Lancaster based artist Louise Ann Wilson is well-known for creating performance art that is location specific, including the local Lancashire countryside. She is The Artistic Director of the Louise Ann Wilson Company, which creates performance projects deeply rooted in the chosen sites. The company’s latest work involves a series which focuses on the natural landscapes of the North of England, including Lancashire and the Yorkshire Dales. The performances explore human relationships with our environment, and the ways in which live performance can describe and articulate significant life events. Their work is the result of a close collaboration with people with knowledge of the local area and history, as well as a variety of artists and experts from other fields.
Two of the performances from this series were based near the artist’s Lancaster home. Still Life and Jack Scout are co-produced by Sap Dance as responses to locations on Lancashire’s Morecambe Bay. The piece that has gained most press attention however, must be Fissure; a site-specific walking performance in the Yorkshire Dales. Inspired by her sister’s battle with a brain tumour, Wilson worked with poet Elizabeth Burns, choreographer Nigel Stewart and Jocelyn Pook, alongside earth scientists and neuroscientists. The piece uses the pathways, caverns and fields of the natural landscape to articulate her feelings surrounding her sister’s death from cancer.
Despite the dark and depressing inspiration, Wilson says it is not intended to be this way as a performance. She says: “I wanted to make something beautiful out of something so terrible… I wanted to take people into a cave, a place underground where you could journey into the darkest place, and emerge back into the light”. More pieces have been commissioned by the National Theatre of Wales and Lantern House International, Cumbria.