The challenges of working in creative collaboration………
Our ‘how’ appeared like a bolt from the blue. Six disparate artists from across the spectrum of multi-disciplinery practice, sitting, talking, standing and gesticulating in fervent exploration, seeking the one thing that would unite our project. We needed to find something which spoke of the industry and life of Hastings in times past, we needed to speak of the development of The Stade area as well as the age-old conflict between the fishing community and the middle classes. We needed to embrace the conflict, encircle the controversial Jerwood Gallery with all its chattering classes connutations while remaining true to our seaside community.
One word. That word was SALT. It came into my mind like a bolt from the heavens. It came because I didn’t have enough money to get a taxi home from the station on a fierce stormy night and when I finally got home, battered by the elements, I realised I was coated in a thin veneer of sodium chloride. The elixir of life, the essential mineral for survival, the preserver of fish and the fishing industry, the stuff of the sea – the conceptual heart of our community.
We had it. And once we had it, it grew into a wild idea that seemed at once implausible and utterly right. Leigh Dyer brought out his drawing of a huge life-size industrial conveyor belt which we fell upon like excited children. Peter Quinnell then came in with a better drawing, showing the OHPs slung carelessly with ropes and pulleys from the ceiling. Miranda Sharp, our Peoples’ Secretary of Hastings showed us the words gathered lovingly from the people of Hastings and Xaverine Bates pulled out photographs of salt mountains, salt hills, salt piles which resonated – and SALT was born……
