North Somerset Artist Commission, Amy Butlin

Amy is an interdisciplinary artist whose process-led practice is driven by an ongoing search for self. Drawing on themes such as the unconscious, memory, repetition and uncertainty, her work is informed by ideas from folklore, history, feminism and her own neurodiversity. Amy employs automatic writing and drawing, and uses everyday found materials, in an improvisational way that allows chance encounters to shift the direction of her work into film, photography, and installation.

For this new work, Over Old Ground, Amy focused on a walk from the land to the sea, between the sites of two bronze age barrows on Weston’s hillside, to investigate the complex nature of our relationship with place. A series of open-ended, overlapping explorations whilst walking the network of paths between these two points considered the nature of the pathways, the shifts and changes to the environment, and overlapping histories and mythologies. Combining drawing, writing, photography and textiles the work considers the complex, shifting nature of places and our relationships with them.

Grains of Sand is a programme of micro-commissions led by Super Culture for early career artists from North Somerset, with outcomes presented at the Promenade Weekender.