Friday: Once more at Tullie House working with Catherine and Tina, assembling the Frontier Voices Wall installation, which is looking great! Thank you everyone! We even recorded some Frontier Voices to include in the display in the gallery. Unfortunately we couldn’t actually install our Wall in the gallery as the installation person allocated to us has contracted Covid. Tullie House will install it in the gallery as soon as they can. However we photographed the work so we can now prepare the second version for the Sill exhibition. Frances has been in touch from Corbridge Roman Museum and sent me photos of a few of the Corbridge pots made by the Northumberland Scout camp now on display at the museum until at least the end of January. Here are her photos alongside a real Roman face-pot on show in the gallery.
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Thursday: I spent the morning at The Sill Discovery Centre finalising the artworks for the exhibition with Sarah Burns and Mandy Roberts, agreeing all the details for the celebration event on the afternoon of 1st December. It’s going to be a good event but the installation will be challenging - we just have so much fantastic work to show!
Then back to my studio to complete and assemble some of the embossing work ready for Tullie House tomorrow. Wednesday: Roman Army Museum artwork has now been photographed and put into banner format and looks really good! We are having one to go up at Vindolanda over the winter, which will move to the Roman Army Museum when it opens after the winter. We are also having one printed to go on the gate beside Fort Magna so walkers can see the actual site - but this one will have micro-holes in the fabric to let the wind through!
Had a really good meeting with Nigel Mills as we reviewed all the international work and worked out what needed to be done for the Dutch delegation that is coming to the celebration. I am going to have quite a bit of presentation work to do for the fantastic Limestor project currently on show at Dalkingen, to do it justice here. Tuesday: I confirmed frame and mounting types for displaying the votive plaques inspired by Carrawbrugh for English Heritage at Chesters Fort and they have been ordered. I have chosen a specific red mounting card to show the metal embossed foil off at its best!
Monday: Sometimes I feel like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland,
“ Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Due to the change in the hour I was up bright and early sorting out the layout and framing for the recent metal embossing worships so I can get the order in this week. Frame type, hanging method and backing sheets all decided! Then in touch with English Heritage about displaying the face pots at Corbridge. Sunday: I was sent some photographs of the Frontier Voices installation at Limestor Museum at Dalkingen and the final cut-outs look really good! Fantastic Job by the Peutingen Gymnasium Year 9 students and their art and english teacher Silke Schwab-Krüger!
Saturday: I met them at Vindolanda where they had had an inspiring visit, and delivered the key. Then it was off to the Sill to continue developing the exhibition design over fantastic bacon rolls and coffee, then to Corbridge to deliver the first pots for the face-pot case in the Roman Museum, followed by some Christmas shopping in their shop. On the way back we stopped off at the Roman Army Museum and measured the gate beside Fort Magna to size it for the printed banner created with Haltwhistle Youth Club. It was so peaceful there. I hope our artwork helps to rise awareness of the effects of global warming and the potential loss of evidence of our forebears due to drying out.
Friday: Birdoswald was misty and you could almost feel the ghosts of the past.
English Heritage staff met me, smiling ready for our visitors from the Netherlands. We shared creative workshop practices, and discussed my presentation on the Frontier Voices journey showing some of the creative outcomes. The Birdoswald poetry was a great success with our visitors, working how they could use this for their heritage workshops in Leiden - real international co-operation and sharing! They brought over an eco-printed and embroidered hanging for the exhibition, a group collaboration for Frontier Voices showing an interpretation of the roman fort at Park Matilo. The leaf printing is really delicate and there is a lovely mix of embroidery stitches adding additional texture. The embroidery reminded me of my mother’s needlework - she taught me how to sew and embroider when I was very small - and it was good to discuss this with the textile artists and their choices of stitches. We walked round part of the fort and I shared the horse carving, which I love. I then introduced them to metal foil embossing, which they hadn’t tried before. They created leaves for the Sill installation and then votive plaques for the exhibition, which will then to go on to Chesters for display after the exhibition. We said our goodbyes and they have invited me to come to the Netherlands. However I had a phone call in the evening to say that the key they had asked me to return to the Great North Museum was in fact their back door key for their house in Hexham……… Wednesday. Nigel Mills and I went to Segedunum to share aspects of the project with our partners from the Netherlands at Park Matillo, Leiden. It was lovely to met their team of artists, archaeologists and others involved in working with their local community. We shared the Fort and the artworks that are currently on display there and then went on to the Great North Museum to see the installation in the Roman Gallery and meet manager Adam Goldwater and GNM keeper of archaeology, Andrew Parkin. They shared favourites from the gallery and we looked at digitally printed artefacts for use with learning and engagement along with the Roman stone from Milecastle 38 that proves that Hadrian commanded that a wall should be built - fantastic!
The group are going to visit Houseteads and Walk some of the Wall tomorrow and then work with me on Friday. I am really looking forward to discussing creative arts practices using heritage, and the journey I have been on with this project. The Park Matillo group have also asked for me to give them an art workshop so watch this space! At the Northumberland National Park's Sill Discovery Centre, all the Hadrian’s Wall volunteers were having a celebratory day for the 1900 Festival. I met lots of enthusiastic volunteers, planned my final exhibition layout and in the afternoon presented my project to them all. Clare Forsythe helped us set up and she added to my presentation. Dr Frances McIntosh opened our workshop, focussing on Carrawbrugh Fort, the Mithraeum and Coventina’s Well. She showed some wonderful examples of metal votive plaques discovered in this area and then we challenged the participants to learn new skills, emboss metal foil and then create leaves for the Sill installation and votive plaques for display at the Sill, and then afterwards to be displayed in the café at Chesters Fort. The were some fantastic results! It was also really good to meet the Hadrian’s 1900 Festival organisers in person - it makes such a change from Zoom!
The remainder of this week has been all about planning the final exhibition, layout, finishing artwork and designing the layout of the interpretation panels, ready for a meeting with the Sill team next week. |
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