Past Inspired Sculpture 8

Prehistory and public art

frequently entangle.

Monumental forms

referencing deep

time of places,

expressions of

hoped for

futures,  accrete.

 

On a coastal headland,

aggregation of ancient sites

Evoking trialothonic brutalisms of Stonehenge dreams

Gathering granite, megalithic family forms

Pierced, broken and reassembled

Providing glimpses of distant futures.

 

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Menhirs for Peace is by Galician Sculptor Manolo Paz.

It can be found in A Coruña, Galicia and is located in the landscape around  The Tower of Hercules World Heritage Site.

It is situated on a headland, with ancient rock art on the outcropping bedrock, which has been washed by waves and sea spray for millennia.

 

For other examples of Past Inspired Sculpture please see:

Past Inspired Sculpture 7

Past Inspired Sculpture 6

Past Inspired Sculpture 5

Past Inspired Sculpture 4

Past Inspired Sculpture 3

Past Inspired Sculpture 2

Past Inspired Sculpture 1

Witches Whispers

Despite it remoteness, St Kilda, is globally connected.

Through shared histories, oceans and skies

with flight                                maritime transports                          we congregate

nearly 1 million birds

Northern Gannet, Atlantic Puffin, Northern Fulmar, Manx Shearwater, Storm Petrel, Leach’s Petrel, Kitiwake, Guillemot, Razorbill, Great Skua

summer

at the archipelago

Hirta, Dun, Soay, Boreray.

Remote Life

Collect Bird

Cleit Dry

Yet we wont linger on Hirta but head to the world of Boreray

Through

wave

wind

and wonder

we reach

Stac Lee

look back

Hirta

with anticipation

before crossing

beneath

sea cliffs

thrumming

krok krok krok krok krok krok krok krok

krok krok krok krok krok krok krok krok

krok krok krok krok krok krok krok krok

soaring

sweeping

crucifix

filled

vision

wards

pulse of the world

receeding

further

from

memories

navigate dangerous waters

voices voiceless

witches whispers

kroK kroK kroK kroK kroK kroK kroK kroK kroK kroK kroK kroKk roK kroK kroK kroK

‘a great noise like that made by a gannet,

but much louder when shutting its mouth’

‘A storm rose, and that, together with the size of the bird

and the noise it made led them to think it was a witch.’

‘they were beating it for an hour with two large stones before it was dead’

‘he was the most frightened of all the men, and advised the killing of it.’

‘they killed the bird on the third day after it was caught’

Can we ever leave

the world

 

 

of birds and witches,

now unclear

which is which,

Bird as person,

bird sustains life

person as bird.

 

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The collection of eggs and hunting of birds provided a significant amount of sustenance to those living on Hirta.  Stone shelters, Cleits, were built and used to air dry the birds for consumption later.  Climbing cliffs and seasonal stays in bothies on the archipelagos other islands and stacks to hunt was part of the strategy for sustaining life.

Stac an Àrmainn is the highest sea stack (196 m) in the UK and is the location of at least two powerful tales.

One tells of the group of three men and eight boys from Hirta who were stranded here in 1728 for 9 months.  Upon returning they were to find that during their absence most of the community had died, all bar 4 adults and 26 children, from small pox.

The second tale, from about 1840, is of the death of what was probably the last Garefowl (Great Auk) in Scotland, when three men allegedly thought it to be a witch, only a few years before the species became extinct.

The quotes above are details of the St Kilda witch account, taken from a letter by Henry Evans, and can be found in:

Harvie-Brown, J A 1888 Vertebrate Fauna of the Outer Hebrides p 158-59.

How faithful the details of the story are can be debated but there was certainly a strong folklore which may have provided a context.  An interesting overview of witches can be found here:

Henderson, L. (2008) Witch-hunting and witch belief in the Gàidhealtachd. In: Goodare, J. and Martin, L. and Miller, J. (eds.) Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland. Palgrave historical studies in witchcraft and magic. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 95-118.

 

and a broader context can be found here:

Campbell, J G 1902 Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland : Tales and Traditions collected entirely from Oral Sources. Glasgow.

Seeing a Great Auk in Scotland in the first half of the 19th century would probably have been a rare occurrence, numbers already depleted, and with the last small colonies on Iceland some distance – so there may have been no familiarity with this species of bird among the men on Stac an Àrmainn.  Whether the killing of the last Great Auk in Scotland as a witch (presumably in a shape shifted form) is true or not, today we are faced with the certainty if we do not do things differently other species will become extinct and St Kilda and the wider world it represents will be poorer for such losses.

