Exploding day-to-day climate relations

Theorectical Archaeology Group Conference, University of East Anglia (UAE) December 2023.

As usual, and also having become a little hermit-like online over the last year, I'm behind on posting this. But I really wanted to share this fascinating insight into contemporary archaeological enquiry into how objects and matters continually assemble and reassemble. With huge gratefulness to Historic England archaeologist Dr Katy Whittaker, who brought together our small group of artists and archaeologists to Climate TAG in December 2023, by open invitation, asking: 'How did we get here'. We each selected an object associated with our travel to the conference and over several online meetings and one in-real-life morning, picked them apart by exploring (destroyed, observed, discussed) their matter, connections and complexities (which were compound and several), and also got to know each other's perspectives a bit. A fabulous bonus!

Session abstract:

I think it's apt to describe the findings of this small quick project as becoming exponentially more complex as we explored. This contributed to an adaptable and precarious assemblage of things and responses that were overlapping and confusing. A hotch-potch within which some responses were overt and extrovert, and some were very subtle, while others celebrated these differences by weaving the experience together. 

Assemblages of assemblages

Grounding

Thinking about archaeological tropes.

Blue Rec - production images

Thought I would share some extra images from the Blue Rec commission. Here's other blog post about the commission with all the various links. Blue Rec blog post.

This image is from the extraction of the brick guard. 

The following pictures are from putting together the fabric that is on the reverse of the Blue Rec hangings. The images on the front side was from scanning the ground in the months after extraction. One of these is currently on the background of this blog.

The backing took a long time to make because I decided to dye the fabric with dye plants located near the excavation site which took a while. And was also quite complicated to do because all the shaped pockets had to be in exactly the right place, with a couple of holes wandering off to give an idea of the plastic board maybe eventually breaking up. I really enjoyed the process, not least because the fabric took on the aroma of the plant dyes and it was just really pleasurable to handle. 

It's probably the least visible part of the installation but is my favourite bit. Partly because it remains hidden and it physically holds remnants of the woodland as I didn't rinse the dye out. By installation the fabric still carried a faint aroma of the plant dyes and I like the idea of these still being in conflict with the board, which I was once adamant wouldn't be in the installation at all but ended up casting shade from a corner.

 

Midwinter Potato Plate

Some time ago on a whim I purchased an old-style cake plate. I think I might have only used it once for cakes and since then to keep the potatoes in order in their dark cupboard. I liked its tranfer decoration of a brown landscape with vividly tinted figures. Just as something to play with really. I always felt there was a story within the scene: 

...

It is a landscape drawn in the round. In the farthest distance are trees with bulbous foliage like succulent plants, drawn as if so many caterpillars were piled up and balanced, on boughs which have tough elbow-like angles to them and each of these teeter-tottering poles have a margin of punctuation marks. The trees stand under clouds that are made to have an almost wooden grained texture, but it might be that they are actually mountains topped with red volcanic clouds.

Next to the centre of the scene a faceless wig is balanced upon a pile of pancakes, themselves perched on top of a four-pillared structure the same colour red as several loaf-roofed houses pictured in the distance. Near these, a construction consisting of precariously balanced sections appears to be still standing despite having become half-smothered in volcanic dust.

Oblivious of the complete environmental breakdown oozing towards them as a flow of lava channeled underneath the arches of a bridge drawn with drastically swerving perspective, a couple walk towards us arm in arm. They are conversing, and it is quite obvious that we are meant to understand them as a courting couple. The male gestures derisively towards another figure leaning back on one elbow to their left, who is perched on top of a recumbent, green, many legged creature, as if to say, 'Hey, look at this lazy lout, he has subdued this beast but now doesn't know what to do with it'. But the lout ignores them to look beyond, not to the chaos unfolding, but two more people who have paused under an arch in a building to the far right. This couple are quite different in emotional tone. They are pictured as having happened upon the scene unfolding in their full moment of horror, corralled into the devastation by the wall to their left and backlit by the late afternoon sun which causes shadows to fall across the whole scene. We can see that the figure wearing a blue full-length robe has raised its hands to its face, perhaps to call out, or maybe wipe away tears. While the other holds out a short, thin stick, perhaps to indicate their vision, or possibly to attempt some defence, which seems to unlikely to succeed. 

The only other figure in the scene is pictured in the middle distance sitting on a kind of vehicle, preparing to pass over the bridge while driving in front of them a four-legged creature. We can see that a second creature of the same type has already passed over the bridge, possibly leading but perhaps being chased.

This soon to be destroyed Eden is captured within a circular net, crested with equally-spaced white crenellations, beyond which is a desert of lava and then a hedge of twisting roses. Situated beyond this point can only be the end-of-the-world, represented by a repeating pattern of blank-faced four-petalled, pimpernel blooms.

