The residue of an unspecified ritual and journeying to no end

June 2011

Black Isle Residency

Funded by RSA Residencies for Scotland Bursary in association with Creative Scotland and the Cromarty Arts Trust

As the bus made its way up the winding highland roads my face split into a grin. I lean out the window craning to admire the waves crashing against the rocks running parallel to the tarmac; the smell of salt air fills my head.

Final stop on the bus route, I alight before the bus turns around and makes its way back along the coast towards Inverness. Pausing for a moment, I take in my new surroundings. It’s a beautiful day and I take off my jumper, then turning my back on the harbour I make my way up the hill with my suitcase to my new June lodgings.

I barely fit through the door, squeezing in I pick up my keys then roughly drag my suitcase to my bedroom on the top floor. The low ceiling beams on the ground floor have been padded out with blue velvet, pinned to the wooden beams with gold studs, but the same has not be applied to the subsequent floors and by the end of the first evening I’ve surprised myself with sharp bangs to the head 2, or was it 3? times.

The first few days are caught in a heat wave. I spent the evenings between studio basking on the beach by the rock pools, lazing in a somnolent haze, half dreaming listening to the waves caress the shoreline and occasionally opening my eyes to watch the swallows dart fervently across the sky.

Yesterday brought a storm; the water seems to have harnessed more power here by the coast as if the rain, encouraged by the waves, beats harder and faster against my legs. Walking home along the beach I feel engulfed by water. A small clip from The Craft plays in my head. (My mind spins back to Susan Hiller’s 1999 Psi Girls installation I saw at Tate Britain while I was down in London exhibiting last month, then my thoughts move to her Dream Mapping 1974. Today I’m listening to the Susan Hiller Tate Talk podcast).

I smirk at the occult-ish nature of my walk; my long skirts whip against my legs, my loose hair is blowing wildly in the wind and I’m carrying a cow’s skull. I’m glad no one is around to confront me as I’m not ready to explain myself yet.

Retreating to the shelter of my attic bedroom to listen to the rain bombard the windowpanes, the noise drowns out the radio.

This morning I awoke to a pale amber sky winking at me from between the tall rocky headlands, the south Sutor shrouded in cloud.

The Exhibition – wonderful, went like a flash! I met with Elizabeth Shields, granddaughter of John Kinross and daughter of John Kinross who set up the RSA Scholarship in honour of his late father. She was delightful and gave me some very heartwarming feedback, it seems our collective enthusiasm for art became infectious.

Guest queuing to get in, filling the corridors of the basement space as I squeezed past attempting to introduce the artists to those who were taking a keen interest in their work -topping up drinks, stealing a quick moment to chat to old friends – the opening was over far to fast.

My work: bearing the space in mind, I needed to bring pop-up pieces of work, works that could expand inside the basements rabbit warren-esk space.

Miss Cadiere’s Flying Machine – build from lolly pop sticks, a bit of tissue and an old sweeping broom. I also showed my 2010 film ‘My dear, my very dear mistress, I like to rock your child because I myself am a child ‘

And a large composite of photographs, mono prints, paintings and found objects that I titled ‘The Serf Invokes the Spirit of Hidden Treasures’

I also took the opportunity to invest in my fellow artists are walked away owning Studs by Ashley Nieuwenhuizen, Three Winters Worth by David Cass and an untitled painting by Sophie Ormerod.

Back from London: Preparing the clay I dug from the local parish last summer, the leaves and grasses caught in it have began to decompose and further discolour the natural material.

The thick black clay is now too sticky to work, instantly coating my hands, so I’ve laid it out in the sun to dry out a bit, reminiscent of making mud pies. I’ll come back to it tomorrow.

(written 05.05.11)

With less than a month until the opening of WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE it has been all go go go in the 2010 RSA John Kinross Scholars camp. Compiling mailing lists, press releases, ordering flyers and finalising promotional posters. Artist David Cass is just finishing up an artists book catalogue for the show, featuring work from all the artists showing and nice little behinds the scenes footage of us working in Florence. He has a superb eye for this sort of thing so I am eagerly anticipating the final product.www.davidcass.co.uk

It’s very exciting for me to watch a little seed of an exhibition idea bloom into something substantial, something thats gaining both acknowledgement and financial support from major players in the Scottish art scene.