How will we explain to future generations, what will undoubtedly seem 170 years in the future as, unjustifiable behaviours which lead to such losses.  Seemingly enlightened, we may not fear witches, but through our behaviours we make our offerings to other gods of consumption and waste.  They may not be so overt but our brutalities can be small, long  and incremental.

Listen for the whispers….

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I was privileged to journey to St Kilda earlier this year with the wonderful Kilda Cruises a great highly knowledgeable team.

For more details about St Kilda, please visit, the National Trust for Scotland website, the St Kilda website  and the UNESCO St Kilda World Heritage Site

If St Kilda is not possible for you, another option to consider is the journey to Ailsa Craig, some details can be found in another post

Imaginary Island – journey through the south west.

 

Among The Dead Dunes Some Trees Glow Like The Sun…

 

Among Dead Dunes

Primordial Arboreal Gold

Washes Upon Baltic Geographies.

Millennial Boundaries Shift

With Faint Traces

Of Ancient Rites,

Through Weaving Light & Shadow

We Can Glow Like The Sun.

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I was privileged to stay nearly three weeks in Lithuania spending much of the time exploring aspects of its heritage and landscapes.  The first week was spent at the wonderful Nida Art Colony, a creative center from which I explored the landscape of the Curonnian Spit.   Located on the Baltic coast, the spit is about 98 km long, the northern part of which is within Lithuania and the southern part in the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation.  I was drawn back to the Curonnian Spit, in part due to my interest in a Neolithic amber hoard, within which are a range of unusual figurative forms, that had been discovered in the 19th century at Juodkrantė.

However I very quickly became more interested in a series of tensions and entanglements that the forested nature of the landscape and the elemental nature of amber began to reveal.  The Curonnian Spit has a remarkable natural and cultural significance in part recognised with its inscription as a World Heritage Site in 2000 and its status as Kuršių Nerija National Park and as the Kurshskaya National Park of the Russian Federation.  So interesting tensions can be encountered between geo-morphological forms, climatic processes and the movements of other species which do not recognise political boundaries and the management of designated landscapes.

The landscape of the Curonnian Spit has been subject to major changes in character, sea level, deforestations, erosion and drifting of sands, and then reforestation and management. People have responded for millennia, and in part caused, some of these changes. For millennia they have encountered timeless gifts cast up from the sea. At times they reworked these gifts, and sent them back, perhaps in an attempt to make sense of or intervene in the world of change around them.

While there I worked on a piece through researching the history of the landscape and those who have dwelled within it for nearly 5000 years and by creating a series of small temporary installations in the landscape. This resulted in the development of a piece Among The Dead Dunes Some Trees Glow Like The Sun which was performed the following week in Vilnius.  The 12 minute performance explored the ongoing inter-relationships between people and landscape, and invited us to re-imagine the way we interact in the future.   Rather than try to reproduce that performance here I show some of the elements which I responded too.

Concert-Natura

Located in rural Catalonia, nine kilometres north of the city of Tarragona, is the Mèdol quarry.

The quarry is up to 20 metres deep, 200 metres long and 40 metres wide, it is thought that 50,000 cubic metres of stone were quarried from here !  It dates to the Roman presence when Tárraco (Tarragona) was the provincial center of Hispania and is thought to have been the source of much of the stone for many of the great public buildings in the city.

What is striking as you enter the quarry is the huge pinnacle of rock, L’Agulla del Mèdol, which the extraction of the quarry respected through out its use and which has survived intact to this day.  A solitary and mysterious figure, it dominates the space,

but as you move further into the quarry you are met with dense vegetation of oak, olive and mastik trees, it feels like a lost world…!

Mèdol quarry was inscribed in 2000 as part of the UNESCO world heritage site Archaeological Ensemble of Tárraco.  Further details about Roman Tárraco can be found at the El Museu Nacional Arqueològic de Tarragona (National Archaeological Museum of Tarragona) website.  More information about Roman quarries in North-East Hispania can be found in a published thesis by Anna Gutiérrez Garcia-Moreno, Roman Quarries in the Northeast of Hispania (Modern Catalonia).   The thesis is an fascinating study of the minerology, techniques of quarrying and the cultural background to their use in the Roman period and beyond.  There is an excellent account of the subsequent understanding by archaeologists of El Mèdol, which is unexcavated, in which it is noted that between 1931 and 1934 it was the focus of a

‘concert-natura’,… which was supposed to give El Mèdol an international reputation as the Auditori Natural de Catalunya (ibid 147)’

Its amazing to think that there still remains such striking evidence of Roman activity in the landscapes of Catalonia but no surprise that they continue to capture the imagination.