An evening with primrose
in development 2014 - present
By Abigail Conway with Ross Flight, Eoin Ryan and oenothera biennis
An evening with primrose is a concert, an interactive performance installation, which unfolds over approximately 60-90 minutes across the course of an evening. Audiences are invited to think about their relationship to time through nature; listen to a unique soundscape as they watch the blooming of Primrose flowers, and begin to measure moments in time - leading to that moment - as determined by Nature's clock.
In 2016, the team spent two weeks of research and development at Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts (ACCA), and created a scratch performance of the development which can be seen below.
Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. Developed at and supported by Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts, and Chichester University. Previously this work was developed at The National Theatre Studio. A special thank you goes to Melanie Wilson, who nurtured this developmental time.
Active Research: the question of time has always been at play somewhere within the interactive projects Abigail has made. Time pressures have been explored within durational work, and individual time perspectives have been examined in terms of how audiences ‘play’ and lose track of time within the interactive, task-based installations she makes.
An evening with primrose invites us to surrender to the act of waiting. The project references natural recordings of time. The flower clock by 18-century botanist Carl Linnaeus, is a particular inspiration. Abigail’s current active research is around the biological exploration of circadian rhythms, in both plants and humans.