David Ward: WALKING / PAUSING / IN GATHERING LIGHT (The Orchard Suite)

David Ward is an is an artist who works with painting, photography, light projection, sound, writing, and transient installation and performance works, including collaborations with other artists, dancers and composers. 

This performance, WALKING / PAUSING / IN GATHERING LIGHT (The Orchard Suite) took place within Jyll Bradley’s installation Pardes in the Warehouse, responding to the underlying themes and structures within Bradley’s installation, and drawing on a continuing conversation between the two artists. The performance brought in sources from poetry and painting including language from Rilke’s poetry, Poussin’s painting Et in Arcadia Ego and ambient sound recordings that Ward made in the rainforests of the Upper Orinoco River in 1995.  

The performance grows out of a kind of vocabulary of associations and movements. Transient gestures and held positions; standing, sitting, leaning and stepping. Actions and stillness and the pausing of the body all occur in the light of Jyll’s installation Pardes. – David Ward

Pardes is an ancient word for orchard or garden, with forms in many cultures and languages including Greek, Persian, Arabic and Hebrew. It is the root of the English word ‘paradise’. – Jyll Bradley 

This collaboration was a partner to Ward’s performance in Bradley’s installation Dutch/Light at Turner Contemporary, Margate (2017/2019) which gave rise to their film Woman Holding a Balance (2021). 

Ward was returning to Fruitmarket having collaborated with Bruce McLean on McLean’s performance sculpture Partition in August 1986.