If It Thunders on All Fool's Day

If It Thunders on All Fool’s Day was a residency and exhibition held at Eastside Projects (Birmingham), convened by artist–curator Dinosaur Kilby.

The project brought together three collaborative artist-led groups – GLOAM (Sheffield), Chaos Magic (Nottingham), and The Field (Derbyshire) – for a week intensive of co-inhabiting, co-thinking, and open-ended making. Functioning as part exhibition, part gathering, and part collaborative experiment, If It Thunders on All Fool’s Day was designed to embrace uncertainty as a generative method. Rather than being outcome-driven, the project focused on the fertile possibilities that emerge through gathering, exploring how collaboration, ritual, and co-habitation inform the production of new practices and networks.

As part of this, Sharples produced a site-responsive performance (and waters carry it, 2023) that transformed the gallery into a ceremonial site, allowing artists from each group and members of the public to come together to assemble and exchange thoughts.

Exhibition & Residency with GLOAM, The Field, Chaos Magic, Ishmail De Niro, Leah Hickey. GLOAM artists: Victoria Sharples, Stu Burke, Thomas Lee Griffiths, Rose Hedy Squires. The Field artists: Sean Roy Parker, Adam Grainger, Sonia Odedra, Dudley Dream–Walsh, Milly Melbourne. Maggie, Will. Chaos Magic artists: Chloe Willis, Francis Slip, Harry Martin, Tomas Corbettm, Winter Beaumont.