Simon Whitehead is a movement artist living with his family in rural west Wales. His practice is improvisatory, in response to the circumstances he finds himself in he makes work that moves in correspondence with land, materials and beings. He begins with, and re-turns to the motile materiality of the body and its agency amongst an assemblage of other forces, flows and matter. He is a maker that moves and has been practicing this relationally-focussed work for over 30 years.
Simon has hosted Locator since 1993, an ongoing experimental workshop researching ecological ideas through movement practice, situated in Tycanol, an ancient sessile oak woodland in Pembrokeshire. He is a member of Maynard Abercych, an interdisciplinary artist collective collaborating on a programme of engaged dance activity in the rural village of Abercych and lower Teifi valley, working through ongoing residencies, the village dance, workshops, local and international partnerships. He has developed the sound work Dulais as a series of ongoing field recordings with his Fender Stratocaster, made on the river near his home since 2006. A limited edition of recent recordings will be launched as an album in late 2023 by experimental music label East Cape Calling.
Simon is also a Craniosacral therapist, working in his community with people in pain and stress- related illness.
He is currently exploring what posthumanist thinking means in relation to expanded ecologies of touch as part of a (PaR) PhD at Glasgow University, soft matter is part of this process of research-creation. The book Stitching soft matter was published by shoeless in December 2022.
Since 1994 he has collaborated with Melbourne based sound artist Barnaby Oliver, a sample of their work is archived here: Untitled States
Photo: Martin Roberts