Cornwall


<p>International Women’s Day celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women as well as being a call to action for accelerating women’s equality. Here at Muddy Cornwall we are marking the day once again with an interview series of inspiring women across the Duchy, celebrating women&#8217;s achievements, how are we raising awareness about discrimination and what is being done to take action to drive gender parity.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="810" height="1000" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Misha-Curson-Eden-Project-KEM2302_Eden_Misha_01-810x1000.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-29855" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Misha-Curson-Eden-Project-KEM2302_Eden_Misha_01-810x1000.jpeg 810w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Misha-Curson-Eden-Project-KEM2302_Eden_Misha_01-648x800.jpeg 648w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Misha-Curson-Eden-Project-KEM2302_Eden_Misha_01-768x948.jpeg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Misha-Curson-Eden-Project-KEM2302_Eden_Misha_01-1244x1536.jpeg 1244w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Misha-Curson-Eden-Project-KEM2302_Eden_Misha_01-425x525.jpeg 425w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Misha-Curson-Eden-Project-KEM2302_Eden_Misha_01.jpeg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px" /></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tell-me-a-bit-about-yourself-your-background-and-what-you-do-and-how-you-came-to-do-this">Tell me a bit about yourself, your background and what you do – and how you came to do this?</h2>



<p>After completing a foundation in Art and Design at Falmouth University, I studied Fine Art Sculpture at Brighton University. When I first graduated, I began my career working for artists, including Damien Hirst, to curate and produce global contemporary commissions and exhibitions with institutions including the Tate Modern and Qatar Museum Authority. Then, as Associate Director at Cass Sculpture Foundation, a not-for-profit commissioning body, gallery space and sculpture park which enabled new opportunities in contemporary sculpture, I began to lead on major public commissions and place-based cultural strategy alongside exhibitions and residency programmes for more emerging artists.</p>



<p>More recently, as Senior Curator at the Eden Project, my current role spans the strategic artistic development of Eden’s original site in Cornwall alongside new national and international projects including Morecambe Bay and Qingdao.</p>



<p>Throughout this journey, I have become more and more focused on cultural activism, sustainable and regenerative practice and the power of art as a form of political thought and agent of social and environmental transformation.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What have you been doing at Eden recently that ties into the IWD area of celebration <em>elevating visibility of creatives</em>?</h2>



<p>We recently launched at Eden a new commission titled <em>First Came the Landscape</em> by Swedish artist Ingela Ihrman, as part of our current exhibition Super Natural.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="628" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ingela-Ihrman-with-the-giant-stick-skeleton-First-Came-the-Landscape-at-the-Eden-Project-Cornwall-1000x628.jpeg" alt="Ingela Ihrman with the giant stick skeleton, First Came the Landscape at the Eden Project, Cornwall" class="wp-image-29877" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ingela-Ihrman-with-the-giant-stick-skeleton-First-Came-the-Landscape-at-the-Eden-Project-Cornwall-1000x628.jpeg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ingela-Ihrman-with-the-giant-stick-skeleton-First-Came-the-Landscape-at-the-Eden-Project-Cornwall-800x502.jpeg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ingela-Ihrman-with-the-giant-stick-skeleton-First-Came-the-Landscape-at-the-Eden-Project-Cornwall-768x482.jpeg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ingela-Ihrman-with-the-giant-stick-skeleton-First-Came-the-Landscape-at-the-Eden-Project-Cornwall-836x525.jpeg 836w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ingela-Ihrman-with-the-giant-stick-skeleton-First-Came-the-Landscape-at-the-Eden-Project-Cornwall.jpeg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption>Ingela Ihrman with the giant stick skeleton, First Came the Landscape at the Eden Project, Cornwall</figcaption></figure>



<p>Nestled in the outer estate at Eden, it’s a huge (over 10m) long stick skeleton made from the trunk, limbs and branches of a single beech tree that came down in a storm.</p>



