ARCHIVE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS EVENT
I have loved Wind in the Willows for a very long time. I love the books, the films and the musicals. My favourite characters are the weasels, especially Chief Weasel. I always love the bad guys.
When I started doing ceramics at Venture Arts, I decided I wanted to make weasels. Soon my weasel army started to grow. The army has been exhibited at The People’s History Museum and most recently at the Manchester Open Exhibition at HOME in 2020.
I decided I wanted to teach other people to make weasels, and I started to do workshops to help them.
During the lockdown I carried on making weasels at home. I even appeared on BBC North West to talk about them.
Stephen from Bronzecast UK saw me on TV and contacted me to offer to cast one of my weasels in bronze. It was great to see the process and my bronze weasel is awesome!
Because I couldn’t do face to face workshops during lockdown, I worked with Venture Arts to create Weasel Making Kits which were sent out to families in Manchester so they could make their own clay weasels. I made an instruction video so they knew how to do it.
My idea for Weasel Nation came from my love of wrestling and especially the ‘bad guy’ gangs, like Aces and Eights and Beat Down Clan.
The Weasel Nation is a group of people who protest against injustice and support each other come what may. We stick together against racism, sexism and discrimination against people with disabilities. We are born to be rebels and we don’t follow anyone else’s rules.
I wanted to write a Manifesto so that more people could find out about Weasel Nation and what we stand for. I have included some of my weasel artworks, and I have had it translated into Arabic so we can start spreading the word of Weasel Nation around the world. I hope to get translations into other languages in the future.
I am also working on a new weasel making video which we will have translated and have a sign language interpreter, so that people everywhere will be able to make their own weasels. This will use self drying clay so that people won’t need to have access to a kiln to complete their weasel. I will put the video on my YouTube channel (DominicGTV) so that everyone can see it, and hopefully it will be available on the DadaFest website too.
And remember, there is a weasel in all of you. We are Weasel Nation - Join the Nation!
Dominic G.
#DDFIWeasals