ARTISTS TALKING

Festial is a self-directed, year-long residency which artist Imogen Ashwin has recently undertaken in a largely unrestored medieval church in the village of Wood Dalling, roughly three miles from her home in North Norfolk.

The Festial project is supported by an Arts Council England Grants for the Arts award.

This project takes its name from an influential medieval book - a runaway bestseller that went through multiple editions. John Mirk's Festial is an early fifteenth century collection of sermons for the major saints and festivals of the church year, for use by priests who were not learned or ambitious enough to find sermon materials for themselves. These sermons relied heavily upon legends, exempla and popular tales.

The timetable for the residency was structured around some of the most important religious feasts of the medieval year. As we are now running thirteen days ahead of medieval time reckoning, the date for each festival was calculated using the Julian calendar. Imogen spent time at the site seeing what happened inside and outside: a meditative process through which she explored the limits of how far she found herself able to share in, empathise with and 'inhabit' the medieval world. Each visit saw her engaged in regular tasks and seasonal activities inspired by - although not re-enacting - some of the rituals appropriate to the medieval festival in question. In the course of her research, Imogen has come to feel that many issues of primary importance to medieval people lie at the heart of what it means to be human. Laying out her findings for inspection by the viewer, she is attempting to capture something of their resonance and to elicit a response that might not be entirely comfortable for their 21st century descendents.

An exhibition of work arising from the Festial residency will take place at the Nicholson Gallery, Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk from 26 September until 17 October 2008. Click here for further information.

Read Imogen's blog here.