Although at times it’s been a wee bit stressful organising and planning this show, it has also been an incredibly rewarding process, making contacts and learning skills that will be applied over and over again in my years as a practicing artist. This is what can be achieved as a ‘do-it-yourself’ artist, and what you can get if you just ask the right questions to the right people.

Still, a few weeks of hard graft to go yet before I can enjoy a glass of wine at the opening…. nervous excitement….

WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE opens with a special preview on 28 April at 7pm, the show will run at Shoreditch Townhall Basement from Friday 29 April until Sunday 1 May. If you want to book mark this exhibition you can join us on the Facebook event page here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=163021950421185

Here in Northumberland I have been quenching my thirst for contemporary art with regular journeys across to Newcastle to visit the Baltic (they’ll be hosting the Turner Prize later this year) but I still feel a little too removed from a contemporary art scene. And if it’s not the 2 hour journey to the nearest contemporary gallery that’s making me feel cut off it’s the fact the working 50 hour weeks is leaving little time for art making. (Even this blog has taken me over three weeks to write now, every morning jotting down a quick sentence/notion between slurps of tea.)

(Nevertheless) I’ve begun the hunt for the She-wolf in rural Northumberland.

One particular wolf is of local legend here, and although apparently meeting an untimely end on the rail tracks west of the village here in 1905, I still hear people warn others about wandering around the forests at night in case they meet the wolf.

A quick google search of my home town ‘Hexham’ and ‘Wolf’ brings up articles from Mysterious Britain.com and The Fortean times.com – the world of strange phenomena vividly describing the wolf attacks at the turn of the century and even the peculiar case of the Hexham Heads in the 1970s. ‘a pair of Celtic stone heads were dug up in a garden not 10 minutes walk from the woods of the wolf. These uncanny artefacts were seemingly protected by an animalistic presence that would crash about in whichever house the Heads happened to inhabit. Interestingly, witnesses of this bizarre primal presence described it as being half-man, half-beast; the beast part was a wolf.’

However the scholar in me will not allow myself to put much faith in these Internet articles, and I’m curious to know how these wolf tales began.

It’s this curiosity (and I think a desire to feel like ‘a scholar’ once more) that led me to walking up the winding metal paint flecked staircase to the upper floor of my local library where the ancient microfilm scanner lurks. The dark wood panels library and cavernous dark brick ceiling makes this the kind of library where you are surprised the books aren’t completely moth eaten and disintegrate when you pick them up. Unsurprisingly there’s not a single book on contemporary art in their collection (actually there is very little that’s not romance, crime fiction or local history) but fortunately for me this week they do hold every single copy of my local paper, ‘The Courant’ on microfilm.

I begin pulling reels of film out of the metal cabinet, loading them on the machine and start scanning through pages of articles on local farming and adverts ‘NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! 1 CABINET free of all charge!. I have a good idea where I need to start looking but still a disappointing half hour went by and I found no trace of the wolf. I began to conclude the story had been sensationalized with the previously mentioned reporters banging out weird stories without any actual fact checking.

But then something came up.

Friday December 10^th, pg 8, amongst notes on the Russo-Japan war; ‘BIG HUNT IN ALLENDALE: The Search For The Wolf’. I begin eagery scribbling down notes ‘Killed 4 sheep, severely injuring 2’ ‘Sighted in Sipton Wood, then Killop Law then across to Weardale’. In the weeks after more articles pop out as the hunt for the wolf catches the public imagination. After a couple of hours I have lists of notes following the exact movements of the wolf sightings over a couple of weeks as well as a few more humorous anecdotes , one regarded an unfortunate farmer who ‘was standing at his door when the wolf suddenly appeared which so unnerved him that he ran into the house and threw a cat out at it’.

And some articles that struck a particular chord with me noting ‘peculiar costumes have been worn’ while tracking the wolf, men wore ‘white dresses’ and how the ‘ornamental appearance of the hunters (was) enhanced by wearing ‘hoggers’ ‘

(Although still no sign of that main front page headline of ‘Wolf At Large In Allendale’ like the man from Mysterious Britain promised)

Now I wonder if I can find anything in the 1970s papers about those weird Hexham Heads?

Back to the library

when I get another day off.