<p>The artwork reflects the delicate life cycle of the natural world and will remain in situ until the wood naturally breaks down, returning into the ground in which it has been placed and benefiting it’s surrounding ecology as it decays, even in its final states. Ingela provides a meditation on mortality that’s at once playful and profound. She once said to me that if she chuckles inside while she is developing a new work then she knows she is in the right space – I have so much admiration for her ability to do that.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How do you and your team consciously consider the IWD themes and areas of celebration?</h2>



<p>There is a Brittany Packett quote about privilege and power that has stuck with me ever since I first heard it. It&#8217;s a reminder to consciously create space and opportunity wherever I am empowered to do so, so that the programmes and opportunities that I am responsible for might be informed by the lived experience of a broader perspective. We will all benefit from the vibrancy of conversation that this can generate. This is embedded in our Combined Cultural Strategy at Eden, not just because without this commitment our offer will be irrelevant (which is true) but also because social equity and the planetary emergency are intrinsically intwined, environmental harmony cannot be solved by science alone nor in isolation from the social histories and geopolitics that have contributed to the situation we find ourselves in today.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“That privilege you’re hoarding could be put to good use. Here is the thing: you didn’t earn your privilege. It was the luck of the draw to be born white, male, cis, straight, able bodied, and able minded. You didn’t hit a triple: you were born on third base. And the privilege that you enjoy comes at someone else’s expense in this zero-sum, winners and losers society they set up. That privilege you’re hoarding could be put to good use. It could be used to create space, resources, opportunity, amplification, and room for someone else. Not because they need your saving but because that is what you do with what you didn’t earn: you give it away. And yes, you can have an identity that’s oppressed and still have other identities that are privileged. White women still have privilege. Straight black men still have privilege. Able-bodied LGBTQ folks still have privilege. We dare not fight for freedom of our kind, and leave others out. Spend your privilege whatever kind you have.”</p></blockquote>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">During the last two years day to day working life changed for some. Have you been able to continue any ideas into 2023? Or indeed anything you’d like to change?</h2>



<p>I spent a lot of time at my allotment over lockdown, It seemed there was a collective solice in slowing down, connecting with the earth and honoring the power of the natural world. We often say at Eden that we are a part of nature, not apart from nature. This thinking contributed to our current exhibition at the Eden Project titled Super Natural.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="563" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ai-Weiweis-Fly-2019-part-of-the-Eden-Projects-Super-Natural-exhibition-1000x563.jpeg" alt="Ai Weiwei's Fly (2019), part of the Eden Project's Super Natural exhibition" class="wp-image-29878" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ai-Weiweis-Fly-2019-part-of-the-Eden-Projects-Super-Natural-exhibition-1000x563.jpeg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ai-Weiweis-Fly-2019-part-of-the-Eden-Projects-Super-Natural-exhibition-800x450.jpeg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ai-Weiweis-Fly-2019-part-of-the-Eden-Projects-Super-Natural-exhibition-768x432.jpeg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ai-Weiweis-Fly-2019-part-of-the-Eden-Projects-Super-Natural-exhibition-900x506.jpeg 900w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/Ai-Weiweis-Fly-2019-part-of-the-Eden-Projects-Super-Natural-exhibition.jpeg 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption>Ai Weiwei&#8217;s Fly (2019), part of the Eden Project&#8217;s Super Natural exhibition</figcaption></figure>



<p>Super Natural (24 Sep 2022 – 1 May 2023) explores humankind’s ever-evolving understanding of ourselves as a part of the natural world, the interdependencies between humans and plants, and the systems that inform our varying perspectives. The exhibition features artworks from international artists including Ai Weiwei, Kedisha Coakley, Patricia Domínguez, Iman Datoo, Ingela Ihrman and Eduardo Navarro. Every living thing on Earth is interconnected, and this exhibition comprises a diversity of artworks that examine and challenge our perception of the natural world and our part in it, through a focus on our relationships with plants.</p>



