Secrets of Soil – ncas award-winner Henry Driver at the Sainsbury Centre
By Carl Rowe, ncas trustee and artist
Let us establish something from the outset, I don’t play video games. That said, I do remember playing Asteroids and Space Invaders back in the 1970s, both games defined by restrictions of movement and the anxiety-inducing onslaught of salvos. I expected vestiges of this unease along with the awkwardness of a sixty-something when, this February, I sat down to play Henry Driver’s game Secrets of Soil at the Sainsbury Centre’s exhibition Sediment Spirit: The Activation of Art in the Anthropocene. After one minute playing (or engaging) I was transported into an enthralling world of microscopic architecture and microbial communities. No anxiety, just a sense of wonder. The inspiration for this game came from the work that Henry’s family have done to make their farming methods carbon negative. When you enter his interactive journey, you are made aware of the complexity of soil and the symbiosis of the organisms that inhabit it. He does this through vivid and enthralling imagery. It is a game, but more so it is an artistic reimagining of the cosmic world beneath our feet and a cautionary reminder of the damage that we are doing to the balance of nature.
Henry Driver graduated with distinction from Norwich University of the Arts with an M.A. Fine Art in 2016. He also studied for his B.A. (Honours) at Norwich University of the Arts, receiving first-class honours. His progress as an artist is marked by notable achievements, and he has accumulated an international reputation for research and creativity within the field of climate change and impact. His inclusion in Sediment Spirit: The Activation of Art in the Anthropocene aligns his practice with internationally recognised artists, all pursuing facets of a geo-political critique. Perhaps it was obvious that Henry would be successful as a professional practising artist whilst he was still studying at undergraduate level. His focus, ambition and creative capability came across powerfully in his degree show work, which won him the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society Award for a graduating student in 2015. Henry reflects on this by saying,
“Receiving the Norfolk Contemporary Arts Society award provided a combination of both confidence and financial support which is so critical at the start of your career. My degree show piece was quite a development and departure on previous work with a focus on filmed imagery instead of abstraction.”
On a practical level, Henry used the prize money to assist with a 2-month residency at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge in 2015, and then for a Leverhulme Scholar Residency that same summer. What was left over he invested in making new artwork. But Henry also notes that “the ability to put on your CV that you’d won an award really was incredible and helped my career progress”. He is in no doubt that receiving the Norfolk Contemporary Arts Society award galvanised his direction as an artist and validated the importance of what he was setting out to do.
ncas continues to award the annual £500 Fine Art Prize to a student graduating from BA (Honours) Fine Art at Norwich University of the Arts, as well as the recently introduced ncas £500 New Makers Prize. In addition, ncas also offers support to Norfolk-based artists and groups through its Small Grants programme. The encouragement that all of this gives to graduates can’t be underestimated and is an endowment for our future artists.
Discover more about the artist Henry Driver http://www.henrydriverartist.com/
Sediment Spirit: The Activation of Art in the Anthropocene is showing at Sainsbury Centre until 14th April 2024. https://www.sainsburycentre.ac.uk/whats-on/sediment-spirit/