Making marks

In our respective studios, Rob and I have had our heads down, each busy stitching together our final pieces ready for the exhibition opening. Snippets of sound and image have been pipping back and forth, as the work grows: sub-surface landscapes (re)emerging from tape-loops and wax-resist. 

Rob has been immersed in reel-to-reel recordings, taking a sequence of sound and running it carouselling round and round, recording the slow trickle of magnetism from its surface. The fragments of sound bury themselves deeper and deeper in the landscape, different sites around Aldborough emerging. I love the way these bits-and-bobs of collected sound – including the ‘sound memories’ of time on site – are being gathered, folded in, layered up, so that the finished samples are both familiar and altogether new. Each takes the imagination in new directions. Sometimes, a particular element floats to the surface, foregrounded, before being woven back, deeper into the piece again. It is fascinating to witness this re-composition of the sub-surface; to reflect how such subtle use of sound can give an immersion in place; a feeling of space. 

We’ve spent so many months discussing the character of different underground elements – the subtleties of the sub-surface lodged in stratigraphy, soils, materials, voids – that it feels strange to be finally gathering these loose threads to make a finished piece. And really, I wonder if these can ever be ‘final’ – there seem so many ways of exploring both the ideas and the processes of communicating them. As I make the paintings for the project, my mind is always busy; both with the task in hand, but also roving across and through the landscape of Aldborough, easing back and forth in time. This has been one of the things I have always loved most about working between art and archaeology: that one process sparks the other, the imagination happily set free. It reinforces how important it is to work in different ways on sites: re-framing, re-considering, keeping that essential curiosity. 

For me, Aldborough is a place full of connections. Not only is it my long-term research site with the Aldborough Roman Town Project, but it is also where I grew up. I have a vivid, layered map etched into my mind, a mix of archaeology and memory. I know Aldborough from the air to underground. How then, to communicate this to others? The answer, I think, is to find different ways of sparking imaginations, ways that allow for myriad narratives of the past. The joy of art is that you are putting out work that allows people to make their own connections, finding fragments of meaning or enjoyment for themselves. Working between sound and image seems to amplify this effect. 

Each day in the studio is a discovery, as new ways of layering or balances of tone emerge. For some time I have been developing work using wax-resist and watercolour; the use of white or transparent oils and wax for base layers giving a sense of emergent forms akin to those in excavation. Layers can be built, re-applied, scraped off, and surfaces can absorb or repel. Unexpected surprises emerge. These images have been slowly building in my mind for months, as particular ways of seeing translate to paper. It is exciting now to see various forms and ripples of these laid out across the studio floor. The process makes me look forward to our workshops in September, to see how other people imagine and recreate the unseen sub-surface of Aldborough.

The exhibition and art trail launch this Saturday 24th August at The Shed, Aldborough.