Claye Bowler

So much love for these beaut photos of Dig Me A Grave which closed at @yspsculpture last month 🪦 Very much an exhibition about the light you can see outside of the grave, crawling out and leaving the grave empty whilst you go frolic in the sun instead, perfectly captured by @realbadtime 🙏

Dig Me a Grave has now closed for the third and final venue on its tour! So many thank yous to all involved and everyone who visited, travelled far and wide, entered into my grave. I'll post some more things soon but here is one of the songs that inspired lots of the work. "Who sits weeping on my grave and will not let me sleep??" What a mood The Unquiet Grave - trad folk

Thanks @sam.moore94 for such a lovely write up in @guardian ! Link in bio Top at @henrymooreinstitute open till 15th Jan !

Children are so much better at sculpture than any of us fr First day with @yorkshirecontemporary at Cross Flatts Park last Saturday, lots more chances to come and build your own pARCHIVE over June and August - Hunslet Festival, Sat 13 Jun, 11.30am–4pm (Grove Road, Hunslet) - Beeston Festival, Sat 27 Jun, 10am–5pm (Cross Flatts Park) - University of Leeds Family Arts Day, Sat 27 Jun, 11am–3pm (University of Leeds Campus, LS2 9JT) - And every Wed/Thur in August 12-3pm (Cross Flatts Park) . Thanks to @loxleywoodcraft for making these gorge make your own shelves

🌿 Introducing pARCHIVE 🌿 Join artist Claye Bowler @clayebowler this summer for a series of fun, creative sessions for families. Inspired by how museums collect and archive objects, you’ll help build a unique archive of play. pARCHIVE will be popping up at selected festivals and running every Wednesday and Thursday throughout August in Cross Flatts Park. We’re kicking things off at the Let’s Move South Leeds festival: 📆 Saturday 9 May ⏰ 12:00–3:00pm 📍 Cross Flatts Park, Beeston Come along to make, cast, find, bind, and play together! 🔗 Find out more via the link in our bio With thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund for their support ✨ Image Credit: Image courtesy of Claye Bowler #leeds400 #southleeds #leeds

✨ Artist Announcement ✨ We are delighted to share that Claye Bowler has been selected as the commissioned artist for our summer Art and Play activities in Cross Flatts Park! This commission is part of Yorkshire Contemporary’s Inside Out programme, focused on supporting creative play for children and families in Beeston and Beeston Hill. It forms part of the organisation’s artistic strategy of supporting continuous play, curiosity and creativity for people from all walks and stages of life. Claye will design and deliver the season of creative play sessions, drawing on his sculptural practice and experience in how museums collect and archive objects. Through nature inspired, playful activities, the project will engage audiences across South Leeds and create new meaningful moments this summer. Congratulations to Claye! To learn more about the artist, please see our latest journal post using the link in our bio. Image credit: 1. Image courtesy of Claye Bowler. 2 and 3 Claye Bowler, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Photography by Owen Richards.

@bro_mate and I were thinking a lot on our recent residency about Neolithic stones being places of gathering and community, but also drama. These sites would bring together people from neighbouring communities, would be meeting spaces bringing mundanity but also excitment and frivolity. This sparked some correlations with a common trope in trad folk songs, to come across someone hot in the fields and ask them out/fuck in a nearby grove. I've always romanticised that it will happen to me one day. We were also planning on visiting some known cruising sites in Cornwall and archiving them over the residency, but we both didn't get around to it, but also found out someone else is already doing it ! @cruisingarchaeology (Show at @studiovoltairelondon opens next week!) Sometimes it's nice when someone's already made the work you thought of, so you don't have to. Heading back from Cornwall through Dartmoor and coming across some stone circles, I realised that we had visited cruising sites all along as these stones would have been just that, or at the very least a spot for a pre-planned rendezvous. Here's me recreating and reliving the queer history of the stones and just waiting for someone to come across me. I'm sure they'll appear one day.. Here's some pics of that plus a plethora of other thoughts and moods 1 - Grey Wethers stone circles 2 - Ithell Colquhoun's drawings of Merry Maidens stone circle, brought to mind by a visit to @libitasibungu 's studio 3 - Grey Wethers stone circles 4 - @cruisingarchaeology 5 - Queen of May 6 - Queen Among the Heather ft train horn 7 - Lone the Ploughboy 8 - The Banks of the Sweet Primroses 9 - @janedoescomedy 10 - Found dandelion at Merry Maidens 11 - Mr Darcy in Pride & Prejudice (2005) 12-13 Grey Wethers stone circles Residency supported by @freelandsfoundation @porthmeorstudios

We found these shiny plastic 3D printed offerings inside Tregiffian Burial Chamber. I thought it would be funny to take a cast of them and multiply them so that if the original donor came back to check on their deposits, they'd see that they'd magically multiplied and also turned into stone (plaster). Additional one in latex, condom offering for the made up function, that I've decided is historically accurate, of this space as a sex chamber. Just dropped them off on my way out of Cornwall. Still have the moulds. Maybe I'll make more and distribute around. As part of @porthmeorstudios @freelandsfoundation residency with @bro_mate

Packing up after a busy fruitful month residency at @porthmeorstudios with @bro_mate supported by @freelandsfoundation Thanks to all who visited the open studios yesterday, and for all the lovely support and chats over the month. Big thanks to Porthmeor and Freelands Foundation for supporting residencies full of play and exploration. It's been the fourth year in a row I've done a spring residency in West Cornwall, and I'm not sure I'll be able to stop now.. More soon, but now I'm having a beach nap before I'm back in the real world

Oh no! I'm stuck in Mên-an-Tol 🤷‍♂️ 📷 @bro_mate @freelandsfoundation @porthmeorstudios resi

@bro_mate and I are having an open studio this coming Saturday at 5 Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, Cornwall 1-5pm We've been here in Cornwall for the last month exploring the mythic, neolithic & explicit landscape Ps, if delving into our expansive, deep, cavenous, veiny..research isn't enough for you..it's also St Ives kite festival just around the corner 1-3pm too Two together residency supported by Freelands Foundation @freelandsfoundation @porthmeorstudios

First two weeks of two together residency with @bro_mate at @porthmeorstudios with @freelandsfoundation ! We've been thinking a lot about holes, types of holes, function of holes Holes as hiding places, visibility, temptation, voyeurism, secrets, portals, emotion We're also having an open studio in 2 weeks to close our residency on 28th March, 1-5pm. Studio 5 (Don't let the photos fool you, there's been 30-50mph wind which blows every different type of weather throughout the day, everyday)