WB2016 artist Richard Layzell discusses Softly Softly, his performance for the festival, catapulting soft toys, and the artist use of alter egos.

Interview with Richard Layzell
by Emma Leach
by Emma Leach
WB2016 artist Richard Layzell discusses Softly Softly, his performance for the festival, catapulting soft toys, and the artist use of alter egos.
06.08.2017
Read Interviews Whitstable Biennale 2016by Ben Hawkins
Caitlin and Andrew Webb-Ellis on the development of their WB2016 video installation Parlour Walls, the relationship of water to memory and future directions.
01.06.2017
Read Interviews Whitstable Biennale 2016This video, shot by Reynir Hutber, documents Leslie Deere’s performance Modern Conjuring for Amateurs, which takes its title from the book by J.C. Cannell, a popular guide to learning tricks, conjuring and ventriloquism. Deere’s performance combined her performing arts dance background with her sonic arts training, as she created a shared experience, conjuring up sound and visuals with gesture.
12.06.2016
Watch Artworks Music Performance Whitstable Biennale 2016This video documents Hear What You Eat, a very special kind of symposium/dinner party held for Whitstable Biennale 2016 by musician Matthew Herbert and chef Rosie Sykes. (50m23s)
12.06.2016
Watch Food Music Performance Whitstable Biennale 2016The acclaimed writer Philip Hoare is joined by collaborator and Whitstable Biennale 2016 artist Jessica Sarah Rinland to discuss the whales, marine life and ecology. (1h20m)
12.06.2016
Listen Discussion Whitstable Biennale 2016Created by Siobhan Davies and filmmaker David Hinton in 2012, All This Can Happen is a film constructed entirely from archive photographs and footage from the earliest days of cinema. Whitstable Biennale screened All This Can Happen on 8 June 2016) 2016. This was followed by this conversation between Davies and Whitstable Biennale 2016 Cinema curator Gareth Evans. (19m27s)
08.06.2016
Listen Discussion Whitstable Biennale 2016Celebrated painter Rose Wylie takes a keen interest in cinema, and references from film spill into her work.
On 5 June 2016, in a discussion hosted by art writer Skye Sherwin, Wylie talked to artist filmmaker Ben Rivers, about painting, film, and being the subject of Rivers’ film portrait, What Means Something, which was screened after the discussion. (57m)
05.06.2016
Listen Interviews Whitstable Biennale 2016This video, filmed by Reynir Hutber, documents Richard Layzell’s performance Softly Softly, an elemental journey exploring suspension, elasticity, anthropomorphism and flight.Taking place in a then undisclosed location in Whitstable, it invited participants to uncover the universal in the everyday, the endangered in the familiar, function and form, expectation and humility, success and failure, tension and release, pathos and play. (23m31s)
04.06.2016
Watch Artworks Performance Whitstable Biennale 2016This video documents The iScreamers, the performance which opened Whitstable Biennale 2016: a consideration of ‘the cool confection’ in song and dance. Artist Marcia Farquhar draws on the dark side of ice cream’s history in a semi-autobiographical, psycho-geographical, socio-economical lecture accompanied by action painting and live music. (45m18s)
04.06.2016
Watch Artworks Performance Whitstable Biennale 2016A recording of the first of the two salons Kötting presented at Whitstable Biennale 2016. Kötting explores the notion of ‘atmosphere’, and how it might be experienced in a sonic, visual or textual way. (1h33m)
04.06.2016
Listen Essays Whitstable Biennale 2016This symposium, organised by Silke Panse and Connal Parsley, invited academics and artists to explore the relationship of ethics to contemporary art making. Watch a selection of presentations, originally live-streamed on 3 June 2016 by thisistomorrow.com.
03.06.2016
Watch Discussion Whitstable Biennale 2016Read about the 2016 Whitstable Biennale: The Faraway Nearby.
02.06.2016
Read Whitstable Biennale 2016The third in a series of posts by WB2016 artist Trish Scott discussing the development of Medium: her new work for the festival, and her collaboration with psychologist Dr Ian Hocking.
01.06.2016
Read Interviews Whitstable Biennale 2016The second in a series of posts by WB2016 artist Trish Scott discussing the development of Medium: her new work for the festival, and her collaboration with psychologist Dr Ian Hocking.
16.05.2016
Read Artworks Whitstable Biennale 2016by Kiira Laurikka
Mikhail Karikis talks to Kiira Laurikka about his WB2016 work ‘Ain’t Got No Fear’, made over the course of eighteen months with a group of teenagers on the Isle of Grain.
16.05.2016
Read Interviews Whitstable Biennale 2016