Stringed musical instruments have evolved over many hundreds of years, their shapes and forms developed from natural materials through a transfer of skills from luthier to luthier. The ongoing collaborative project Dovetailing began as a creative response to this evolution. 

The rhythms, harmonies and timbres of music echo back to the natural world, and it feels as if instruments themselves embody the potential for a balanced and harmonious intertwining of humankind and nature. The title of the project, Dovetailing, describes this relationship of two parts by referencing the interlocking dovetail joint in carpentry, a strong and seamless union. The word has also been used in orchestration, describing the technique of overlapping musical lines between two instruments. 

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The first exhibition  of Dovetailing took place at Farfield Meeting House in June 2021, an early Meeting House in the Yorkshire Dales. The installation involved a room full of wooden mobiles and a projected film onto the back wall which also fell onto the turning mobiles, creating a layer of ever-changing silhouettes over the film showing on the wall. Visitors walked around the space, affecting how the mobiles moved. Their own shadows also became part of the viewed film, making each showing entirely unique. Nearly 300 people visited, many of whom walked over the fields to visit the exhibition. Their responses to the installation can be seen on the Reviews page and as a collective work they opened up new layers of thoughts and ideas. Our hope was that the exhibition and its themes might inspire other artworks of all kinds to form a responsive exhibition.

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We are grateful for the funding we received from Ilkley Arts and the Ronnie Duncan Art Foundation to help create the next layer of interaction, Dovetailing Responses, which took place from 4 - 7 November 2021 at the Manor House in Ilkley.  The underlying concept was to create a space in which the unknown can emerge; a magic evolving out of collaboration. The installation was staged in a new way in the different venue, with a number of suspended sheets of light diffusing paper on which the film was projected from two different projectors. The mobiles were hung all around the room. The idea was to create a sense of a forest through which visitors took their own path. 

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This summer of 2022, we are looking forward to exhibiting the Dovetailing installation at The Old Fire Station, which is part of Windermere Jetty Museum, Lakeland Arts. More details soon.

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“…I felt integrated into the Dovetail collective from the beginning, both through their welcome and their sense that a company poet could offer another dimension to their Ilkley project; I came to learn their work generated these new dimensions constantly, a strange and generous physics hosting multiple universes of creation. These were worlds of the heart as well as of the mind. A critical ecological consciousness permeated everything being done.”

— Ian Duhig

“…A real, tangible, emotional, spiritual and intellectual experience which was so understated and yet perfect, Dovetailing seems almost to be the definition of creativity. The absolute commitment of all the artists involved to the essence of the project has created something without any ego, without any ‘stance’ but which opens outwards to everyone.”

— Geraldine Woodhouse