An old friend of mine, Sam Treadaway, is a British artist, currently living and working in Bristol. His multidisciplinary practice includes: sculpture, book-arts, scent works, and occasional live events. Making use of existing frictions between aesthetic form and utilitarian function, he edits and re-aligns found objects, structures, and systems thus generating new outcomes. The interplay between the arts and other fields of knowledge, such as philosophy and science, often inform these processes – www.samtreadaway.com

For the past few weeks Sam has been resident artist at AirSpace gallery in Stoke-on-Trent and his work can be found there until 23 June.

“During my residency project titled, Rise,I have temporarily converted the gallery into a micro-brewery and artisan bakery, to explore the profoundly social role that food plays within society, as a primary source of sharing and as a manifestation of altruism. With a focus on relational activities of exchange and collaboration, and working with locally sourced produce, ten gallons of Mead (honey wine) and over 100 loaves of bread (connected by their key alchemic ingredient of yeast) have been produced at the gallery. Fresh bread has been gifted to gallery visitors each a.m. and the project has included a free participatory bread making workshop (with a mobile wood-fired bread oven) in collaboration with B-Arts (www.b-arts.org.uk).

As my practice as an artist often includes works with scent and the sense of smell, during this project I have been particularly interested to test how the everyday aromas of the raw materials (honey, flour, yeast, and water) and the processes of fermentation and bakery, circulate and are experienced within AirSpace. Parallel to this I have experimented with other methods of diffusing these scents (such as  the smell of honey) within the gallery to further my enquiry into the unique ability of smell to simultaneously fill and empty a given space and transcend fixed boundaries.”

Rise will conclude with a ‘Mead-In’ gathering, at AirSpace gallery, on Thursday 23rd of June 2016, from 7–9 pm. This celebratory event will include a Mead tasting and works in progress developed during the residency project.

Rise has received support ‘in kind’ from: AirSpace Gallery; Young’s Home Brew; B-Arts; Shipton Mill, Hillbrook Apiaries; The Co-operative; Stable Cottage Apiaries.