History

Nicola Woodham has a long term anxiety condition, meaning that for her the sensation of relief is particularly welcome.

At Mutton Fist Press Nicola has been relief-printing as printing with her relief. Nicola argues that the press is a place of collective resistance, a site for social imagination. It’s funding is unofficial, that’s all that can be said here. It relies on forms of assistance. Nicola’s practice at the press is her response to feeling assisted by the site and it’s residents. The etymological stem of the word relief is fourteenth century Latin ‘relevare’, used to mean to lighten, to ease, to rise up, to offer a hand from the ground.

Relief printing is a process in which an image is printed from a raised surface. For Nicola, it is a relief to give her body over to the printing process, to move away from the laptop or mobile, to rediscover her active, moving body.

During her residency at Mutton Fist Press, Nicola has been finding ways to combine her vocal performance with printing. Printing with relief under your aegis is that. She draws on themes of protection, empowerment and interruption in her work. In this intimate, solo performance over two acts, Nicola will create an interruption of usual proceedings at the press, drawing on the alliances she has made. In Act 1 Nicola will de-familiarise the studio with her oral imaginings. In Act 2 Nicola will commune with the Albion press, drawing out its persona as an ally and mythological creature, a composite of animal, architecture and machine. In closing, she will evoke the aegis, Athena’s protective noisy, snaky, facey garb.

Nicola Woodham's voice-making combines free improvisation and poetry. She uses techniques to create a tension between her bodily sounds and the estrangement of her body from her voice. Using anxiety symptoms as material she explores paralanguage and her breath - coughs, wheezes, hyperventilating. These sounds are then pushed through various effects and distortions. This attention to loudness and her de-articulated, physical presence are a way to scale herself up and to take up space. Both to create a barrier of protection and a demand to be heard.

Doors at 7 for a 7.45 prompt start

Duration 1 hour 15 mins including interval with refreshments