Artist Statement
Tim Southall is an artist who seeks collaborative opportunities. As a Quaker, he is guided by the principles of Equality, Truth, Integrity, Simplicity and Sustainability.
Through his engagements in the land, sculptures and drawings, he highlights environmental or social justice issues. His investigative walks in the Avon Valley led this year to the Hidden History art walks with Bristol Quakers learning together about the extent of Quaker involvement in the brass industry in the 18th century and the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Afrikans. He joined Richard White on walks around the estates of families in Bristol enriched by ‘slavery compensation’ which has encouraged him to explore the Duchy of Cornwall's estates and the Langton Family. His land art at Newton Park culminated in an event with Fine Art students who helped install the foundations of a stone folly: Mash Castle. The photographs and recorded sounds of this collaboration were installed in an exhibition that included Mash Castle Tower a 1:5 scale maquette created in cardboard, glue and paper-mâché (made from twenty years of shredded 121 notes).
With the dancers Rose Zhang and Gabrielle Hardy and pianist Simon Tait he collaborated in May on a performance: Redressing and Renewal at the Holburne Museum. The dancers, responded to a poem, narrated by the artist, by Robert Nugent, an eighteenth-century parliamentarian in denial of the injustices of slavery and an extract of Ottabah Cuguano, a freedman and abolitionist, who showed defiance and foresight about reparations. Open to Truth, the artists brass vessel used in this performance, was later displayed in Play the Museum at the Holburne Museum as a provocation to Gainsborough’s portrait of Nugent; drawing viewers attention to these injustices and encourage them to be open to reparations.
Tim Southall, has exhibited in a range of exhibitions in Bath and Bristol. He displayed a collaborative artwork with David Alesworth in Karachi in 2021, he was shortlisted for the Lucca Biennale in 2022 and was a resident ‘land’ artist in Andalucia in 2023.