The story illustrated in this darkened room told of ancient swamps in the area of a stunted global landscape - pre-continental shifts - hinting at a Britain-shaped land mass conjoined to Europe (Topical ?) In the midst of all that a region which will be Stoke-On-Trent at some future time, but beyond comprehension as yet. The early 1970's looked nothing like the Middle Paleolithic period tableaux in the museum complex laid out before me - I struggled with this room!
I suppose I didn't get the point because the number-crunching involved in the great passage of time it illustrates is mind-blowing; but it might as well be just the other week in the greater scheme of things with regard to planet Earth's known existence, and wrapped up in the history of time itself to boot!
The room is still exactly the same today, but obviously it all makes sense now.
It all begins with a huge map at the entrance to this room, the natural history section.
The map is the Mineral Map & Section of the North Staffordshire Coalfield, 'shewing the outcrops of the Various Seams or Strata of Coal & Ironstone.' I can imagine now; a small smoky office cramped with the presence of heavy coated, top hatted men poring over this comprehensive map wide-eyed with the vision of the potential spoils lying beneath this local earth, and the vast wealth creating possibilities to a grasping gamut of heavy industries operating on the surface, to which these men belonged - rapidly seducing people off working the land and into the black, grimy filth of dim streets and long hours of harsh unforgiving and life-shortening labour. The Stoke-On-Trent of my fore-fathers no less.
My particular interpretation of this map prompted me immediately to title this next phase of my work #Scar; for it is, in visual terms, exactly that - an industrial 'scar' across the green and pleasant rural history of Stoke-On-Trent.
Looking at the map objectively it forms in the mind a conclusion; that which tells us that this city, this conurbation of six highly individual towns, came to being solely from the processes of industry. Coal, Pottery and Steel. It was never a pretty picture from any angle. It starts with wholesale exploitation from the very beginnings; of the land, and ultimately of the people who worked it. What came from here enriched the world.
Stoke-On-Trent was literally born out of the earth and made with fire!
The idea of the scar cemented further when I first broached the concept with Dave Harper and Mike Cain, known in team form as The Penkhull Artists Association.
Mike recalled a time in the Seventies when he walked down Basford Bank toward Hanley and was awestruck by the industrial panjandrum within the Etruria valley, occupied primarily with the spectacle of Shelton Bar and Etruria Gasworks. Dave in parallel was exploring a phase in his work concerning strata; layers, lines, textures from nature, colour and contrasts.
#Scar was born.
Honestly and shamefully, the work of the Penkhull Artist's Association is a body to which I was curious to only by a passing glance on a particularly busy day - an exhibition I passed through without looking properly. Furthermore I chanced across the website not long after without diving the full depth.
Now I am fully immersed. It is what I saw in those glimpses; I see primitive forces in slabs of deep rich colours encased in honey-thick glazes, shining from deep within like a kaleidoscope trapped in amber. The primary vehicle is a square slab-made dish of sublime proportions. Heavy in thickness; solid with all the gravity of reason. With it's decoration it delivers mass. Force. Each is highly individual, like tracks on a definitive album - akin to all the instruments in recording one particular track being put away afterwards and another, radically differing set appears, mastering different disciplines to write and record the next; comfortably resonating next to each other as a whole but still resolutely absolute in their individuality.
Being privileged enough to see a great many all together in one place as the pieces come together prior to selection for this exhibition, I think that any prospective buyer could panic in the instance of having to select the piece to take home. They work collectively as a choir in a cacophony of creative volume, but as an owner of an individual work let me reassure - it sings most beautifully on it's own.
Rebecca Perry is our quiet delight! Her work is split into two camps. Firstly; bold, fresh, innovative, shocking perhaps and tantalisingly ambiguous! Lucky me to be invited into the depths of her sketchbooks - they confirm resolute lines of direction drawn extensively from intuitive enquiry - a mind open to the vastness of exploration and influence leaving no possibility ignored it seems.
Secondly, she's very technical: Professional in clay choices, and ghe science of it all - she's articulate and confident, knows why her decisions are made in resolving the brief she sets herself - she knows what she wants her material choices to achieve and her creative instincts to convey with all the confidence that her youth exudes - she has no constraints, and thus she will fly ...
Lindy Martin I 'discovered' through an image on a business card in a gallery I visited whilst on holiday! Two or so years passed but when the terms of exhibition required a collaboration approach, and gave me the free rein of dream choices I remembered, and hunted hard for that business card!!
Initially I loved her utilization of a functional and traditional everyday household item as the teapot is, elevated further still into the realm of conduit to the creative subconscious!! Or rather the creative concious - Lindy is the seeker, explorer and creative adventurer! Her teapots will never have a functional life other than to transfer one's love to... that is certainty all I ask of them! I don't believe in god, I believe we are a product of the Periodic Table of Elements, and the work of Lindy is just that - a belief in the science of things. She told me of her father, a chemist by profession, who passed on a belief, and a confident reliance in things Elemental along with a desire to pursue the investigation of solutions infinite and without boundary ... if the base of her work is clay; then it's resolution will be a revolution ... watch this exhibition space!
Come along to Valentine Clays (www.valentineclays.co.uk) for the opening night of '#Scar: from the Rich Earth - opening on Thursday 3rd October 2019 at 5.00pm - a visual feast awaits ...
