As with most of my work I had no pre-conceived idea of what I was going to do, see or record prior to the trip to Great Yarmouth and Winterton on Sea. Great Yarmouth and I have history. I sent two years there as part of my HND in Graphic Design between 1984 and 1986. I haven't been back much, this was going to be interesting looking at it with a fresh pair of eyes as opposed to those of someone away from home for the first time as a bright eyed eighteen year old. First of all I had to visit the building I spent the two years in.
After satisfying my curiosity I decided to explore more of the wonders of Great Yarmouth. I went with a collection of Year 1 Fine Art students to the Time And Tide Museum (https://www.museums.norfolk.gov.uk/time-tide). It did depict very well the history of Yarmouth and in particular how harsh things were in the height of its Herring fishing past. It also describes how many of the workers would come down from Scotland, in particular Glasgow to work on processing the catches. Interesting facts and a glimpse into the past. It also draws parallels to how many visitors till flock here from far and wide but as tourists, taking in everything Great Yarmouth has to offer.
After leaving the Time And Tide Museum I decided to explore other areas of Great Yarmouth. I discovered it has an outer wall, something I either hadn't noticed or hadn't registered before.
I also looked at parts of derelict buildings on the end of Wellington Pier to see if these could be used at a later date as inspiration. I ended up using elements of them as part of the Collage Workshop.
After sitting on the beach and absorbing the environment I decided to see how I could record my visit and map the experience. We were asked to create a 'psychogeographic' map (the effect of a geographical location on the emotions and behaviour of individuals) -
"How do different places make us feel and behave? The term psychogeography was invented by the Marxist theorist Guy Debord in 1955 in order to explore this. Inspired by the French nineteenth century poet and writer Charles Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur – an urban wanderer – Debord suggested playful and inventive ways of navigating the urban environment in order to examine its architecture and spaces."
The above image is interpretation of by Barrett Lyon of the internet, with different colours allocated to different areas of the world, the lines created by delays between two nodes. The line coming from IP addresses. The result is something that reflects outer space, almost a cosmic image, which works perfectly alongside the concept of how the world wide web is structured and the idea of all those interconnecting points that are constantly happening in the ether.
“It started as a bet, but after I warmed up to the idea I found a lot of value in the project itself,” Lyon writes on the project’s homepage.
I considered various ways to map my visit. I had already filmed various railings, fences and balustrades and as you walked past them they not only created a rhythm but also a barrier to the front gardens, play parks and houses. A barrier that was really only a visual barrier, it also became a window to the various spaces behind. I decided to film these and see if there was anything I could do with them later. I decided to link them all together and just simply blend from one piece of footage to another, letting my pace be the rhythm of the piece. I then decided to take all the sound off and add the sound of the sea that I had recorded as a backdrop to the images.
While I was walking around and recording the railings and repetitive it reminded me of a piece we watched and discussed in Year Zero. 'Railings' by Francis Alÿs, 2004.
In this piece the artist uses a drumstick to drag against the various railings in the many squares you find in London, Alÿs used many of the affluent squares and commented 'The railings are a physical obstacle between the pedestrian and the house they surround.' He had been speaking with British sculpture Richard Wentworth and said ‘Richard Wentworth suggested to me that the railings are an echo of the moat around a castle. They play a role of protection, they are a filter’ (Alÿs in 21 Portman Square 2005, p.20). https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/alys-railings-t12194
I couldn't say that the railings in Great Yarmouth were surrounding houses of quite the same standing as the ones Alÿs was walking past. However the railings still create the same division and barrier.
I also wanted to record somehow the beach and the barrier between land and sea. After watching the sea and thinking about how I could potentially record or sketch the environment I thought one of the simplest ways would be to take a piece of paper and see if by letting the water touch it the paper would record the contact. I also sketched the sea from the tideline with charcoal laying down, a wave came in and made the paper wet, which I used to blend the charcoal in.
I then walked from one pier to another (Brittania to Wellington) and collected all the debris I could see in the tideline. Plastic, paper, string, foil and whatever was attached to the pieces. I didn't know what I was going to do with these at the time but thought they might inspire something.
When we got back to the studio the following day I decided to create a line 'From Pier To Pier' using all the items I had collected and simply stuck them to a piece of paper, creating a horizontal timeline.
Artist Mark Dion in 1999 along with a group of helpers explored a stretch of the Thames shoreline (Millbank and Bankside - where the Tate Modern is now situated) at low tide and collected vast amounts of items, clay pipes, toys, discarded objects that had historical value and interest. The items after being cleaned and classified were then displayed in a large, grand mahogany cabinet.
The recording, documenting and classifying of all the objects found become as important as the actual items themselves. It takes the found items and gives them a place, a new life as well as recording them as part of history. The decision to display them in the cabinet elevates the items even further, almost making them some part of a museum collection rather than a gallery display. Galleries tend to use sterile clear vitrines that do as little as possible to detract from the item, yet Dion's cabinet gives the items a place, a home.
Other artists to explore the pollution of the oceans in recent years are Tony Cragg's 'Britain Seen from The North, (1981).
Although this piece of work dates back almost 30 years it is still relevant today, perhaps even more so with the current media and public awareness of plastic use and pollution. To be fair this piece was not necessarily about pollution, plastic yes but that heralds back to Cragg's past. He worked as a lab technician at the National Rubber Producers' Research Association in Welwyn Garden City, where he would often find himself "watching things tick and boil" (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jul/22/tony-cragg-sculpture-scottish-national). Cragg started studying at Wimbledon School of Art and one of his tutors was Roger Ackling, who used found objects, mostly wood, which he then burnt into using the sun and a magnifying glass to create marks. Ackling was also friends with Richard Long, the renowned Land Artist. Perhaps it was more of a combination of these events, combined with the politic landscape in the early 80's along with the proliferation of plastic objects of the time to reflect the issues as he saw it that forged the idea to create Britain Seen From The North.
To create Asterisms (https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/gabriel-orozco-asterisms) Gabriel Orozco collected a variety of items discarded at two separate sites. One being a playing field close to where he lived in New York, items ranging from discarded sweet wrappers, chewing gum, coins to bits of discarded sports items and clothing. In total he collected almost 1,200 items.
The other half of Asterisms was a collection of items from Baja California Sur in Mexico. A part of the Pacific coastline that provided all sorts of waste from bottles, various parts of boats, domestic and industrial waste. Everything was catalogued and arranged according to size, colour and the material that they were made from. The items were not only displayed but photographed as a selection of grids and displayed along with a selection of the actual items.
The every day made interesting. As a pile of waste it is viewed as a pile of waste but to separate, categorise and arrange the items it becomes far more interesting. The individual pieces stand out more, they can be identified with by the reader, their history, their source, their journey. The materials come to the fore and the focus changes from a pile of waste to a collection of items with a history, a story, an interest.
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