Neverends Seminar, Grimsby Fishing Heritage Centre

Seminar

Neverends: art, music, text in place

Having found the original exhibition of Neverends useful and inspirational (Link to blog here), I decided to attend the seminar based on the exhibition.  Not only were the exhibiting artists giving artists talks there were talks from visiting artists and curators.  These included:-

• Avril Maddrell, associate professor in Human Geography at the University of Reading
• Frances Presley who grew up in Lincolnshire and now lives and works in London
• Dr Rosemary Shirley an Art Historian from the Manchester Metropolitan University who collaborates with
• Verity Elson, curator at Compton Verney Art Gallery

The day was introduced by international artist and curator, Linda Ingham and then continued with a talk by Avril Maddrell.  Like Linda Ingham and David Power, whose work on memorial benches was featured in the main exhibition, Avril's work centres on memorial benches and wider vernacular memorials and their meaning.  Looking at mapping grief and consolation in our lives and landscapes her research grew out of multiple personal bereavement.  She spent several years volunteering with a bereavement support group and realised that these geographies were common to us all.  She also explored pilgrimage as journies of belief and belonging.  I was particularly interested in this aspect of the talk.  I partake in long distance walking: The Viking Way, The Yorkshire wolds Way and The Cleveland Way, and am increasingly drawn to the idea of pilgrimage, especially the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in France and Northern Spain.

Artist Talks

Linda Ingham
Linda spoke about her work on memorial benches, an interest in which began in Whitby, where she says there are many.  She made notes, sketches and drawings.  She found these particularly poignant after her mother died, but discovered that there were only about 10 in Cleethorpes.  She made memorials and memorial benches the subject of her collaboration with David Power.

Interestingly she mentioned an informal bench made out of driftwood out on the outer dunes at Cleethorpes.  The coast and dunes at Cleethorpes is a place that I enjoy spending time and I have photographed this bench.  Although never created as a memorial bench it has since become an informal one with memorial cards and carvings being attached.  It is, however, more about life than death.

David Power
David collaborated with Linda on the work on Memorial benches, but also contributed film and music to the exhibition.  He studied composition with Richard Steinitz, Steve Ingham and Roger Marsh and his work was premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.  It has been performed widely throughout the UK and, more recently in Europe and the USA.  His work has also been used widely as soundtracks for art installations.  His music in the exhibition accompanies two films: Platinum and Did I Dream You.  In one film I was interested in the use of double exposure, something I have been experimenting with in still photography to link landscape and memory as was the case in the film.

Harriet Tarlo and Judith Tucker
As explained in my earlier blog on the Neverends exhibition (Blog link here), Their work Outfalls features drawings and poems of the Louth canal.  These are beautiful in their own right, but what attracted me was the reference to the fact that the industrial past of the canal becomes absorbed into semi-wilderness.  This is re-wilding of man's infrastructures excites me.  Perhas the ultimate example is the re-wilding of Pripyat since the Chernobyl disaster.  The idea of walking the canal links with my work on walking and wilderness and to this end I have already walked and photographed the first half of the canal. (Blog link here).  Their talk made links to The Edgelands of Farley and Simmons Roberts and they made the argument that Edgelands are today's true wildernesses.  The canal closed in 1924 and has since fallen into slow dereliction.  They concluded with a fascinating question: "Do canals remain canals when they are no longer used as such?"

An important and very enjoyable part of the presentation was a reading by Harriet Tarlo of some of her poems.

David Ainley
David, artist and lecturer at the University of Derby and Nottingham, spoke about the work from his series Quarrying, Landscape Issues and Veins which features in the exhibition.  He gave the background to his work and explained how landscape has been shaped by overlooked labour.  He spoke interestingly on the complicated and lengthy process of creating his work.

After lunch Francis Presley spoke on the subject of the language and landscapes of her Lincolnshire childhood.  Her poems are published in a book: An Alphabet for Alina which is illustrated by Peterjon Skelt

Rosemary Shirley and Verity Elson
This talk was entitled Creating the Countryside; the rural idyll past and present.  It is the title of both an exhibition at Compton Verney Art Gallery and a book of the exhibition.  The talk was basically a virtual tour of the exhibition with their personal observations on the relevance of the various exhibits which vary in media and artists, ranging from old masters to modern work; paintings, photography and installations.  Shirley and Elson gathered together a range of art works to tell the story of the creation of today's (false?) romantic notions of the rural idyll which is our landscape.  Contibutors to the exhibition include: Claude Lorrain (drawing and a Claude Glass), Paul Reas, Thomas Gainsborough, William Collins, John Constable, Peter Kennard's take on The Haywain, Anna Fox, Frank Newbould and others too many to mention.
The book of the exhibition features an introductory essay on the creation of the countryside by the authors and then a series of essays by other contributors to illustrate aspects of the exhibition as well as interviews with some of the featured artists such as Anna Fox.  I look forward to reading it, not least because one of the essayists: Dr Nicola Bishop from Manchester Met who writes on The Nature of Nostalgia is a family friend who grew up with my own children.