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Stones, The Sun and Mythology in the Dartmoor Landscape
Stonehenge at Summer Solstice, Salisbury.
Solstice, Stonehenge. For those looking to celebrate these celestial landmarks in the turning year it is a combination I imagine feels more than familiar. Summer Solstice in particular also happens to be to be Elsie’s birthday, so to celebrate we packed our bags and made our way down westward to the outskirts of Salisbury to meet her family amongst possibly the worlds most iconic stone circle.
After night had fallen, there is a passage of time amongst the deepest hour where the drum beats start to slow, people start to lay on their blankets dashed amongst the surrounding plain and the atmosphere tempers to that which I could only describe as hushed. The stones beckon a dawning glow as the sky begins to illuminate little by little, and people at the same pace begin to encircle the great old titans of rock. It is truly a morning unforgettable.
Elsie and Lamb, Harford Moor.
After heading further west down into Devon, we slept most of the remaining day in an attempt to cull the effects of pulling an all nighter. For the following week Elsie guided me to some spots around Dartmoor and Devon she thought I may be interested in. Including Harford Moor’s bronze age hut circle village, Avon Dam, Totnes Castle and I was pointed in the direction one misty morning of Ugborough Beacon and let loose with my RB67 amongst the wind and mizzle, where I encountered some quiet Kelpies grazing amongst the granite.
Kelpie, Ugborough Beacon.
This encounter with the Kelpies upon Ugborough Beacon prompted a much welcomed dive into the deep rabbit hole of mythology.. Previously when I was last in Dartmoor, I was there soleley for the conception of my ongoing body of work Dumnonia in which I found focus in the polygamous marriage of industry, faith, science and the domestic endeavour that I imagine was more akin to survival when these ruins still stood. I’m excited by this new underpinning for the body of work and the cultural context it will serve within it.
Elsie finds a new friend, St. Petroc’s, Harford.
Me and a Hawthorn, Harford Moor. Photograph by Elsie.
Foxglove, Harford Moor.
Dumnonia - A short film for Dartmoor
Dumnonia, a short film and poem created alongside the main body of work as a response to the bronze age landscape of Dartmoor.
Reading in old English. (Ot at least trying to)
A big thank you to Joanna Mayes and Carolyn Kennett for having me on the residency.
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I step across the earthly expanse,
Rocks drowning in mud and peat.
There, on the hillside, an enclosure made of stone is placed.
I think to the livestock that would have roamed this small hill box,
What gods they lay their hearth down upon,
I think to my sea at home, and the men that tended to the waves for the good of their kin.
The felling sound of men escapes the tree line and breaks this thought in two.
I am left standing at a cross, for something so hallowed it looks to me like a serpent escaping from infernal dominion.
The mist congeals at the rise, the parliament of great stones loom and speak, passing knowledge of my tomorrows between them. They know, but I do not.
What tomorrows lay ahead? I step upon the earth and find out day by day but never knowing of its fixture until it is already passed.
They breathe in deep time for I must appear a speck of dust floating in the mist. My sorrows and joys a leaf floating down stream until I am tossed to the waves.
The River Cries With Its Mouth Full Of Mud - Group Exhibition @ Dorset Place Gallery w/ Photo Fringe
The River Cries With Its Mouth Full Of Mud interpets space and trauma, prompting us to tackle the concept in broad and different ways. These diverse visualities range from personal, archival explorations; to works that highlight climate change’s impacts on English landscapes; to investigations of historic events and their physical traumas to the land.
This exhibition celebreates our diverse, collective works and showcases the future of contemporary photography through emerging artists’ eyes. Our work prompts an open dialogue with the audience and questions how photography, space and trauma interlace. Running throughout is a comentary on the impact of photography as a social-narrative tool and offers up an invitation to interpret the diverse work new photographers are creating.
Sharing two photographs from The Crossing", I put forward a launchpad for a body of work that walks the trauma seeped landscape touched by the journey of William from the shoreline of Pevensey to the areas surrounding years following his enthronement.
Photographer Ben Osborne was chair to our panel discussion and Q&A on the themes of this exhibition.
Other photographers showing include: Emma Brown, Stanislas Sauvage, Anna Warin & Zoe Montgomery.
Tales The Land Tells - Exhibition with Joe Charrington, Zosia Symanoswka & Esme Papa @ Koop Projects
Opening Friday, 31 May: Tales the Land Tells is an exhibition that focuses on the passage of time and the stories we can tell using the land around us. Featuring a delicate collection of work from, Esme Papa - The Seaweed Experiments, Zosia Szymanowska - Place & Passing and Joe Charrington -'Lay Like The Folds of A Bright Girdle Furled'.
"Along the bleak facade of permanence that is the Sussex Coastline, Joe Charrington interprets and documents transient states. 'Lay Like The Folds of A Bright Girdle Furled', a line reappropriated from Mathew Arnold's poem Dover Beach, is an ode to the ever changing landscape on the southern most stretches of this England”.
Beneath Mercia - Published by Unit 33
Joe Charrington’s first publication 'Beneath Mercia' is a 34 page risograph printed photobook. Hardback with debossed print on cover, foil blocked spine and black paper digital print dustcover.
‘…a lot of the time, my work is concerned with human interaction with the landscape of Sussex.
Beneath Mercia most notably takes this interaction and places a bookend some time back, a time when we fully relied on the land to live, and takes another bookend and places it in the present…Within these boundaries I wanted to depict a county, or country even, that was longing to step back into these traditions and ways of living that echoed down family trees, faint memories still alive in the synapses of our psyches…
Beneath Mercia is in no way an answer to the dissonance in our relationship to The British Isles. To me it asks: Where are we? Where were we? And how does that fit in to our lives today?’
148mm x 210mm
Printed on FSC certified 120gsm paper
Sewn binding
Printed endpapers
Edition of 100
Each copy is numbered and signed.
Buy Here