With less than a month to go before the residency exhibition things are coming together. I've spent today testing out how things look in the different spaces in the lighthouse. As an exhibition space it is pretty challenging: there are low light levels in most rooms; floors and surfaces are dirty; and there are a lot of steps! By exhibiting work at the top of the building (where the light is better) you are expecting visitors to invest in the effort required to walk up all those steps. Hopefully the promise of the view from the top is enough to encourage people to make that investment! Lower down, where it is gloomy, even on a bright day, there is a risk that work will just not have an impact at all. There is a lot to consider in trying to create an exhibition that will be successful for the viewer.
I was also interviewed today for BBC Look North, which was fun. We recorded sequences on the top of the dunes, in the lighthouse and up on the balcony at the top. The feature should go out sometime next week in the eastern part of the region. The weather was good to us, with bright sunshine while the crew were there.
Later things got very hazy and strange light joined rumbles of thunder before some rain.
On any walk on the beach I pick things up, sometimes more actively than others. On my long walk last weekend I just collected feathers.
I've experimented with printing from these, having turned some of them into a collagraph plate. Their solid shafts mean that there is quite a difference in heights on the plate so a relief print using just rollered ink is patchy, but I love that uncertainty about what will print and what won't.
I've been developing some collagraph plates to print from. This is a slow process as things have to happen in the right order, with one layer or process being completed before the next. I'm working with two different ideas: one is to use collected items from the beach, glued onto a base; the other is to build up texture based on my drawings using collaged paper and stitch.
I'm experimenting with different types of found item: plastic fragments (which should make an interesting print but are not easy to glue down effectively), textile fragments (which glue down beautifully) and seaweed fragments (which glue down with mixed success).
At this stage things can look disappointingly boring but there is the hope that they will produce some really interesting textures and marks once printed.
Everything has to be sealed so that when it goes through the printing press with damp paper it all holds together. Some things also need a kind of primer to help stabilize them for when ink is applied. The gesso I use for this transforms the plates into ghostly versions of themselves (see the image at the top).
My hope is that I can use the textures to print onto both paper and fabric, the second of those to feed into the 'Spurn cloth' that is developing from the fabric dyed on site.
Having undone the bundle I had left on one of the groyne bolts on my last visit I prepared to leave some more to mature for next time. I'm trying to take marks from Spurn itself, using things that are part of the place. Because Spurn is a Nature Reserve my work has to have no impact at all on the place. This means that I can't pick leaves from the sea buckthorn to dye with or anything else along those lines.
The rusty metal that I am finding both on the groynes and lying around on the beach is part of the make-up of the place. Man-made structures are very much part of Spurn's history and the things that are washed up on the beach are as much part of what Spurn is today as the sand, pebbles, seaweed and plants (whether we like it or not!). If it wasn't for these additions then the spit probably wouldn't be in the form it is now.
If I can use these things to make meaningful marks on paper and cloth, with little use of other materials then I feel I am really taking something from the place, making something of the place without any negative impact.
I'm using the sea water as an agent to help me too. I do find that the addition of tea really helps transfer marks from the rusty metal onto paper and cloth (see here for an explanation) so I am using that to help, even though that isn't something that occurs here - I have found a few old tea bags in amongst the other flotsam and jetsam, so maybe that justifies that one! A mixture of sea water and tea from my flask to wet the fabric before wrapping it will hopefully help get things off to a good start and then they will be submerged twice a day by the North sea.
I'm looking forward to returning to Spurn tomorrow, although the weather is horrid and looks like it is continuing like this for a few days. I'm particlularly looking forward to getting to know the groynes a bit better! These wooden structures for slowing the action of long-shore drift are quite dramatic and seem to feature in just about every photo of Spurn you find on Flickr.
I'm interested in the rusty metal that is often attached to these in various states of decay. Much of my work in recent months has featured rust prints as a basis upon which I've layered other print techniques, as well as stitch. I want to see what kind of marks I can take from the rusty objects at Spurn. On my last visit I left a couple of experiments on site. These have hopefully been developing and maturing and I'm looking forward to seeing what results there are.
I wrapped some metal objects I found on the beach, having first wet my fabric in sea water (the nearest sea fisherman along the beach must have thought I was bonkers; dancing around the edge of the water as the tide was coming in and trying to dodge the waves whilst dipping fabric into them). These I left in the lighthouse.
I also wrapped one of the rusty bolts still attached to a groyne but loose. This should be submerged in sea water every time the tide comes up. Even after one night and one high tide it had obviously started to take on some of the rusty colour:
My worry is that these have either worked loose and been washed away or removed by curious visitors. Although this shouldn't be too unusual a thing to come across given that many of the groynes already have many bits of rope and broken net wound round them by the action of the waves. As long as they remain in place and depending on the resulting marks, I plan to set up some more this weekend.
