 Residency catalogue at the Greyhound Pub in Hendon 25-31 Oct 2024. 

A very productive session this one, colourful and thoughtful. We will add further images to this post in the next days.

Jeffrey Adjei, Jon Shmulevitch, Dom Chu, Robyn Lammiman, Kavuyan Arivanandan, Faezeh Fathi, Kristina Kotov


a tribute to Mr Serra


While doing some maintenance at the Ranch in April, the news surfaced of Mr Serra's passing. The circle in, line and circle out' was not done deliberately, but as both a gesture of located space at the Ranch and maintaining a flourishing willow population. The thought of Mr Serra's work was reminiscing. 

I am not a specialist of willows but this species has a reputation of extensive breeding.

Managing the growth to keep some water movement through the Ranch, to keep the mosquitoes at bay in the summer months is always a challenge, and these needed to be cut while the stem diameter was manageable - by hand.

And so this arrangement. The outhouse and bridge frame this area, a small urban oasis of circles, holes and lines. Not cars and patched asphalt in a vacant street but small gestures which comprise movements around, in and through. Perhaps the colour tones and frosty air settled the aura, in silence.

the Ranch Summer Residency session 2024

We've launched the 2024 Summer residency.

Get in touch to express interest.

We are extending the deadline to pass some hand-in moments- though spaces are limited. These sessions are based on first come first serve basis and kept small in number of participants.

Please do get in touch by email or instagram message or other method if you are interested. The poster is below with further details. Browse through this blog and ISSUU catalogues on the nature of this collective rural slow space for making things from things we find we encounter or from your own interests. We all do this, there is little hierarchy.

If you are interested in applying please get in touch via the insta QR code below, we will send you a brief questionnaire to get to know you a bit better.

Look forward to hear from you or if you might be in the neighbourhood to stop by for a visit. 





Fall Residencies 2023

We were amazingly lucky to squeeze in a Fall Residency, our first. We planned and hope to be able to host one for several years delayed for all sorts of reasons...As for many these events, they tend to be outside day jobs, other types of practice, while this is part of the practice of helping breath life into the everyday ponderings. It is healing and necessary interlude. Managing, maintenance, butting up to and weaving into the everyday of the Ranch, its beavers, neighbours, the seasons.

The season was on the cusp of winter. The stillness and silence quite unlike Summer Residency Sessions, as these are a cacophony of conversations, scores and symphonies- the Ranch at the end of November is a John Cage 4'33" - all 96 hours of it - barely audible.



With thanks to ToolToy Project (Maegan Icke & Rachel Jones) & Jon Shmulevich for all the laughs, help with covering boar digs (sadly we missed the truffles), clearing trees for the Big Barn to breath again, beaver shenanigans and exploring encounters during that extended weekend.

Photos by Rachel Jones.

The zine of the Residency will be available to view soon. Meanwhile a few excerpts are here including the playlists :




As I write this the news of Paul Auster's passing has been announced. An homage to his influence on these Silences, Coincidences & Fate which are parts and layers acknowledged at the Ranch on site and off. 



Summer Residencies 2023 an Exhibition UCA- Ranch [reboot]










We opened on Friday with a small gathering some excepts from this summer's reboot residency session. We launched the draft of the annual catalogue as well. Once we have all the grammar ironed out, we will post the link here. If there is anyone interested in a hard copy of this eventual publication or others please get in touch. The handheld version works nicely.


All accolades go to the Ranchers of 2023, their help and perseverance for the exhibition but mostly to withstand the weather, the unknowns and respond to the on site time with grace, grit and care while developing and making their ideas, helping each other out, cooking and experimenting with this cocktail under the Ranch sky.

Diya Seepaul

Dom Chu

Fay Fathi

Jeffrey Adjei

Tanchho Lawati

Zain Azhar

& myself Kristina Kotov

With Jon Shmulevich (online in London) and the inhabitants of Stučių hamlet.


Royal Academy selection- Taking the Barn for a Walk


Gabor Stark and I were short listed for the Royal Academy Summer Show event a few weeks back. We packaged up the little Barnies carefully, Gabor taking much care with the box, myself thinking we needed much more bubblewrap and string but in the end we had a nice package with clear instructions and the required Green label. We dutifully delivered the little Barnies to the Royal Academy from Canterbury via Green Street in East London.



