Deal Pier Arts committee invited Kate Davis as lead artist to design and curate the inaugural Deal Pier Arts festival, in the spirit of her solo exhibition headhearthole at the Wordsworth Trust. The festival, funded by local businesses and entrepreneurs focused on Deal’s pier and architecturally award winning restaurant.
Davis, working with artist David Moore as ME-WE Productions, brought together diverse multi-disciplinary elements that could involve the local community. The 5 day festival incorporated; Golden Boat ,a float , a series of community clay workshops with local story tellers, Twist Something Forcibly, a video show reel and sculptural installation , 1062FT Supper Club evenings which included Aphrodite Umi, a signature cocktail artwork and designed table ware, and with story telling and live music by local residents and bands. The festival culminated in a community procession and ‘Golden Bouy’ ritual led by Davis and Moore with sea shanties.
Elements that Davis believes that when experienced together represent a complete sensory intellectual and human testament to our existence with art being at its centre: it’s heart.
Davis and Moore’s theme of the festival was inspired by the American marine biologist and explorer William Beebe’s book ,The Arcturus Adventure 1926 and responded to the local myths and legends. They reintroduced the tradition of the talisman or “Cabbo” to Deal. These largely forgotten objects or grotesque figureheads were fashioned from local clay and fixed to the front of fishing and smugglers boats in Deal and the south Kent coast.
Twist Something Forcibly was a compilation of video works that referenced water and were selected by Davis and Moore from the University for the Creative Arts Canterbury, the Royal College of Art, and Edinburgh College of Art’s graduate and post-graduate 2015 degree shows.