The Last of Autumn

After sewing the dry oak leaf bowl for the Miles and Dacombe Flavour Exchange walk intervention in Birmingham I have been collecting other dry leaves without a clear idea of what i might do with them. 

Whilst in Paris last August I noticed how dry the city was, the fountains were still, the leaves seemed to have fallen very early. I collected some large grey green leaves and left them to dry in my shed.

In September, whilst exploring Totness I collected in a church a larger number of leaves, delighted and intrigued by the vast choice of colours, flame red, green/red, grey/green, toasty brown, gold, ochre, some already crispy, others softy and supple. I wondered how long they would retain their colour. 

So far my collecting had given me leaves of a similar type - the theme continued as i tryed to collect some of the tiny deep red Acer leaves from my garden - they crisped and crumpled away to practically nothing. However, whilst working in Northampton there were heaps of a different leaf shape (you can see how I am now dodging naming the exact trees, my leaf identification skills are pretty poor). These leaves were string, flat, rounded and came in a good range of colours, so I scooped up a bagful and took them home, still not really knowing why.

I had a thought about adding lights and putting them inside a glass dome, but during my kitchen studio antics for the NYB16 "Nature as a material for art" I broke the dome and decided that whole idea was pretty clichéd, so left that. As I am still trying to make things from things I already have rather than accumulate more things I cannot store I decided to repurpose the stands that had been used in a Brampton Valley intervention. I found some copper wire and decided that instead of sewing another bowl or embellishing a garment (done, done, done) I though I would use the aspects that made them hard to sew together - their dryness and the long, tough yet elegant stems.

I wanted to try an capture that sense of falling

I wanted to enjoy the colours,

the textures and the fragility of the leaves.

wrapped with wire, embraced by wire,

reflected in acrylic and supported on plum wood.

I had to be gentle working with a material that could be so easily crushed and destroyed, I ha to be careful not to do too much, just let the leaves decide on their shape and form, then wrap quickly in the copper wire. I like the sense that at any moment, wind or motion could alter or undo the leaves resting places and yet somehow they also remained strong. I liked the interplay of impermanence, strength and fragility, that they were an avenue of not trees. The colours were disappearing but there were faint traces of their autumn fire. All the bases should be in the same orientation, but one has been moved, I have just noticed this and it bothers me. I can't go back in time and change it, put it right, I have to accept that memory and actuality differ, are imperfect. 

This piece is about time and place, 

lightly caught and held.

The Last of Autumn - Jan 2016

Carole Miles - NYB 2016

Artspace, Kettering

Disappeared #43

Disappeared #43 has now been installed and can be seen until January 19th, here is some background information about the piece.

"Mexico: Students killed and others missing in Guerrero

On 26 September 2014, students were intercepted by Mexican police patrols firing shots and then later attacked by unknown individuals in Iguala, Guerrero state. At least six people were killed, 20 were injured and the whereabouts of 38 remain unknown.

Fear and fury in Mexico as mass graves hint at fate of missing students

They were young people for whom teaching was the only way out of poverty. But when they demonstrated over hiring practices, the drug cartels and police showed no mercy

Jo Tuckman, Iguala, Mexico

The Observer, Sunday 12 October 2014"

The students names also lie inside the greenhouse under the gloves 

The box has been filled with bay leave, dry rose thorns, other branches and rosemary, sadly I no longer have a sense of smell but the installation soon began to fill the corridor with fragrance, even if you didn't see it you would be able to smell it. 

The gloves suggest the way in which those left behind also remain buried, they have no body they are stuck between hope and fear for their loved ones, as are all who have missing friends or family. 

A laurel wreath

Names in suspension

From below

A basin for washing - hands, bodies, bones.

A dead Bay branch.

The gloves are for the family. 

The copper tags name each missing student.

Many thanks to Sharon M Read to Gallery 202 for inviting me to make this piece for The Box Gallery in Walgrave building at the University of Northampton. You can see further images here

There are packets of bay leaves dried from my own bay tree, one packet for each missing student. Why bay leaves?

Bay (Laurus nobilis)
From Legend and Lore to Fragrance and Flavor



“A crown of bay good fortune brings


to poets, cooks, scholars, kings.
”

--Carolyn Dille & Susan Belsinger

Bay was first an herb of poets, but also of oracles, warriors, statesmen, and doctors. The leaves were made into wreaths for illustrious poets and the ancients used them to crown heroes.

Bay laurel was the symbol of wisdom, both acquired and intuitive. This herb seems a good fit with all those that strive to study, their thoughts and deeds and flavour to the world.

I hope viewers will take a packet and in using them will spare a thought for the missing, not just the #43 but all those who have been lost or disappeared.

Gallery 202 - Box Gallery - Preparation

Throughout my life there have been news bulletins, news paper articles, television reports about people who have been disappeared, tortured, kept in captivity, killed. The missing 300 Nigerian girls prey on my mind, as do the more recently missing boys and I feel helpless to effect any change. A friend involved with Amnesty International put out a call just before Christmas.