<p>It encourages us to consider what we might learn from plants, from the ‘more than human’, from reciprocal relationships in nature, and asks how different perspectives may inform and influence a shared understanding of ourselves as part of nature as opposed to apart from nature.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Do you have any role models? Who are they?</h2>



<p>Clare Lilley, Director of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, has been a wonderful support over the years as my career has progressed. Despite her busy schedule she has always made time to share her advice when I have asked, and I am so grateful to her for that generosity.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What’s your favourite Cornish beach / view?</h2>



<p>Once, while watching a play the Minack Theatre &#8211; a spectacular open-air theatre, perched on the Cornish cliffs overlooking Porthcurno beach – a pod of dolphins upstaged the performers playing in the aquamarine sea. That view has been a particularly hard one to beat. It is painted in my memory as clearly as the day I saw it.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="720" height="480" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/04/minack-720x480.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-22947" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/04/minack-720x480.jpeg 720w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/04/minack-300x200.jpeg 300w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/04/minack-768x511.jpeg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/04/minack-788x525.jpeg 788w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/04/minack.jpeg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What do you do in Cornwall to make the most of living here?</h2>



<p>I enjoy the benefits of the thriving cultural ecology and community embedded in Cornwall. Visiting CAST in Helston for artist screenings and talks, nearby Kestle Barton is a magical setting for exhibitions. Penzance for Newlyn Art Gallery and The Exchange and of course St Ives for the Tate and Barbara Hepworth Gardens. Falmouth has a great music scene, particularly at the Cornish Bank. I spend as much time as I can in Cornwall’s landscapes and in the sea, I walk cliff paths come rain or shine and of course I make good use of the excellent seasonal local produce.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="720" height="480" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/10/Barbara-Hepworth-Garden-720x480.png" alt="" class="wp-image-24647" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/10/Barbara-Hepworth-Garden-720x480.png 720w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/10/Barbara-Hepworth-Garden-300x200.png 300w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/10/Barbara-Hepworth-Garden-768x512.png 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/10/Barbara-Hepworth-Garden-787x525.png 787w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/10/Barbara-Hepworth-Garden.png 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Favourite cafe/ restaurant / shop?</h2>



<p>Gusto in Newquay is a favorite spot for an affordable, delicious, hearty lunch. Gilmores, also in Newquay, for a margarita and tacos. Canteen at Mount Pleasant Eco Park for a vegan roast. St Agnes bakery for all traditional Cornish baked goods, sourdough bread and their not-so-traditional vegan tandoori sausage roll. The Star and Garter in Falmouth for beautiful views, excellent food and service to match. </p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="720" height="480" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/11/Argoe-exterior-720x480.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-24870" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/11/Argoe-exterior-720x480.jpg 720w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/11/Argoe-exterior-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/11/Argoe-exterior-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/11/Argoe-exterior-787x525.jpg 787w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/11/Argoe-exterior.jpg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /></figure>



<p><a href="https://cornwall.muddystilettos.co.uk/eat-out/argoe-newlyn-penzance-cornwall-review/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Argoe</a> in Newlyn Harbour has a similarly gorgeous setting and such good food. 43 Queens Street Penzance for simple, stunningly crafted plates. I once had a deep-fried olive at Appleton&#8217;s in Fowey that blew my mind. Continuing the food theme, Goonown Growers for volunteer subsidised, locally grown (where possible) organic veg boxes.</p>



<p><em><a href="https://www.edenproject.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">edenproject.com</a></em></p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="166" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/InternationalWomensDay_Landscape_PurpleOnWhite.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-29870" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/InternationalWomensDay_Landscape_PurpleOnWhite.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/InternationalWomensDay_Landscape_PurpleOnWhite-800x133.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/InternationalWomensDay_Landscape_PurpleOnWhite-768x127.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/cornwall/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/03/InternationalWomensDay_Landscape_PurpleOnWhite-900x149.jpg 900w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>


Muddy Meets: Misha Curson, Senior Curator, The Eden Project

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