Some install images from Blue Rec.

Blue Rec is an installation about a brick guard that became embedded in local woodland after it came loose from housing development scaffolding during storms in 2017. The design of brick guards has since changed to allow stronger winds to pass through which reflects a greater frequency of stormy weather.

The excavation and subsequent installation at the Old Grammar School in Coventry of the brick guard with a video of the excavation and post-excavation scans of the ground was a commission - for which I am incredibly grateful because without it this project would not have happened - for Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art 2023 ...like a short cut through the brambles and can be viewed Thursday - Saturday October 5 2023 - January 14 2024. 

Photographing the brick guard becoming increasingly embedded into the woodland became part of my larger and still ongoing Silverhouses project studying greenbelt land (in the UK this term refers to agricultural land between towns, villages and cities) newly developed for housing, with subsequent activities expressed through the changing materiality of the site and around its margins. This is the Silverhouses project website page.

Here's a page on the Coventry Biennial website all about this commission, featuring a video by Tegan Kimbley made from the footage she took during the excavation, and of me chatting about it. Extraction

The images above show the installation at the Old Grammar School, in Coventry. There are further ones  on my website on the Blue Rec page.

 

Observation Station becomes Museum of St Mary's Allotments

 

This is the Observation Station in it's latest performance: pride of place next to the composting loo right next to the carpark at St Mary's Allotments in Leamington Spa :-) It is there with many thanks to wonderful concealed-curator Tammy Woodrow and allotmenteer poet Nigel Briggs.

I will post a bit more about the Museum of St Mary's in a few days to coincide with the opening of the Art Trail for Warwickshire Heritage Open Days. But just to say that I am really grateful for those who have come forward with more artefacts they have found in their allotments to feature in the museum. These are fascinating and I'm really looking forward to sharing them. 

Contact:
me: via this site or Instagram @anatomyofasmile
Tammy: https://tammywoodrow.jimdofree.com/ or Instagram: @tammywoodrow

Update: Just to say that sharing the museum was great, and that the art trail was a great success for Tammy and her team. With the artefacts safely tucked away the Observation Station is now over-wintering in my garden and awaits further plans.

Ground Level

I don’t want to hug trees, they can’t move or give permission so it isn’t a two way hug. I feel I am taking and this lacks a care and respect for bodies that should be present. However, there is place where they come to me into my world. Where parts of their bodies are washed to a place where we access equally: the ground. Our bodies intermingle; their bark, my skin, their leaves, the shopping list accidentally dropped from my pocket. This ground - ground level - where we converse speechlessly at equal standing is of course colonised by the un-degraded waste of humanity - screaming so loud it is difficult to appreciate.

Mapping Sloughing

I'm studying MA Contemporary Art & Archaeology part-time and therefore my attention has been taken up with lots of writing in a journal and not so much on the blog. It has been very absorbing and helpful. Leading me to think about the found object collections I make and subsequent assemblage works as a kind of conceptual mapping. Not in any way topographical or geographical representations of space, but how feelings about being in certain spaces and how this related to how I thought the objects I found gathered together.

For this recent open studio I constructed a hanging hoizontal grid and played around with a couple of older collections I'd made quite near the studio. Mapping, now realigned, enabled things in the map to relate to each other as well as to my memory of how I found them. Different species of maple leaves were kept apart, pine needles formed a row like the row of pine trees alongside the trainline from whence they came, plastic headphone casing cradled smashed headlight plastic because I thought of how that might sound that whenever I saw them. But there were visual groupings that related only to each other - circles and colour related maps that were woven into the whole - where I was thinking about those collecting walks, archaeologists call them 'walkover surveys', where the first thing I'd picked up became set a key for all the other things I was drawn to subsequently.

Adding an Arduino powered servo which hit the grid repeatedly made all the things move and shimmer and I amused myself during the day with adding more things and changing the tempo of the servo. It didn't take much might to make everything in the grid move just a little bit - some pushed a little each time until they fell off. 

I seemed to have re-attuned myself over the day. That night I didn't sleep well, constantly visualising little bits of stuff vibrating. Kept catching sight of things possibly moving out of the corner of my eye. Fortunately it only lasted one night!

Since this, I've been thinking more about mapping and specific experience of place. I've been limiting my collections to one walkover and then seeing what I can make. This has co-incided with the seasonal dropping of tree and shrub twigs - they dropped their leaves in January - which is fine material to make grids with. I have dogwood, birch and mistletoe. And I've gone back to using scanners as a way to document and create further grids to accentuate the action of watching and recording.