The final hang last week at Salisbury Arts Centre took just 3 days, which was quite a feat! Curated by Amanda Wallwork and me, and set up with the help of many other step in stone artists and a team at Salisbury Arts Centre, including Visual Arts Manager Louise. As part of the installation , Tessa Farmer has re-created a miniature environment in the entrance display case of her skeletal fairies and other creatures interacting and emerging from fossils, some on loan from Somerset Earth Science Centre. Ralph Hoyte has also re-created his GPS-triggered soundscape ‘ANTICLINE’ to listen to via smartphones around the grounds of the centre. This can be downloaded via this link. The artwork includes a selection of indoor and outdoor pieces from our 6 venues last year.
We had our Private Vew on Friday evening (19th Aug). It was lovely to have so many of the artists together again, many who haven’t seen each other since last year’s project. Numerous visitors came, expressing their interest and enthusiasm for the subject, our work and the exhibition as a whole. “An intriguing multi-media, sophisticated exhibition!” We are pleased with the information/artist panels, which really help to tell the story.
Below are some images from our installation and Private View. Do come and visit the exhibition (runs ’til 24 Sept)!
Fiona Campbell 22/8/16
“Terra Firma: there’s no place like home”
21 varying sized transparent fabric tents are supported on raft type structures and are arranged in part concentric circles. Some rafts are mounted on wheels to appear like trailers while the others sit grounded to their site. Each tent contains various growing manufactured items supporting their own narratives, from grass growing clothes on hangers, to growing table and chair settings, to sawdust coated teapots and leaf coated glasses, coffee pot and cups. The smaller tents contain soap castings of toy cars, wheels, incandescent light bulbs and electric plugs etc, while bamboo ladders support sprouting runner bean plants
“Being part of ‘step in stone’ has given me an ideal platform to explore, through making site-specific works, my fascination for contemporary commemorative memorials. These Mendip quarries in themselves commemorate the regions valuable contribution to the industrialisation of Britain. I aim to stimulate conversations and awareness about the values and impacts of quarrying and the future security of the Mendips and its communities.”
