Where Past Meets Present
A little of the magic
Iron Age penannular brooch
Neolithic - Bronze Age flint arrowhead
Roman bronze ring with amber inset
Antiquities from all historical periods are present in the top soil, brought to the surface by modern ploughing over the past decades. There is a need to retrieve them from the damaging effects of farm machinery and chemicals. They represent an important connection between ourselves and our forebears. Finds recorded by metal detectorists have made a huge contribution towards our understanding of the past.
My love of history, field walking and metal detecting has endured for over twenty years, but has only recently started to become a part of my practice. Whilst I have previously tried to incorporate my finds into my work, I often found them too emotive and history rich to impose myself upon them. My use of mixed media within the figurative branch of my practice, led me to start experimenting with air hardening clay, and through my exploration of this and other materials I began to see ways in which I could work alongside my finds, and incorporate them in rather more sensitive and respectful ways.
Fundamentally and conceptually, the objects that I find represent a tangible link between ourselves and those who left them behind. I see in them, the interconnectedness of human beings; behaviourally, culturally, spiritually, traditionally. Importantly, I see people, separated only by time. The objects they once owned and used are a catalyst for imagination and discovery. There exists within their manufacture, so much humanity, in finger prints, file marks, design and decoration, and just as it is important to acknowledge the legacy of countless generations from our past, it is for me, the simple, yet profound connection that is triggered by an everyday object, between two people, thousands of years apart... The last and the next to hold it in their hand.
A little of the magic...
Finding an object that has survived millennia in the ground, is an awe inspiring experience, filled with a sense of intangible magic. As if frozen in time, the object has lain undisturbed and largely unchanged, while the world around it has evolved beyond imagination. There is a spirit and an aura to such an artefact, that transcends the mundanity of its original purpose in antiquity. it's an echo from a distant time; another world. It has the power to link civilisations, unite past and present and forge connections.
Roman Sestertius - Hadrian (AD 76 - 138)
Medieval buckle
Iron Age terret ring
Throughout my work, poetry continues to maintain an important role, adding depth to expression, and consolidating ideas and concepts. In this branch of my practice, my poetry is an attempt to convey something of the emotion attached to the privilege of finding and connecting with the past.
A Little of The Magic
A still winter's morning
with barely a breeze,
and silence...
A silence such as our forebears would have known.
Silence...
Save for the distant liquid warble of a curlew.
A morning shrouded in mist...
and magic.
A morning that brings to light
a small metal object that has lain
in the same patch of soil
while the feet of ages
have passed over it.
Lain, unbeknownst to all humankind
since the moment it fell.
Until today...
when it's my honour
to be the first to gaze,
and the first to warm it in a hand
for centuries.
