Title
Into the Interior II
Year
2025
Location
Shipping Brow Gallery, Maryport, Cumbria, UK
Description
A continuation of my interest in lives spent underground. I’m a member of CATMHS, Cumbria Amenities Trust Mining Heritage Society, - a society which preserves and makes sense of the remains of mining in Cumbria and is part of a wider UK piecing together of the mining story. Like many terrains and industries, there are mixed emotions associated with this life underground. There is pride and community, but also grief over lives, livelihoods and cultures lost or shortened. For thousands of years, the subterrain has been the repository of many stories and emotions. For example, there are several Greek myths concerned with journeying underground, associated with bravery, love and wisdom.
In recent years, there is growing archaeological evidence in the UK and Greece suggesting new reasons why communities built special architectures underground, ritual sites where we suspended the rules of the everyday, prepared ourselves for the next step, or took part in a natural cycle of renewal or goodbye. The textile pieces shown here are based on visits to Dinorwic, the huge slate quarry in north Wales. Textiles having their own history and language, I have used them for their power to suggest different associations, such as pressed shirts, wispiness, boundaries, shiny and opaque surfaces, creatures, ruins, maps and dwellings.
In recent years, there is growing archaeological evidence in the UK and Greece suggesting new reasons why communities built special architectures underground, ritual sites where we suspended the rules of the everyday, prepared ourselves for the next step, or took part in a natural cycle of renewal or goodbye. The textile pieces shown here are based on visits to Dinorwic, the huge slate quarry in north Wales. Textiles having their own history and language, I have used them for their power to suggest different associations, such as pressed shirts, wispiness, boundaries, shiny and opaque surfaces, creatures, ruins, maps and dwellings.