Exhibition of Ebb Collective SUPPORTING MATERIAL

opening of the exhibition
June 20, 19:00 – 21:00 h, GMK (Šubićeva 29)
free entrance

In June 2024, Ebb Collective will be joining GMK to present Supporting Material – a site-specific residency and show, exploring natural and industrial support structures in relation to collective making and regenerative thinking.
Embarking on a split residency between Croatia and the UK, they’ll work together in full flow, before reaching low tide, when an edited display of work will be assembled, revealing sediments of their making process.

During their residency, Ebb Collective are exploring and emulating modular systems designed to support, dismantle and adapt. How can these structures support us in building an organically paced and connected practice? How can they help us construct a methodology for collective making that’s both regenerative and nurturing?

Taking scaffolding as a central theme for their residency, their reference point is the symbiotic relationship between the city cathedral’s elaborate scaffold system, the eroding limestone it encompasses and the ongoing reconstruction works taking place.

Their research has developed into an exploration of natural support structures interconnecting with sites of mass industry and construction. Key sites of interest trace a production line meandering from the disused Bizek limestone quarry, to the dilapidated Cementara Jedinstvo cement works, through to the city centre’s cathedral.

Through research and contextualisation within the city of Zagreb, Ebb Collective’s site-specific installation will be both archival and evolving. Processes of researching, foraging and collaging produce iterative matter, both found and fabricated. Temporal arrangements of ephemeral matter will be punctuated by modified hardware and construction materials – the possibility of deconstruction and reassemblage remaining as ever-present elements.

The installation will be a blended, visual representation of Ebb’s creation process, their time on the residency and experiences in the city of Zagreb.

A slow and sustainable approach to making ripples through their practice; working intuitively, aligning with natural cycles and focusing on the reuse of both ideas and materials, ensuring projects flow into and throughout one another.

Links to GMK’s working methodologies can be found through focus on self-management,
process led projects and the deconstruction of linear, hierarchical structures. Ebb’s practice not only aligns with GMK’s working model, but also interweaves the site, past projects and
publications into their making process. This will be evident in both their installation and the
workshops they’ll produce.

The remaining events will include:

  • workshop with the Zagreb School of Applied Art and Design: Saturday, June 15 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
  • free, public workshop for all interested citizens: Saturday, June 22, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. (registration at info@g-mk.hr)

Ebb Collective is an art collective from the UK that unites the work of artists Lisa Darrer, Claire Pritchard and Rosalind Wilson. Ebb’s practice emulates natural production and processes through cycles of growth and decay. Their projects embody the spaces they inhabit, exploring relationships to local and larger landscapes – working with urban environments and natural formations. Projects evolve through mediums and time, developing distinct narratives through the places they visit and iterations they take on.

Lisa Darrer’s work explores states of regeneration and questions Western ideals of the original. Producing  site-specific, durational installations, her work presents its own processes of creation and decreation. Lisa’s practice employs photography and natural materials such as hempcrete, mycelium and natural dyes as sculptural mediums, contrasting the permanence of the image and the temporal states of natural forms. 

Claire Pritchard is interested in questions of knowledge sharing or gaining through play, tactility and body – object relations. In adopting techniques of demonstration and instruction, she focuses on touch and abjection to discover the potential of materials, dissecting form and function. Claire questions the role of commercial and commodified products in how we move through the world, how bodily and organic matter relates to the domestic and industrial. She is engaged with feminist theory and body politics, trying to understand how daily design works for and against us.

Rosalind Wilson has a particular interest in how objects hold their histories and how the matter around us reflects societal value systems – what we care for, how we divide resources, and what and who is afforded our attention. She is interested in reframing familiar objects in altered scales, contexts and materials – to act as visual metaphors to address less-tangible subjects of social or climate injustice and more personal experiences of grief.