An Ecology of Line
Bring me your written lines, your marks, your traces, your cuts, cracks & creases, your tide lines & shore lines, your knots & tangles, your tears & folds, your maps, your moving lines, your song lines, your light lines & wave lines.
It was an interest in writing that first started me thinking about line. The mark-made line links writing to drawing; the spoken line links sound to song. The spoken line links sound to movement and on, to the relationship between bodies, to the line as performance, instruction (score) and trace of performance.
My interest in the wobbly event of the line, how it’s made and what its making conveys, underpins the intra-disciplinary, creative-critical enquiry that moves “TOWARDS AN EXPERIMENTAL ECOLOGY OF LINE”.
Building on Tim Ingold’s provisional taxonomy, this show explores different “species” of line - threads (3D line), traces (2D line), dots (the broken line) & blobs (a conglomeration of line), invisible or imaginary lines - and their different linear intra-actions.
Lines emerge within and beyond the human. Line bridges species boundaries and creative-critical domains. Line cannot be contained. Like energy, line does not end, it just transforms. What role do your lines play in this ecology?
The Curator would like to share these artworks as examples to illustrate their thinking:
Curator Camilla Nelson (photography by Lieven Detemmerman)
Curated by Camilla Nelson
Camilla Nelson is an artist, poet, teacher, small press publisher, creative programmer and researcher currently formulating her ideas into an "Experimental Ecology of Line". She has a PhD in Performance Writing from Falmouth University/Dartington College of Arts (2012). Her work expands page-based poetry into mark-making, soundwork, installation and performance. She is interested in experimental, embodied and textural ways of working with landscape. She has curated radio shows, poetry tours, festivals and exhibitions, live and online. Camilla is founding editor of Singing Apple Press, a Visiting Research Fellow at Bath Spa University and member of the PLACE Collective
How to apply
Fringe Arts Bath Festival will take place 22 May to 6 June 2026
Submission deadline: Friday 10th April 2026 at 23h59 GMT
Media accepted: All
Free submission. All are welcome to apply, of any age, status, and from anywhere in the world.
If selected, we ask Artists for a £25 contribution (like crowdfunding) and to give some of their time, as we are all volunteers.
Please read our FAQs here to find out more.See all 17 projects open to submissions on our home page: fringeartsbath.co.uk
To submit your work: please email the curator line@fringeartsbath.co.uk including:
NB: please include the exhibition / project name in the email title.
max 200 words about your work and how it fits the call-out (written, audio file, video or another way to suit you).
some images of the work, or links to video / performance work (or existing work if it hasn’t been made yet).
any relevant links, if you have them (though it’s not a requirement and Curators might not have the capacity to visit them all).
of course please include any questions you have.
you might not hear back from Curators until after the deadline, thank you for your patience.