temporary artwork, written in chalk. August 2007
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sun/dew: (example proposal, which is being developed as a re:place project by Arts in the Peak and arthur+martha CIC)
alleluja baby’s breath bath of venus bee trap bird’s eye
We propose a series of text works, sited along a walk/trail in the High Peak. Each artwork will function as stand-alone piece, but also part of a whole. The texts will be traditional flower-names, placed on (and commenting on) remnants of industrial and agricultural activity in the landscape, including manmade water courses, sluice gates, abandoned mill and farm machinery, field gates and walls, positing a dialectic between the made and the ‘natural’.
Countryside signs are little moments of human intervention. A handpainted sign, an arrow scratched onto a rock, a picture of sheep: they are part of the world so familiar they are almost invisible, but they say a great deal about the people who put them there and about the status and use of the land. They indicate issues of ownership, trespass, ecological use and abuse, lost language, pastoral mythos vs. urban disquiet. Following these hermetic clues along a trail will allow a re-seeing of familiar landscapes, as well as doubling as a markers for a walk. They are gentle poetic interventions, which point up their surroundings with humour and subtle wordplay.
The result is an exploration of versions of the seen world, an enrichment of observation and a delicate reconnection of the contemporary landscape with its multi-layered deeper histories. This is the first part of a broader longterm project by Lois Blackburn and Philip Davenport to use the shape and content of archaic walks in contemporary contexts. This larger project references walks made by mill-workers, Wakes Walks, pilgrimages, pagan ceremonies, journeys made by individuals. A ‘lost’ walk is rediscovered and mapped out again, appropriating contemporary techniques of claiming space: signage, billposters, shop displays, etc. The walks will be documented photographically; we will work in collaboration with the Tourist Board and local councils to establish trails in all of the UK national parks, as well as in urban regeneration areas. The trails will be available as maps, in limited edition signed prints and also a publication documenting the whole sequence as a photo-essay.
The walk-works are an extension of the text pieces and poetic practices of Ian Hamilton Finlay, Richard Long, Bob Cobbing, Jenny Holzer, Carolyn Thomson, Tony Trehy. Davenport is one of a group of new British poets who refer to fine art as much as to poetry traditions; Lois Blackburn is an artist and illustrator with a longstanding interest in work that impacts on the environment and in societal issues.
Workshops
This project has been piloted at a site in Hayfield, High Peak using chalk writing and paper printouts (see photos) for this proposal we wish to include many other media. Some might be permanent carvings, some ethereal and temporary – written in flowers, or in mud, or pinned up onto telegraph poles. A cow’s hide could have a short piece written on it. More permanent pieces might be carved into stone, etched into metal, sandblasted onto a window. The pieces allow a layering of manmade and natural processes – weathering, plant growth, animal activity, water erosion will allow further resonances to develop as the very life that the works refer to reclaim the words.
