Warmest congratulations to Holly Bynoe, whose video “How to Sway on Crick Hill” is included in the collective exhibition “A Strange Kind of Knowing,” curated by Olivia Penrose Punnett for Arusha Gallery (London) and the Haarlem Gallery (Wirksworth).

Arusha Gallery London, December 7-14 December, 2021

Haarlem Gallery, Wirksworth, February 5 to March 13, 2022

Description: Arusha Gallery and Haarlem Gallery are pleased to announce “A Strange Kind of Knowing,” a touring exhibition of new commissions and recent work exploring the land, seasonal cycles, natural phenomena, intuition and nuance. Artists Verity Birt, Holly Bynoe, Kristina Chan, Fourthland, Susan Hiller, Katja Hock, Coral Kindred-Boothby, Penny McCarthy, Kate McMillan, Aimée Parrott, Chantal Powell, Tai Shani, and Eleanor May Watson present works on paper, paintings, sculpture, video and installations that draw on alternative, marginalised and embodied ideas of knowledge intrinsically connected to the natural world.

Artist, spiritualist and medicine woman Holly Bynoe’s film of the gentle movement of wild cane fronds at twilight – How to Sway on Crick Hill (2020) – draws on her deep interest in the spiritual and healing properties of plants, regenerative agriculture and ways of undoing the ‘plantationocene’. The work captures the ritual of walking, looking and listening in on a small plot of wilding land in St James in Barbados, which has since been razed to the ground as part of 40-year development programme.

“How to Sway on Crick Hill” (2020) captures the ritual of walking, observing and listening into the wildness, freedom and all-sustaining nature around us. Shot in St. James, Barbados, a parish undergoing enormous development since the 80s, this small plot of wilding land presents an apothecary of care to the body, mind and spirit. Beneath the feet, layers of fertile soil, limestone, mycorrhizae, vermicast, and Earth essence provide the foundation of living, being and elevation.

Wild grasses, botanicals and cane, sway in the evening new moon breeze. Cane blooms erupt seasonally, reminding us of the evolving nature of post-colonial, post-plantation futures.

• What might these grasses teach us about resiliencies?
• What might the winds of renewal bring in if we restore our balance with Pachamama?
• What knowledge might the ground bring in to teach us about recovering from postcolonial traumas?
• How do we reclaim gentrified scared land?
• How do we grieve our birthrights?

In October 2021 when I returned to Barbados, I saw that the piece of land was razed.

Holly Bynoe is an independent curator, writer, artist, educator, spiritualist, Earth Ally and researcher from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. She is part of The Hub Collective Inc, developing their sustainable, regenerative, environmental and intergenerational pillars. She is co-founder of Sour Grass, a curatorial agency supporting contemporary Caribbean art practice, co-founder of Tilting Axis, an annual regional meeting charting arts activism, de-colonial methodologies and models of creative sustainability, a co-founder of ARC Magazine and a co-director of Caribbean Linked, a regional residency programme held annually in Aruba supporting cultural exchange. Bynoe was Chief Curator of the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas 2014-2019. https://hollybynoe.com/

See more at https://www.frieze.com/event/strange-kind-knowing and  https://hollybynoe.com/writing…/a-strange-kind-of-knowing