EVER PRESENT
Commission / funded project (residency and publication). 2012
Rednile Projects | Redcar and Cleveland Council

Ever Present – a poetic survey of landscape/urban regeneration

Artist Luce Choules and writer Adam Stock conducted research into Eston Hills, taking photographs, audio recordings and writing in order to create an alternative map of the area. They walked and engaged with locals to discuss their relationships with the landscape and made sound recordings and photographic documentation. They looked for traces and markings, entry and exit points, pathways and invisible borders. The idea was to explore the landscape in relation to past industrial use, present population and unfolding future.

Using experimental narrative mapping as a process and as an outcome, this collaborative project seeks to record a conversation between photography and writing that responds directly to the Eston Hills site. Of particular interest is the potential for dialogue between disciplines and location, in the mapping of images and words, to create this new piece of site-responsive work – a work about industrial use and cultural observation. A limited edition Map will investigate temporality, and conversations with the land and its histories – shaping a shifting landscape of images and words involving notions of ‘beauty’ and ‘utility’. The map will become a record of a consultation process – poetic and democratic – and become a place in its own right where the collective dialogue can be realised.

Summary:
Collaborative walking residency staying at a local guesthouse / publication and online exhibition / arts organisation public programme / outdoor culture programme

Artists (collaboration):
Luce Choules
Dr Adam Stock – writer

Project partners:
Suzanne Hutton, Janine Goldsworthy, and Michael Branthwaite, Founders of Rednile Projects, North East England and the West Midlands, UK | Stephen Sherlock, Archaeologist, Sunderland, UK | Joanne Hodgeson, Arts Officer, Redcar and Cleveland Council, UK | Bryn Suggett, Arts Assistant, Redcar and Cleveland Council, UK | Flatts Lane Visitors Centre, Eston Hills, UK.

Factory Nights 2011-2012 programme funded by:
Arts Council England, British Council, Staffordshire University, Multistory, Middlesbrough Council, Redcar and Cleveland Council, and Stoke on Trent Council.

Keywords:
Environmental Art, Curated Landscapes, Cultural Tourism, Regeneration, Physical/Human Geography, Survey, Fieldwork.

              

Link to Rednile Projects ‘Factory Nights’ event
Link to Rednile Projects commission
Link to Rednile Projects commission publication (page 22)
Link to Dr Adam Stock profile Yorks St. John University

WORKS

EVERPRESENT
Printed Folded Map (1270mm x 952mm) and Printed Postcard (235mm x 125mm). 2012

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THE RINGS OF SALTBURN
Fieldwork Documents (photographs). 2012

The Rings of Saltburn is a crystalline view of Saltburn, UK, envisaged through a telescope situated on the cliff. The work was made during a field trip as part of the Factory Nights commission with Rednile Projects, Newcastle, UK. Through the telescope’s narrow viewpoint, the work makes reference to W. G. Sebald’s book The Rings of Saturn through themes of time, memory, and identity; relocating the natural and industrial coastline of Saltburn as ephemeral, fragmented, and multiple through a series of distorted worlds.