Coast to Coast - progress

Most of my energies of late have been directed at the Way of the Roses project - I haven't put anything on this blog about progress with the project for a while, but over the last month or so I have been presenting concepts to the various partners involved in the cycle route....here is an outline of the overall concept:

The route of the Way of the Roses across Lancashire and Yorkshire - showing the sites for proposed artworks: two Terminus works and 10 Passing Places (small diversions from the main route)

 

‘Travelling Histories’

•  A Coast to Coast artwork to accompany the Way of the Roses

•  Two Terminus works - one at either end of the route (Bridlington and Morecambe)

•  Main theme established in the contrast between the Terminus works

•  A series of artworks along the route called Passing Places – marking places where
movements of people or phenomena have coincided with the route in the  past

 

Each Passing Place comprises:

• a destination (historical/cultural - of local significance)

• a constituency (local group or individuals to steer project)

• an artist

• an overall creative direction (from lead artist)

• an artwork (permanently sited in landscape)

• an orientation point within the nearest local community

Main Conceptual Theme - Transformation through Movement

This overall theme is developed across the route through the smaller Passing Places projects, but the foundations of the theme are established in the Terminus artworks. The theme grows from consideration of the contrasting landscape dynamics at work at either end of the route.

The landscape at both ends of the Way of the Roses the landscape takes shapes immediately recognisable as those made by running water. At one end this is an ongoing process that makes newly shaped land every day, at the other, the land retains the memory of movement that occurred at a very precise moment in the past.

Montaged geosatellite image of Morecambe Bay showing the moving path of the River Kent around the ‘Sands’.

Every low tide at Morecambe reveals a newly carved landscape of ‘gulleys’, ‘gutters’ and ‘dykes’ (cf Cedric Robinson).

Schematic diagram of the ‘Dry Valleys’

of the Yorkshire Wolds (Bridlington is at the  easterly edge of the Wolds)

The Wolds is an outcrop of chalk that disappears under the sea at Bridlington. Chalk allows water to soak through it, therefore there is NO water running over the surface of the land as rivers or streams.

During the most recent Ice Age (10,000 years ago) the land of the Wolds was ‘permanently’ frozen hard and in this state was temporarily IMpermeable to water. When water periodically flooded over the Wolds from nearby glaciers, deep river valleys were very quickly cut into the frozen chalk.

As the climate warmed all water once agin disappeared under the chalk leaving the characteristic ‘alluvial’ pattern of Dry Valleys that we experience today.

(For more on these phenomena see also)

Transformation :  
active (in the land) 
vs memory (retained by the land)

 

Typical Dry Valley - Yorkshire Wolds

 

View from the Morecambe Promenade at low tide

Passing Places

The second part of the overall artwork proposed for Way of the Roses is called Passing Places. 

Marker on old monastic route near Fountains Abbey

• There are approximately 10 Passing Places planned along the route between the two Terminus artworks

• Each Passing Place is a short diversion from the main route

Building on the research finding that Way of the Roses is remarkable for the number of visible traces of human activity in transforming the landscape - Passing Places is themed around places where traditional routes and historical events have either crossed or passed near the Way of the Roses route.

Former Quarry Incline - Pately Bridge. Used to slide stone down from the quarry to the railway below

One of the clear aims of the artwork project was to stimulate connections between local communities and the cycle route. Passing Places is built around the idea that if a local person met a traveller, they might well show their visitor something special in their locality.

  

Each Passing place will be developed by a local steering group and the physical artwork commissioned by the steering group from a locally based artist or artist of local origin

Lead Artist (of the overall project) to work with the local steering group and commissioned artist to ensure high quality and relevance in each individual work and cohesion with the overall project ‘Travelling Histories’

moving valleys and valleys frozen in time

As I am making my way across England following the new trail the 'Way of the Roses' I am thinking about the qualities of the two ends of the route. At the East side there are very ancient water features frozen in chalk while to the West the landscape is newly shaped by water everyday.
The story of the West is that of Morecambe Bay and was told to me by two people: Dr Suzana Ilic of Lancaster University and Cedric Robinson - Queens Guide to the Sands.

Suzana told me a story of a process so random and active that scientists are unable to model it in any useful way - the rivers entering Morecambe Bay carve valleys, dykes and gutters (Cedric's terminology) that are partially erased by each high tide and then cut anew in a slightly different location

Plan of the Sands - drawn by Olive Robinson

Geo-Satellite image of Morecambe Bay

One days landscape at lowtide

 Crossing the Sands of Morecambe Bay has historically been so dangerous, because of this shifting geography, that a post of Royal Guide to the Sands was created in the era of Henry VIII. This post has been held by Cedric Robinson since 1963

Cedric Robinson has written 8 books about the culture and landscape of the Sands

Guides Farm. Grange-over- Sands

I had the enormous privilege of spending an afternoon with Cedric and his wife Olive at Guides Farm and hearing about the way they understand the landscape of the Sands. Cedric has guided thousands of people across from Morecambe to Grange - he marks each new route with branches of laurel, markers that will be erased by each big tide, heralding a new topography.

