Walking in ancient landscapes:
a search for connection and belonging through the creative mediation of prehistoric objects and places.
A Final Major Project, MA Fine Art, Falmouth College of Art, February to August 2024
Project rationale
'We live our lives in the middle of things. Material culture carries emotions and ideas of startling intensity '(Turkle 2011:6).
In this project the focus will be one of exploring connection and commonality with the past through the object and extending the research into considering the landscape as object, and into history.
To begin with I will explore materials and method as a form of connection with the past, for example sculpting with clay and pit firing reminiscent of clay pots excavated at the prehistoric site of Glastonbury Lake Village (Brunning 2022). This exploration through process is already a major part of my practice and the basis of my learning strategy. Tim Ingold talks of knowledge arising from thinking through doing, or “where you try things out and see what happens” (2013:7). By using this methodology, I anticipate new levels of responsiveness and fluidity in my work resulting in knowledge production through the process of ‘making’, rather than through what is ‘made’.
It has been a deliberate and important decision to avoid exhibiting in a white cube space. Brian O’Doherty in his essay ‘Inside the White Cube’ (1999) talks about the white cube gallery as a place without time or context, a place where “the outside world must not come in”, however for this project the outside world is very much part of the work. Choosing a non-gallery exhibition venue situated within the prehistoric environment will impact on the works interpretation, and therefore has the potential to provide a more meaningful experience for the viewer.
Excitingly there is scope for future work by adopting an interdisciplinary methodology. Going forward a collaboration with an archaeology group will provide an opportunity in which scientific process and creative expression can work together to consider our interpretation of the past through object finds and landscape.
Over the course of the next few months I will be developing an exciting and thoughtful new body of work by walking with our ancestors in the prehistoric landscape of the Somerset Levels.
References
BRUNNING, Richard. 2022. ‘Uncovering the Secrets and Vulnerability of Glastonbury Lake Village: researching and protecting England’s best-preserved Iron Age settlement’. Historic England [online]. Available at: https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/research/back-issues/uncovering-the-secrets-and-vulnerability-of-glastonbury-lake-village/#:~:text=The%20Lake%20Village,-Glastonbury%20Lake%20Village&text=Excavations%20between%201892%20and%201907,of%20which%20roundhouses%20were%20created [accessed 22nd February 2024].
INGOLD, Tim. 2013. Making; Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Oxon: Routledge.
O'DOHERTY, Brian. 1999. Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, Expanded Edition. Berkely, California: University of California Press.
TURKLE, Sherry. 2011. Evocative objects: Things we Think With. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.