Emily Bronte published Wuthering Heights in 1847 initially under the name Ellis Bell, and died in the same year age 30.
Currently at number 13 in the Penguin list of 100 best books, Wuthering Heights, discordant, fragmented, tortuous, obsessive and romantic is firmly situated in the rain swept moors of upland Britain.
Yesterday afternoon set in misty and cold
Opening lines, Chapter 2, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Charcoal and chalk on Fabriano paper
1500cm x 2500cm
The Revolving Year
Acrylic paint and pen on stripped pine
Stoneware cat underglaze colours with transparent overglaze.
Two textured stoneware slab pots : kasmir blue and copper oxide
A Pennine Sheep visited by a Bird
Bronze 19cm x 10cm x 8cm
I made this when I was a student, but couldn’t complete the casting because my dad died and I had to rush off to arrange his funeral. The wax model sat on a shelf for ages accumulating dust, wax is sticky stuff. In the end in order to prevent it getting inadvertently melted or squashed I had it cast in bronze. I played around with the patina a bit when it came back, filing off some here and there then returned to a slightly more prominent shelf. Where it sat for years until the opportunity arose to exhibit in a show called Northern Fringe: the Mystery of Yorkshire in (nearly) 100 Objects. This is my Yorkshire reply to Object number 73, a small gold Inca llama from the BBC series a History of the World in 100 Objects.
And this is where the idea came from
Northern Fringe:The Mystery of Yorkshire in (nearly) 100 Objects is on at the Upstairs gallery, Dean Clough, Halifax,
HX3 5AX from today September 8th to September 24th.
This work grew out of memories, stories, images, photos, transcripts and audio.
Cobbled together and placed inside old picture frames. I wanted the frame to be part of the work rather than just a display device, the grey is to link them as one work and reinforce the hazy memory aspect. I like old frames, these ones are typical designs of the early and mid 1900’s. Although the frames are of differing sizes the aperture and colour of the mounts are identical. Here are two framed pieces of work temporarily hung in my dining room for Reading Sheffield AGM.
My friend Mary morphed Reading Sheffield from her PhD. The original subject was a ‘middle brow’ author called Warwick Deeping. As I understand it ‘middle brow’ means the books people read but don’t necessarily own up to. From this Mary decided to find out what books people actually read and what influenced their choice of reading. Having picked the years when Warwick Deeping was popular that is the 1930’s 40’s and 50’s, she armed a posse of volunteers with Zoom sound recorders and searched for Sheffield residents who grew up during these years. The result was a fascinating series of audio files documenting the varied reading habits of a cross section of Sheffield residents before the advent of television or internet.
The problem then was what to do with all this fascinating material, and that’s when I became involved. I originally planned an interactive installation in Sheffield City Library but ended up designing a Reading Sheffield web site . I am now working on a series of works based on the people and their conversations recorded during the Reading Sheffield Project.
