Social making: nature, ritual and community

About the project: Our exhibition  – Social making: nature, ritual and community – is a culmination of participatory events linked to the four seasons with local volunteers from Cordwainers Grow and Ukrainians who have recently arrived in East London. At these seasonal gatherings we used plant and animal materials – some of them, like flax, grown by Cordwainers in the garden – to make Ukrainian folk ritual objects including motanka (guardian dolls), didukhs (wheat sheafs representing ancestor spirits) and hromovytsia candles to protect against storms. Embracing the collaborative mode of working, exchanges were developed over the project with the local performers and makers Olivia Armstrong, Maria Magdalena, Ganna and Vitalii Pryimak, Victoria Isai,  and Sofiya Marynyak. The side-by-side making and story exchanges about medieval magic and environments prompted by Sophie built connections between the communities, layering historical, ecological and cultural knowledge from medieval times to today.

Over this period, and for the exhibition Olha produced oil paintings that were informed by staging and witnessing the social making. The four paintings represent ritual objects made during the seasonal events. The are intended to bring the heightened and embodied experience of working with natural materials into the exhibition space.

What are the communities you’ve been working with and how will you introduce the process or your thoughts to the public (minimum of 50 words and maximum of 200 words)

We have worked with two community groups in East London Cordwainers Grown and recently arrived Ukrainians in east London.

Cordwainers Grow is a local social enterprise set up in 2014 that aims to increase the quality of biodiversity in the local area, and support the urban and peri-urban food growing movement to develop a more resilient food system. CG currently manages the Outdoor Classroom garden supported by Victoria Park, Parks Management & Engagement team, Tower Hamlets.

The experience of social making in an outdoor space during the staged events, shared historical knowledge, the playfulness and sense of sacredness, memories and meanings layered onto the objects, informed Olha’s representation of these objects in oil paint. The paintings aim to bring this experience into the exhibition space.

Embracing the collaborative mode of working, exchanges were developed over the project with the local performers and makers Olivia Armstrong, Maria Magdalena, Ganna and Vitalii Pryimak, Victoria Isai,  and Sofiya Marynyak.

We thank Hackney Council coordinators of Homes for Ukraine program for providing informational support.

We are particularly grateful to the UCL Trellis Public Art programme for supporting the development and the funding of this project, aiming at bring together artists, UCL researchers and east London communities to collaborate, create new knowledge, ideas and the potential for change or action.

About our group: Artist Olha Pryymak works with the experiences of Ukrainian diaspora through the lens of mythology, folklore and ecology. She addresses these themes with social practice – staging multisensory, participatory and collaborative performances – and painting.

Sophie Page is a historian of medieval magic, cosmology and living things (animals and plants). She has research interests and expertise in ritual, cosmological world views, folk traditions, magical objects, animals and literary narratives.

We are working with two local communities: Ukrainians who have recently arrived in East London on the Homes for Ukraine scheme, and the local social enterprise

Tree of Life: the Four Elements, painting detail, 2024, oil on linen, four panels 140×200 cm each

Olha

Sophie

Work-in-progress documentation:

All Souls event, Cordwainers, October 2023

All Souls event, Cordwainers, October 2023

End of Summer Stories event, Cordwainers, September 2023

Ice, flame and stars: Winter Stritennya gathering, January 2024