“I'm sure many of you will have heard about the 43 students from a rural teacher training college in Mexico who were forcibly "disappeared" in September. We are planning a simple symbolic action to maintain awareness of the 43 students. If you could take some ribbon, write the name of one of the students on it along with #43 and then tie the ribbon to a pencil in a simple bow (do as many as you like!) and get the pencils to me by the 17 December (inbox me for address), I'll deliver them to the Mexican Embassy. Thanks!” Sheila Royce

I decided to go along and take part in the #43 intervention, I wrote and tied ribbons around 22 pencils but I knew very little of the missing students’ story. Sheila sent me some further information, which you can read by following the links below. 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/12/fear-fury-mexico-iguala-students-shootings

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-30374975

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-30316124

Over the Christmas period the missing, now possibly dead students stayed in my mind. 

I have been making a piece for Gallery 202, The Box Gallery, in a University, a place full of students. I had been collecting materials, thorny rose branches, bay leaves, kid gloves, a mini greenhouse, copper plant tags. I am using found objects and simple, discarded materials to make something that expresses the claustrophobic nature of imprisonment, burial, entanglement and the terrible grief and long term uncertainty that remains for the families an friends left to continue searching for answers.

Some time last year I bought a collection of Victorian / Edwardian kid gloves, which had belonged to women or girls with tiny hands and thin, thin wrists. The feel of the material was very skin-like especially after the gloves had been stuffed with wadding. Some of them were slightly grubby, hands digging in earth sprang to mind. Looking, worrying, waiting, searching, grieving.

I decided to use copper plant tags again to hammer in the names of the missing students, this piece had a very different feel to Singing Ringing and the metal was much harder, each letter needed about three hammer strikes and gave me a lot of time for contemplation. 

As my studio is damp and dark at this time of year I had to invade the dining room. I only had the measurements of the box, so there was no way of putting the piece together until the actual day of the installation.  I didn't make plans or sketches but I did see what might be possible in my mind but what I am learning is that there is a thrill about introducing collected items to a space and making in situ. A leap of faith.

Drawing

During a few brief moments October I gave myself permission to draw, I have been heavily involved with Back To Books Big Draw activities at the Cube in Corby. The Family Drawing Days were great fun, with a steady stream of adults and children coming to make drawings in and around the building.

 This is an uncannily accurate portrait of me by Oscar Cullinan!

As it had been quite some time since I'd allowed myself the pleasure of drawing I just made quick sketches in between the activity of others, trees in the car park, pebbles on the roof, people sitting waiting for a bus, a family exploring the view from the top of the spiral staircase.

I wasn't trying to be accurate, I just wanted to enjoy the soft bite of the pencil on paper, the longer it is between one drawing and another, the more timid one is likely to become, that's why the Big Draw is such a life enhancing proposition and it really does encourage all sorts of people to pick up some sort of drawing equipment and start making a mark. 

It allows you to go back to the joy of looking, thinking and exploring what is seen and felt in the bustling world around us, tracing the shapes people make inside the space.

During half term we visited Compton Verney  spending a really enjoyable day walking in the gardens and visiting the exhibitions. There was an exhibition "Larger Than Life" of work commissioned by hospitals, made by Quentin Blake. The Circus series was a wonderful set of images created for an older adult's mental health ward depicting a range of older people showing off their circus skills to younger participants, a lovely way of exploring age and skill, youth and experience, fun and games. It was also great to see the real marks and washes on the paper, reproduction doesn't entirely capture the energy and humour, or the way colour and form are captured inside well practised lines & marks.

There were Big Draw activities throughout the building and the most fabulous exhibition of the history of fireworks and fire festivals, I love graphic design and the packaging and posters were gorgeous. Another exhibition made a host of fascinating juxtapositions between artworks from their British Folk Art Collection which has been cleverly placed in amongst other collections and peppered throughout the building. The artists involved included:-Tasha Amini, James Ayres, Daniel Baker, Sir Peter Blake, Sonia Boyce, Faye Claridge, Simon Costin, Jeremy Deller, Carolyn Flood, Jenny Gordon, Antonia Harrison, Susan Hiller, Juneau Projects, Alan Kane, Paula MacArthur, Mike Nelson, Martin Myrone, Paul Ryan and Sarah Woodfine.

Artist Laura Ellen Bacon is currently Maker in Residence and has made these intriguing structures amongst the trees in the gardens.

In the same week The Fishmarket Gallery in Northampton was a hive of activity as artists took part in interventions and activities for Northampton's Light Night Run. Artist and Queen of Cup Cakes, Tamsyn Payne offered artists the opportunity to make a sketch using EL wire. I made four small heads which were sited outside the Royal & Derngate (for one night only and they mysteriously disappeared) but here's a very very short clip of them blinking!

When I dropped the pieces off at the Fishmarket I had a chance to see The Seven Spires by Steve Massam which had been visiting many parts of the county as part of Northamptonshire's Cultural Olympiad project "Flow". 

The were land locked in the small courtyard outside, soaking up the weak October light and dreaming of their travels along the Nene.

I was reminded of Steve Massam's Spires when I spied the roof line of the St Pancras Hotel from the courtyard of the British Library during our Pilgrimage to London. We took a brief tour of the Treasures From the British Library after an inspiring day in the British Museum.

There had been so much publicity about Grayson Perry's "The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman" I was worried that it might not live up to to all the praise. It was totally a totally fabulous exhibition and I think I might just need to go and see it again. The thought behind the selections, the clever balance of artefacts, the energy and intelligence of the artist combined with the sensitivity and humour of the texts made this a filling, thought-provoking day. Oh yes, and there was lots of drawing - on pots and from history. Luscious!