The annual exhibition, running without interruption since 1769, features work by leading artists, Royal Academicians, and household names as well as new and emerging talent. Anyone can submit their work and, if their work is selected by the RA's panel of artists, goes on display at the Main Galleries. This year, the Architecture Room is curated by architect Peter Barber RA, and focuses on the role of the making and the hand-made in the design process. 

‘Taking the Barn for a Walk’ began back in 2014 as a conversation between Gabor and myself, Kristina Kotov. As part of the 'Ghost of Barn 2b' project (scan-archived with ScanLAB Ltd) I prepared the barn to be moved – labelling, dis-mantling, assessing timbers, moving and re-assembling it in a safer location on the Ranch site – and migrated three 2m-long purlins as corpses (unusable for re-assembly) to the UK. Gabor's timber piece sat under his desk in Canterbury for some 8 years until last summer. 

“Since 2014, the plan has always been to carve the drifting piece of wood into little barns, to mount them on spindly legs, to repatriate the seemingly walking creatures, and to let them roam through their indigenous landscape again. As it turned out, taking a barn for a walk takes much longer than you think.” 


Gabor's blog and extended writing is here:
The Ranch catalogues on ISSUU Ranch20 Part 1 and Ranch 22Part 2 contain Gabor's specific text and images as well as each year's collective moments with further installs and writings. 


The exhibition opens on 12 June 2023
Royal Academy of Arts,
Burlington House, Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD
12 June- 20 August 2023

Peter Barber's curation is further explained here. If anyone is around please stop by.







ISSUU publications*

UPDATE: We have happily managed to secure a discount with ISSUU to reinstate the access to our online publications. 2023 May 6th

The next small thing to resolve is writing text rather than html for updates here in this blog.

Watch this space. 


Meanwhile our Instagram and Facebook (social) page is still working as far as we know.

We are often silent but on occasion have bursts of content, this is our normal state.

Thanks again for your patience.

The Ranch community


Ranch residencies 2022- the Part 2 publication

 Here it is, the publication of our collective endeavours from this past summer Part 2


This issue has a dust sleeve for the published versions. 

Thank you to UCA School of Architecture for this first print run. For printed orders please refer to the Blurb link here.



Ranch Session Residencies Part 2_2022

we anticipated for 2 years this visit in physical time - our Part 2 in 2022

listening

undoing*

we received

we listened again

we observed alchemical changing of light - locations of intensity conjuring unearthly beauty, delights of relics - so often mentioned this year - of time when we could gather, merging past and present*

measured and marked, weaving 

    from this light, colour, sound

some danced, immersed in synched coincidence, in a frequency of a small orchestra of strings

experimenting with rainbow pigments - we re'marked

mapped in memory of the photograph: washed, rained and diluted

we made space for ourselves in this meadowed landscape, small rooms, moments

we played as a kind of resistance**


*title of Annemarie Piscaer's temporary wall

**grabbed from the back cover of Rebecca Solnit's 'Orwell's Roses'

...Kristina Kotov 2022


Thank you to everyone who travelled and supported from near & further away, encouraging this residency session to occur especially:

2022_ ranch residencies participants Part 2*:

Annemarie Piscaer

Charissa Turner

Dimitra Voutsi

Diya Seepaul

Faezeh Fathi

Jeffrey Adjei

Jon Shmulevitch

Kristina Kotov

Maegan Icke

Nicola Tsioupra

inhabitants of Stučių kaimas

+

Chris Daniel

Declan Ralph

Niall Healy

Rachel Jones

Tanchho Lawati





















The Ranch 2021 Exhibition - Film

Hello, 

It's been some time since our last post. Our Covid inspired 1 room exhibition last summer was lovely to do as a precursor and meanwhile Part 2 to our remote session back in 2020.

We tentatively hoped to travel this year in the Spring, several events overtaking our decision to travel - to hold our position and wait to see what summer may bring.

Looking back in January while preparing for our UCA School of Architecture MultiStorey Lecture series- Staff Research Part 2 thoughts and ideas re-appeared as memories of the title of the 2020 session ' Rituals of anticipation' whatever that may entail. The film had a launch of sorts that evening. 

This version is a slightly edited version. The soundtrack is a collaboration with Gabor Stark from the 2020 Part 1 remote sessions 'Coda to a Lithuanian Landscape'.

This FILM may be still edited but it's time to let it go - again. There is much to add, films to include, anecdotes and stories yet to share.

Thank you again to Daiva for her continuous film take & lone Ranch 21 Participant and curator. 

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