About the Artists - Christil Trumpet

Christil Trumpet is an artistic collaborative between Orkney-based artists Matilda Tumim and Christopher Prendergast - with support from their three sons, Josh (14), Theo (11) and Erlend (9).

Christil Trumpet is a shortened anagram made from the two artists' names - Matilda Tumim and Christopher Prendergast.

The formation of Christil Trumpet, in 2002, came from recognising that we were working against the grain of our lives. We were trying to maintain separate artistic careers but were finding that the costs of haulage, publicity and materials etc. were prohibitive for artists working in Orkney. Both of us felt frustrated by practical and financial constraints and yet we were brimming over with ideas for future art projects. Without realising that we were collaborating as artists, we were already offering each other support and feeding each other's ideas - working together was a natural extension of our everyday lives.

With these ideas in mind, we decided to establish a low tech, low budget way of working as a partnership - and we quickly discovered that the collaboration of two minds could overcome many of the problems we had experienced when working alone as separate artists. Through collaboration we could include our family life in our projects. By setting up Christil Trumpet we no longer felt constrained by commercial considerations and were able to focus our collective attentions on ideas/research based art projects. Forming Christil Trumpet was a liberating process and the only thing we found we were lacking in was the time to work together to develop our ideas and work towards future projects.

The Residency at Papdale Primary School is providing us both with opportunity to spend a whole year working together full time, enabling us to work more intensively through some of our ideas and allowing us to do research for our projects - with the added bonus of the school children's input on our various artworks! The children are benefiting, we hope, by seeing two people collaborating on ideas and by being included in the creative process - and seeing for themselves how ideas can become realities. Through this residency we hope that we are encouraging the children to see innovation and teamwork flourish and we are also looking to extend the children's awareness of contemporary art practices in a wider context.

As Christil Trumpet we have realised three projects to date and have two more projects well underway in the Papdale studio ('Goldilocks/Consequence' and 'Pupils Wave'). The subjects, from where many of our ideas and projects come, range broadly from family life, the environment and renewable energy, human rights abuses and war, human diversity, carnivals and music. The projects undertaken by us so far have been 'Wave' (2003), 'Foul Flora, Weird Waves' (2004), and 'Wedded' (2005). In 2004 we started working on a project called 'Free Radicals' for which we created tropical fish that were made out of rubbish relating to our holidays - this project is ongoing. We were commissioned to make a piece of work for the Pier Arts Centre in 2005 for their stand at Tullimentan 2005: An Orkney Arts Showcase called 'Constellation'.

To see more of our work, read reviews, or find out more about any of these projects please take a look at our main website at www.christiltrumpet.co.uk.

Related pages:

> More information about Matilda

> More information about Christopher

> Information about the residency

> Find out about the art studio at Papdale