Ducks and Drake's

Ducks and Drake's
The Sutton Youth Initiative, The Gallery,
Plymouth College of Art, 1 - 27 Nov 2010

Digital Video, 6.15mins (captured from 8mm.)
Featuring Lucy Brennan, Scott Daniels, Bryony Gillard, Ben Langworthy and Beth Richards.

Film, shot and produced in collaboration with Andrew James.
Soundtrack, in collaboration with Neil Rose.
Sound Recordists, Aiden Aitkinson, Lee Burns, Rob Sanchez and Corrie Warburton.

Standing at a specially selected point on the Plymouth shoreline, each member of the Sutton Youth Initiative group attempt to skim a single stone onto Drake’s Island. The act of five friends attempting to skim a stone such a seemingly impossible distance is filled with futility, but is equally full of hope. Ducks and Drake's serves as a mirroring of a game the group once played whilst on Drake’s Island, only then, facing the Plymouth shoreline.

The five stones picked from the water’s edge, otherwise ordinary and replaceable, are singled out by the artist
and specially decorated with a group emblem, reinforcing the weight of the groups effort to send the stones to the Island.
As the group members fail in their attempts to reach the island, the stones are left to adorn the seabed, now reliant on the ebb and flow of the tide to move them closer to the Island.

Daniels’ treatment of the familiar pastime ‘Ducks and Drakes’ is centred on reconstructing an activity that is imbued with nostalgia, childhood, collective experience and memory.

Ducks and Drake's video on Vimeo.

The Sutton Youth Initiative:
In 2001, six friends attempted to capture Drake’s Island.
The events that occurred on this coming of age journey have stayed with the group.

The Sutton Youth Initiative presents work by five young artists, bound together by a formative journey.
Through their diverse practices, the group has explored a range of responses to this significant collective experience.
Over time, the shared event has consciously and subconsciously influenced each artists practice; the shadow of the event becoming mythologized by it’s repeated referencing in both their individual and collaborative work.
Word of mouth, rumour and visual re-imaginings, not only demonstrate the malleability of oral and visual history, but also emphasise the concept of myth surrounding The Sutton Youth Initiative.

The Sutton Youth Intitiative: Lucy Brennan, Scott Daniels, Ben Langworthy, Bryony Gillard and Beth Emily Richards

Parallel to the exhibition at The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art, Project Space 11
(an artist run space in the heart of Plymouth City Market, run by the artists in this exhibition) hosts an exhibition by artist Jonty Lees, who has been invited to develop and present work in response to the narratives depicted in this show.

Lees plays with SYI’s narrative – using notions of memory, daydreams and the artist’s quest for truth.
While not a direct alternative narrative of the events, by way of referencing this re-imagined past, another account and visual reference comes into being.