First Fridays are our monthly series of informal artist get-togethers where the conversation may stray from the triassic to contemporary reusable plastics — and just about anywhere in between.The sessions last about an hour and are friendly and informal. Participants come from across the world and are always a mix of ‘regulars’ and new people.

This month we join the Borrowed Time audience for a conversation between Charlotte Du Cann (of Dark Mountain) who is in conversation with two contributors as a sneak preview of their latest publication (working title: Requiem) due out later in April.

Charlotte Du Cann is the art editor of the Dark Mountain Project’s upcoming ‘requiem’ issue, housing work by 60+ writers and artists who act as mourners and celebrants of a world that is falling apart. In this pre-publication conversation, she will be speaking with two of the book’s contributors, artist Caroline Ross and poet Dom Bury about bringing our attention back to a physical and cultural engagement with the life-and- death cycles of Earth. What do we need to relinquish and what do we need to treasure in these times of upheaval? And what role does art play?

Caroline Ross will be discussing her practice, rooted in the wild and the liminal, and the generative nature of her foraged and found materials. Dom Bury will be taking us on a journey of loss, grief and renewal with his new collection Rite of Passage, set in the mythic landscape of his native Devon. 

Following the conversation there will be time for questions from and discussion with the audience.

Dark Mountain Project is a network of writers, artists and thinkers responding to current social and ecological crises. It publishes bi-annual hardback journals, as well as curating online work and events. Dark Mountain: issue 19 was created in collaboration with art.earth’s Borrowed Time symposium on death, dying and change,  and will be published on 15th April 2021. 

Charlotte Du Cann is a writer, editor and co-director of the Dark Mountain Project. She has recently completed a book of essays and memoir about myth and radical change, After Ithaca, based on the four Underworld tasks of Psyche. She lives on the salty eastern edge of England. 

Caroline Ross lives on a small boat beside an abandoned boatyard on the last remaining undeveloped large Thames island. She teaches tai chi and wild crafts, and makes art and art media from found, foraged, discarded and natural materials – soil, feathers, oak galls, bark, wood, ochre, to show what is difficult to see – the interconnected, endlessly generative mesh of life and death. 

Dom Bury is a devotee to this miraculous Earth in this time of planetary transfiguration. He runs workshops, rituals and initiations into responding creatively to planetary crisis. His work has been widely published and performed on radio and festivals. He has won an Eric Gregory Award and The National Poetry Competition. Rite of Passage will be published by Bloodaxe in April 2021.  

s Wild Twins courses with Paul Kingsnorth in spring most years. carolineross.co.uk and instagram.com/foundandground  

As this is the first Friday of the month we will be joined by the art.earth First Friday community.

More information at https://art-earth.org.uk/first-friday-april2021/

[image above: Dougie Strang: Deer shrine, Charnel House for Roadkill