Divining


Transition Series - Angela Hughes

Southdown Drive

Your family house
Is sold, at last, so you're cut loose
From your one-time base.
In your Mum's new pad
You're a guest (like me). so we
Entwine, just this night,
In your sister's bed
Where kind suburban silence
Tucks in our Sunday.
Outside, foxes flit
Under cars, beneath bin bags
Arousing pet dogs
With their vixen scents.
We're so intensen now, catching
Each others gasps in
Our murmuring mouths -
Afraid if the household should stir
As our pulses chip
At our last constraints.
When the spell's broken, we try
Not to think how low
Down in this city
We could fall...Come morning, loud
Kids are passing us
O their way to schools;
Their young accents shapr and cleam
As light through clinking
Milk bottles, lifted.
I try them out on my tongue -
Twee passports of sound.

Matthew Clegg

Three young professional artists were chosen to participate in 'Divining', the Foundation's first residency project in the North East of England. The landscape painter Angela Hughes, photographer Dan May and poet Matthew Clegg were invited to explore shared ideas and themes, take soundings, make references and feel the pull of 'gravities' reflecting their individual response to their chosen locations. As part of the residency the artists worked with a group of specially selected 'A' Level Art specialists from seven High Schools in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Location was the catalyst for all three artists. Angela Hughes chose Swan Hunter shipyard on the River Tyne, Dan May the Northumbrian coastline and rural Cumbria and the poet Matthew Clegg moved between the two, drawing at times uneasy comparisons between town and country.

It was a challenging year for the artists, who battled not just with the elements that conspired against them relentlessly, but also with the tragic implications of the Foot and Mouth crisis, which made gaining access to the countryside difficult. We are enormously grateful to them for their dedication and also for their inspired teaching and sheer hard work. They were assisted by the staff from the participating schools who gave of their time unstintingly.

 

 

 


Buttermere 1 and Derwentwater Jetty - Dan May

Two exhibitions at the University Gallery of Northumbria - one of the artists' work and the other of the students' - demonstrated what had been achieved during the residency. This body of work gave substance to the faith of all the 'diviners' who shared in this unique project.

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