The Yorkshire Wolds, at the Easterly extreme of the route are made of Chalk. Chalk is the layer that was formed at the bottom of long forgotten oceans as the shells and skeletons of countless sea creatures fell to the bottom of the sea and were crushed together over millions of years.

The impressive Flanborough Head is an outcrop of the chalk of the Wolds slowly sculpted by the sea. But the landscape that you travel over just inland is a mysterious land of 'lost water'. The chalk of the rolling Wolds is porous and retains no water (instead it passes down until it reaches clay or hard rock and retained as underground reservoirs).
However this land did have rivers for one (relatively) brief period,  the glaciers of the last Ice Age did not reach this far South, but temperatures were so low that the earth was permanently frozen and consequently impermeable to water, this meant that when there were periodic thaws in the glaciers the melt water formed rivers that ran over the Chalk and quickly cut down through the soft stone. When the temperature rose again the chalk thawed out and became porous again leaving the atmospheric 'Dry Valleys' of the Wolds:

Dry Valley at Millington

 I have a mental image of the Wolds as an ancient 3D 'photograph' of the what us happening today in chaotically active landscape of Morecambe Bay. Whether this 'sticks' and become a significant part of an art project is uncertain as every twist and turn of this 180 mile trip reveals a new potential direction.

Contemporary active landscape at the end of the Wolds

A Big Research Adventure

Yesterday I attended an excellent event at Burton Agnes in the East Riding of Yorkshire - it was organised by 'LEADER - Coast, Wolds, Wetlands & Waterway' and also attended by the 'Yorkshire Dales LEADER' group (see Rima Berry's blog on the event here)

Here I was able to present my programme of research for the Way of the Roses commission. As a 'site-specific' artist this project presents a unique challenge....the site is 180 miles long running from one coast to coast across England.

Over the next month I will be attempting to combine travel (by bike and car) with encountering the areas along the route in as much detail as I am able - the whole process is subject to the laws of chance, weather, and health. As such it feels like the best approximation I can make to a Pilgrimage of discovery

If you know of anyone or anywhere along this route that you think I should encounter please do get in touch

Here is the map of the journey:

And here are the 'emerging themes' that are framing my approach to the project 

EMERGING ARTWORK THEMES

(just to prompt thoughts about people or places I should visit to get a sense of your part of the route of the Way of the Roses)

- Old or ‘special’ routes ….pilgrimage (St John of Bridlington, Pilgrimage of Grace), migration (Gypsey Race), Carlisle-Settle railway, York Mystery Plays

- Different material qualities of landscape – shifting silt and mud, dry chalk valleys, hard rock …quarried and transported

- activities that celebrate uniqueness – local markets, customs. Festivals….souvenirs and relics

- the processes that have shaped the land eg farming and how these activities are changing in our modern era

- Changing nature of tourism – ever increasing specialisation, a paradoxical desire to participate in place but without leaving too heavy a ‘footprint’

If you can contribute to this project in any way please contact me by email through the website (above) or via Twitter (below) 

many thanks

unexpected Morecambe

Not sure what I was expecting when I arrived in Morecambe on a 2 day research trip as part of the Way of the Roses project - but it wasn't to find such an intensely active bit of coastline so dramatically highlighted by the elements of light, wind and water. There is 'Eric' as well of course - but I loved the idea that the traditional British holidaymaker always has something extraordinary to watch form the Prom...rather than just waiting for the sunshine to allow them on the beach.

The tide goes out very fast to reveal a pristine landscape of shimmering silt

 Visceral channels of water flow around the silt

 Walking the Prom

 Weather Station outside the Town Hall

....and then there is 'Eric'

Way of the Roses

I am delighted and very honoured to have been chosen as the artist to develop the artworks for the new coast to coast cycle path which crosses England from Lancashire to Yorkshire.

 

I have been working with artworks in relationship to routes for some time, particularly in my landscape work, and this is an incredible opportunity to push some of those ideas to the scale of an overall journey (that'll be 180 miles....). The commission partners are interested in ways that someone following the route can be 'active' in the landscape in such a way that they are contributing to the experience for those that follow. There is a wonderfully diverse group of folk who are part of the overall team ranging from Sustrans, Bridlington Renaissance Town, Lancaster City Council, Morecambe, the Forest of Borland + Yorkshire Dales and the East Lancashire Wolds. The public art manager on the project is Cathy Newbery