Dr. Bram Thomas Arnold is an artist who started with walking and kept going into performance, drawing, installation, writing, academia and broadcasting. He studied the worlds first MA in Arts & Ecology undertaken at Dartington College of Arts and in 2016 finished his PhD with University of the Arts London, a practice-based study into walking, writing and performance, developing an ecological form of subjectivity: a way of being in the world whereby an individual exists within and amongst places: ones social, geographic and political contexts. He has exhibited broadly in the UK as well as abroad in exhibitions from New York to St. Petersburg, and is currently an Associate Lecturer at Dartington Arts and Falmouth University.

From May-June 2019 he collaborated with Professor Caitlin DeSilvey from the University's Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI) on an Arts and Culture Creative Fellowship entitled A Transect for Trelowarren. As part of the project he drew a line from the ESI in Penryn to the Trelowarren Estate near Helston, a place which is currently in the midst of a rewilding programme. Working collaboratively with a team of researchers, including ecologists, geologists and cultural geographers at the ESI, Bram walked and talked with them along this line, uncovering what was already there, what could be there and what should be there, creating a composition of narrative gestures and performed texts out of fragmented conversations.

The project seeked to cut through Cornwall, through the scientific method and through institutions (be they country estates or universities), with the aim of contributing to an ongoing conversation around conservation and creativity. Work from A Transect for Trelowarren was shown as part of Unbounded at the Eden Project from September 2019 - January 2020, an exhibition showcasing contemporary art practices in Cornwall.

For the current ESI Creative Exchange exhibition Catalyst, Bram has produced a remix of his radio mini-series for Resonance FM that was made during Lockdown 1 in 2020. Commissioned by Arts and Culture, the original series consisted of three individual shows which featured a mix of found sound, field recordings, ambient music, archive footage and spoken word, to explore research into a diverse set of ideas that swirl around his continued work on A Transect for Trelowarren.

You can experience the remixed piece and see accompanying photography by visiting the virtual ESI gallery, just click on the image below. You can also listen to all three original radio pieces individually here.

About Catalyst

Showcasing nearly a decade of arts/science collaborations at the the University of Exeter's Environment and Sustainability Institute, Penryn, 'Catalyst' features new work by twelve artists, all of whom have previously worked with researchers as part of the ESI Creative Exchange.