ARTSPACE / STILL WATERS

Photographer Lindsay Ward is visiting Askam and the ponds and the estuary, gathering images for an exhibition....here is a selection from her latest visit ... Following our field trip to The Ponds with Kev Alexander in February I made a note to return just as the green starts to make a froth on the trees, altering the light and vistas. Cue a sunny Sunday, end of April, my family accompanying me.  A funny thing really, having been introduced to the landscape by Kev, I found myself retelling some of his stories of industrial history and local kids' den building exploits. Borrowing his lore to explain the slopes, scarps and waters to my family while they were exploring it and adding their/own own family history to the place. The wild garlic was in full leaf, softening the hard edges seen in February, and the creep of greening plants and trees created a sense of a landscape re-wilding. Looking forward to a sunset visit in coming weeks, to see what the lengthening shadows prod...

 Jim's armature greets its public yesterday afternoon at the Sir John Barrow Cottage...click to view...

  This will become one of Jim's characters in his animation piece...it looks a bit Robocop right now, but soon it will be clad in capok, clay and fabric. It was assembled limb by limb in the cottage today, and, as you see below,  had its hands cured by scalding with water, making sure the plastic that surrounds each finger is tight and pliable. Next, motion tests...we'll be back. Hoho. I was in Askam yesterday , to meet Historian Janice Cummings and get some photos of The Lots pub  AKA The Askam Hotel interior, where a scene from Jim's piece is set. More about that later. I shot some video and recorded some sound overlooking the estuary and then went to the school to meet Mrs Morgan to discuss dates for our schools project Scroll down for a photo of poet and novelist Caroline Gilfillan who visited today and brought along Anya Pearson, a descendent of Sir John Barrow, for her first visit to her ancestors' birthplace. Happily, our pal Historian Iain McNicol was with is at...

Excellent day at the cottage today. Jim cut the bones for his animation figures,we built some sketches for sets and ran some lighting experiments using his nifty Wowstar LED rig, which looks like a kebab shop fly killer and offers a range of really useful lighting states, ideal for working in the cottage.  We had some visitors who left with Soft Drive and Ulverston Brewery books and the sound of pond life in their ears from my hydrophone recordings.  More pics below.... Next, we hand over the sketches and photos to Alex, who will build a more substantial version of what will be Jim's Pub int/ext, and Jim bolts his figure together and puts clay on the bones. .

One of the attractions of this place is the lack of a formal museum or heritage centre. Archives exist, in Barrow; the Askam Historical Society holds talks and public events on the industrial history, and local people like Kevin Alexander combine research with passed-down accounts.   Rather than a shelf or a vitrine, Askam's story occupies the space available in it's people a nd the materiality of the place itself.   Jim and Kevin are from one of Askam's oldest families, and Kevin in particular has a direct connection with the past through his daily experience of this  shifting land, and the presence of his and Jim's old 'uns in it..their boats are still on the estuary, their pens are still worked, the stakes still get put out.    The rest of us are from outside the region; we arrive at a remove, needing a conduit for this fluid history. The need for these conduits may turn out to be the subject; the  extent to which we can - or should-  tell a st...

Proto-storyboards from Jim for his animation, alongside Alex's props and Jim's surviving avatar from our previous projects, see here at the cottage. The plan is to rely less on clay, to build around the armature (below) with capok to give them mass and mobility without the problem of crumbling clay and repetitive strain injuries.  Clothing will be made from loose, light fabrics, which means Jim is  learning how to sew. At some point soon we will set-up a studio in the cottage, and you'll be able to see a bit of work in progress.   

A sample of Lindsay's photos from Askam. the Estuary, industrial relics and spoil heaps, the ponds in former mine workings, and the encroaching woodland. Lindsay will be working to collect images for a couple of exhibitions, as well as documenting some parts of the general  process.