Splicing

And then I opened my first grey, cardboard, archive box of Sanctuary treasures. Box Number 5 contained black and white photographs from various eras, but the 1920s shot of three women dressed solely in white, wearing black boots and eyes cast down at the same table of work, while two men sit with the same focus at a neighbouring bench, in dark jackets, flat cap and what looks to be a Homburg, caught my eye and stirred memories recent and distant.

The women may have been examining finished rope for imperfections, the men are perched on stools, with what could be hessian sacks, as cushions. They’re definitely checking their laptops. No, they really are. Emily has agreed that I can put together a slideshow of my favourite Sanctuary images, as part of my exhibition next spring, so you can let me know what you see.

My memory was sparked in at least three directions. Immediately, in relation to a day in June this year when nearly all the phase 3, New Expressions artists and curators gathered at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery to share individual lines of commission enquiry. While I look at this photograph filled with white walls, coils of rope and piles of hemp, the strong shaft of sunlight beaming onto the be-bunned workers reminds me that artist Tim Shore, in the north of England, is currently researching how time/light ruled the working day of a mill. I’ll be watching out for his final work at Strutts North Mill, and interested to see if images of millworkers in sunbeams also engender the air of Canova’s ‘The Three Graces’ for me, however incongruous that may seem.

In addition the scene of studious, grafting employment in this photograph reminds me of the steady gazes of unemployment, poverty and hunger found in Walker Evans’ work during the Great American Depression, 1935 - 1936. Having curated the Hayward/Southbank Touring exhibition of Walker Evans’ images in Ely, Cambridgeshire 2006, and filled the gallery full of lindy hop dancers, infant and ancient, I had a great drive to install the same works at my newly rented Dorset farmhouse home in 2010.

I was privileged to be given permission by my landlords and the Southbank, to live with 53 of Walker Evans’ finest photographs nestled in bucolic isolation for a month. 500 intrepid visitors shared the poignancy, quality and intelligence of Evans’ Farm Security Administration work with me while combine harvesters pulled in the surrounding rich harvest by day and night. I don’t think the contrasts were lost on any of us, especially an ex-tenant who visited the farmhouse to remember his impoverished boyhood 65 years prior.

Finally in this echo chamber I am transported to the engine room belly of a ship where my grandfather is working, with his flat cap on, his white sleeves rolled and the churning quease of oil filling every part of my system.

I like to see where things join, where they connect. Where they knot together.

http://www.newexpressions.org/New-Opportunities-Award/