House of Mercy (2022)

From Bolton to Bangkok, the global pandemic has forced us all indoors with limited opportunities for vital social contact. The House of Mercy Project is an international creative arts collaboration that has evolved during the Pandemic year, involving dance, music, photography, and fine art (painting). All the artists involved in the project have had to reinvent themselves in some way and learn to work in relative isolation without the stimulus of contact with live audiences and the dynamic of performance. However, the paradox is that although we may be personally isolated, often away from friends and family, communication via the internet has allowed us to work virtually with other artists in countries as far away as India and Turkey. The "House of Mercy" Project has its origins in the first lock-down period when musician/photographer Phil Curry and artist/singer Jeannie Clarke recorded their debut album at their kitchen table and released it online. One of the songs they recorded was House of Mercy, a powerful song written by Grammy-winning bluegrass and roots musician Sarah Jarosz. The idea then emerged to invite six dancers from Spain, France, India, Romania, and the UK to devise a dance piece to the House of Mercy song. Our principal intention was to explore how artists can remain creative despite being isolated with limited space and resources. The six dancers filmed their dance in their home environments using the space and the light available and sent it to Phil who made still images from the video and also to Jeannie, who used screenshots as inspiration for paintings of the dancers. As the project progressed over the lock-down year, it went through a number of iterations as we discussed developments to the dance via FaceTime and Zoom. Turkish architect, interdisciplinary artist, video artist, and filmmaker Can Aksoy also joined the project and became editor of a documentary film of the project, as well as creating his own experimental, short dance film. Over the past year and we have created over 40 artworks and hundreds of photographs. For the documentary section, Phil has also recorded interviews with the dancers where they describe how they personally dealt with the isolation of lock-down and how they developed their dance sequence. The House of Mercy Project was originally never intended for an audience. It was an experiment to discover whether it was possible to maintain our respective artistic practices online and keep us all creative and connected, ready to re-enter a post-Covid world. However, the sheer body and quality of work produced have far exceeded all our expectations, so we now find ourselves with something which deserves to be seen by the very audience we were denied due to the Pandemic. It is a document of creativity during a testing time for artists and creatives and a testament to international artistic collaboration. Our intention now is to curate both a virtual exhibition, which will exist online as well as a physical exhibition once we are all able to travel more freely.