Herbert
Working across film, installation, and community action, artist Gregory Herbert seeks to explore the spaces between species. His practice centres on collaboration with both human and more-than-human participants, asking how we can engage and activate support within an ecosystem in a way that avoids extractivism, and looking instead to models of mutuality and solidarity.
Film is a key ongoing strand to Herbert’s practice, combining a digital vernacular with more recent investigations into sustainable methods of film production. Herbert often utilises film-making as part of his research process, developing projects through ongoing practice and experimentation. Practice, research, and content are closely interwoven, informing each other in a continual feedback loop that echoes the symbiotic cycles of the more-than-human world.
There are further parallels between Herbert’s approach to collaborating with other artists and practitioners on the one hand, and the role of cross-species collaboration on the other. He is interested in interrogating the spaces between species, while considering the complex ethics of working within those spaces. These are the places where symbiosis takes place, such as the meeting points of plants and fungi for nutrient exchange, which are essential for the continuation of life on earth.
Herbert repeatedly questions how he can engage with people about the spaces we’re living in, and the wider implications of the systems we live under, attempting to make those conversations open and inclusive. He works both within and outside of a gallery setting, as well as through Chopping Club, a cooking and eating group examining food production systems run in partnership with Niamh Riordan.
He is developing his current project The Hum as a form of abstract opera, taking inspiration from the etymological root of the word “opera” which means “work”. Incorporating collaborations with a sound designer and a choir, the project foregrounds the work and resurgence of multi-species assemblages. Through The Hum, Herbert draws on the potential for storytelling outside of the gallery space, considering how interacting with people in this hybrid context might create action around issues such as species loss and the climate crisis, or prompt radical thought about our relationships with surrounding ecologies.
Contact; Gregoryherbertart@gmail.com
@Gregoryherbertart