Hard Rock Lament
Things of concrete and wire, mythical creatures to inspire stories
What captivates your senses and gives you that WOW feeling? It’s different for everyone. I love looking at graffiti, it’s like another language of colour, form and shape whose meaning eludes me, yet it feels like I should be able to ‘read’ the words and symbols. It’s the same for old rusted wires and fences, they become creatures of beauty in my eyes.
As part of my artist residency in Cornwall, we travelled to the Lizard peninsular to explore an abandoned stone quarry which is currently the site of speculation about its future. While much of the industrial machinery has been removed, there are still remnants of its former existence which form a disjointed narrative of concrete, wire and stone. This wall (pictured above) with rusty wire sticking out from the top, felt like a spirit trapped bodily in concrete, with wild hair and gesticulating arms. It could be a mythological Medusa embedded in another place and time.
She inspired me to take photographs of her and I imagined what it must feel like to be trapped in this immovable body. It was this image which started my series of poems about the mythical creatures who reside in the abandoned quarry, while in its liminal in-between state of neither being neither a working industrial centre, a wildlife refuge nor a housing development (all three have been proposed).
There are large concrete walls which have attracted protest graffiti as well as rusting fences, strange empty subterranean rooms like bunkers and the remains of where the conveyor belts went out to the pier for loading the gabbro stone onto ships. My gaze though, returns to the Medusa and her wire protrusions, penetrating into the concrete like wounds that bleed rust.
For our open studio next week, I have sent two pictures off to the printers to exhibit. The top picture of the entire wall with its wire ‘hair’ and a close up of what I call Medusa, all twisting, convoluted wires looped around what appears to me as a face.
I hope to show a little one minute video about ‘trespassing’ and instal some works on a plinth. Places become alive to me often through fictional stories created about them. This is what I aim to do in the short time we have on our residency - to create a brochure and poems for An Imaginary Guide to Trespass.
I’m in the process of loading images and poems onto my website as a record of the work I have made. During these last artist residencies, I’ve discovered I love combining poetry, film and visual art. Expect more of these as the year continues…
‘Medusa’ in concrete -she calls to me to tell her ‘hard rock’ lament.
