Poppy Jackson: Pathways Home

Poppy lives and works from an isolated Suffolk flint cottage with her two young children, Elora and Wanda, surrounded by acres of meadows and woods that are mentioned in the Domesday Book.

Through Live Art in Rural UK, Poppy will be developing a year-long series of performances and actions in the surrounding landscape and further afield into Norfolk and Suffolk.

The live works will explore performance as a marker of presence in the land that connects embodied discovery of its history with its potential. All performances will be documented by local photographers and videographers and will build towards a larger event and an exhibition at the culmination of the project. Centring these works at the artist’s base will engage, develop and expand local performance art audiences, and establish the artist’s relationships with regional arts organisations, venues and educational partners.

During the Pathways Home programme, introductory workshops on performance art will be hosted in Diss, the nearest town. Poppy will also connect with performance artists based in the region, through which she aims to deepen East Anglian public and arts audiences’ understanding of current local performance and Live Art practices.

Live Art in Rural UK will enable the transformation of the artist’s home, studio and workspace into an ‘arts centre’ that can host artists workshops, residencies and events, whilst nurturing and amplifying the artist’s embodied practice.

Pathways Home culminated in the performance Tower, taking place in Wattisfield, Suffolk on 25 September 2024