Drowned, Drained, Swamped & Bogged Down:
Initiating A Creative Exploration Of Mythterious Scottish Marshes & Wetlands
CREATIVE: VOMITON COLLECTIVE
VOMITON is an international costume collective who “play with trash”. They create oversized masks and costumes fashioned from waste, in playful responses to different subject matters.
I spent half a day with artists Kiera Saunders and Lorenzo Rangoni Robertson, learning about different approaches to using “waste” materials in performance art and the power of oversized masks.
Kiera and Lorenzo had pulled together countless brilliant examples from their past projects, and helpfully provided numerous resources for further exploration and artistic research.
Vomiton was started during first lockdown by artists Kiera Saunders and Miriam Craddock for their final degree show at Edinburgh College of Art. The collective later expanded to include Lorenzo as a core artist, as well as numerous other artists and dancers. They regularly collaborate with other art forms and have taken on a wealth of exciting (and hilarious) projects.
The energy and humour of Kiera and Lorenzo was truly infectious. The joy of silliness - and all the creative potential that releases. It was brilliant to explore some light-hearted approaches and discuss the power that mask-based performance art has for opening new conversations and engaging audiences.
I had been particularly drawn to the collective due to their reclaiming/reuse of materials and their queering of subject matter and it was useful to discuss their process, hints and tips.
Lorenzo’s other work around natural materials, tribal mask/costume and the meeting of cultures is also very inspiring, with the emergent themes of connection, interpretation and transformation.
I am so grateful to Kiera and Lorenzo for the time they took and the knowledge they shared - true gems.
