Amy Todman
artist and writer
×
Twig (Amy Todman, 2019)
Chapbook, 32 pp, edition of 100
Twig is a play in four acts. It is an intense encounter with twigs, a type of thing most often categorised as inanimate. The focus on twigs is absurd.
g(love) (Sad Press 2019)
if you had asked me then what I did, I said I was nothing. It wasn't a bad thing, more an aim for a life that no longer fit its order, a hand that no longer fit its glove. Being nothing was a unique experience. The poems were written in that moment.
[cover] (Brae Editions, 2014)
[cover] is an artists book that traces the loss of ‘E’ through a series of reflections on relationships between people, objects and events. Beginning with a small covered stone, it traces the life of several objects through drawings, contributed texts and reflections. It is formed around a series of statements written by the protagonist B, drawing on the thoughts, sketches and words of characters A – K.
Although concerned with the process of losing a loved one, and the importance of relationships, the book is equally an exploration of the nature and values of drawing, if also the processes by which decisions come to be made. Deeply personal, the book also speaks to a wider audience, particularly poignant for those who have been touched by the issues of loss that it raises, and have found their own ways to move forward.
Circle, 2015 (Edition of 5)
10 pp., tracing paper, digital print
Buddleia, 2015 (Edition of 5)
100 pp, digital print
The Buddleia grows behind a steel fence in a patch of wasteland beside the timber yard along the road from my flat. Beside the plant is a large, green glass recycling bin that moves, or is moved, every few days, to the right, left or centre of the plant.
When I noticed the Buddleia I was drawing circles in my studio, repeating the same form over and again. Circling became a thought process as well as a form to draw and I began to think of cycles: circadian, daily and monthly as well as those perhaps more hidden. I began to find connections between my own rhythms and those of the Buddleia neraby.
For 25 days I went to the Buddleia every day, measuring one part with a piece of thread and noting my observations of weather and time. I made a second thread measure, forming one into a circle and tying the other into a chain of thread circles.
Each of the imperfect circles is traced, or held within a digitally generated geometric circle. One form of representation traces another.
Buddleia was inspired by the herbal tradition, in particular the German physician Leonard Fuch’s De Historia Stirpum, first published in 1546. In this book, for the first time, each written description of a plant was accompanied by a corresponding image. This one-for-one description became increasingly significant over the next centuries, requiring that an ‘ideal’ image be created from which many individual plants might be identified.
Creating a type of visual description for a plant, like a tied-thread circle rather than mimetic representation, explores a cyclical relationship between plant and person which an emphasis on identification might miss.
For the Attention of Early British Antiquarians, A play in three parts.
Hospitalfield Interdisciplinary Residency, 2014
“Why may not the seeds of the rock plants be disposed of in the earth from the first as well as other seeds that are upon the earth, that they might also grow up shed their seed and produce their like, and if the sea hae the likeness of all things upon the land why mayn’t the bowels of the earth hae somewhat like unto it?”
Extract taken from two letters written by Mr. John Beaumont Junior of Stony-Easton in Somerset-shire, Concerning Rock-plants and their Growth, ‘Philosophical Transactions No. 129’, 1676.