- Venue
- Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Whitby Museum and The Museum of Whitby Jet
- Starts
- Friday, July 19, 2019
- Ends
- Sunday, November 3, 2019
- Address
- Contact The Captain Coo kMemorial Museum ,Grape Lane, Whitby YO21 1PA
- Location
- North East England
- Organiser
- Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Whitby Museum and The Museum of Whitby Jet
The work is a direct response to the extraordinary drawings, paintings and prints that documented James Cook’s three voyages.Cook’s official artists recorded some of the first encounters between Europeans and native peoples with varying degrees of objectivity. On closer inspection, these seductive images often reveal a darker more troubling subtext.
Helen has sought to reinterpret and reframe the Cook narrative in order to challenge notionsof home, nationality, identity and freedom of movement.
The exhibition includes costumes, props and interior furnishings, produced through laser cutting and water jet cutting. These works have in turn been used to create a series of staged photographs.
Helen has been working closely with curators from The Box Plymouth, The Captain Cook Memorial Museum Whitby, Whitby Museum, The Museum of Whitby Jet and the Devon Guild of Craftsmen to research and develop a touring exhibition, supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Helen has taken inspiration from the many original works in the Captain Cook Memorial Museum collection, notably the remarkable drawings and paintings by Cook’s official artists Sydney Parkinson, William Hodges and John Webber and also the complete set of plates from Sir Joseph Bank’s Florilegium, a recent bequest to the museum library.
The Box, Plymouth has provided Helen with access to first edition volumes of Cook’s voyages and other eighteenth century works in its historically important Cottonian Collection.
A sailing residency around the Outer Hebrides with Sail Britain and An Lanntair Arts Centre, Stornoway in 2018 provided some of the locations for the photoshoots.
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