The Broads Authority 'Water, Mills & Marshes'
Artist Residency, 2021-2022
During 2021-2 I undertook an artist residency for The Broads Authority ‘Water Mills and Marshes’ Landscape Partnership Project - a multi-disciplinary project that aimed to foster public engagement in the natural and built environment, heritage and community of the Norfolk Broads. Five artists were selected to engage with a particular community and landscape within the Broads and develop site-specific artworks for an exhibition 'Between River and Reed', curated by Caroline Fisher, at The Skippings Gallery, Great Yarmouth, 8th-25th June 2022, and The Assembly House, Norwich, 9th August-31st October 2022, See Exhibitions page for further details.
Having previously worked on a large-scale aerial photography project mapping and recording the archaeological landscape of the Norfolk Broads for English Heritage, I was keen to develop a more intimate and nuanced relationship with this place. I chose to explore Wickhampton, on the western edge of the Broads, where the archaeology had fascinated me during my mapping work. Here the farming landscape overlies a complex of ancient settlements, field systems and trackways known only from the cropmarks that temporarily reveal themselves on the surface of the fields. Detailed discussion of these features can be found in chapter 5 of this online Report. Through a series of site visits, research and conversations I sought to explore the 'Field Stories' and practises embodied within these fleeting ‘ghost’ fields and the continued agricultural legacy of this farmland; it’s traditions, rituals, and architecture.
The discovery of photographs of Plough Blessings, a modern resurrection of ancient rites, in Wickhampton Church threw these ideas into sharp relief. Subsequent site visits and meetings with the local church and farming community led me to explore the ways in which the grain and the land, as well as the church, become vessels for ideas of faith, permanence and community identity, and a connection with the past. Traditional harvest favours and corn dollies, like those displayed at the Harvest Festival, were commissioned for the project from May Queen Crafts and were encased in liquid clay and fired into a fragile ceramic forms. A central ‘Urn’ vessel decorated with images from the 2022 Plough Blessing and medieval woodcuts of agrarian scenes, was surrounded by contorted landscapes and filled with ceramic pebbles. Monoprinting techniques were used to produce flaking and ephemeral surfaces that reference the fragile medieval church paintings and dilapidated village sign - exploring contrasting ideas of impermanence and fragility, compared with memorial and monumental, and how fragments of these stories are written into the landscape.
The final exhibit was part museum exhibit, part archaeological assemblage waiting to be excavated – fragmented remains of stories, traditions and landscapes.
