Monday 28 May 2012
Tuesday 22 May 2012
Saturday 12 May 2012
Monday 7 May 2012
Tout Quarry
Tout Quarry is an abandoned stone quarry in Portland, Dorset. It is situated on the cliff edge overlooking the sea, with Chesil Beach as its backdrop. Portland has been described as the womb of London because so many of London's buildings are made from the stone quarried there. Wren was a particular fan of the stone and used it in the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and the numerous churches that were rebuilt after the Great Fire.
Tout Quarry is now a sculpture park, formed in 1983 with the creation of the Portland Sculpture and Quarry Trust. A large group of site specific sculptures have been created in the quarry, but as the park is easily accessible to the public at all times of day these sculptures have been vulnerable to vandalism, as well as the weather.
We took a trip here when recently in Dorset. We dumped the car on double yellow lines in a cul de sac leading nowhere, surrounded by faintly menacing portacabins and industrial sheds of no specific purpose. The first set of sculptures appear on your left as you head down the hill into the park. There are no explanatory boards or interpretation materials that you might expect from such a project. In fact, the site appears almost as a waste land. However, trawling online suggests that new work is being commissioned for the Olympics.
To us it seemed a place devoid of human agency. Fragments of sculpture emerge from the pale stone. Some sculptures have clearly been damaged but others seem half formed. As you move down into the basin of the quarry you are fully surrounded by the white stone and more pieces appear. We found ourselves intrigued by the site, its seeming dereliction, and its unrealness, somewhere between a film set and an alien landscape. It felt like a place where furtive secret activity occurs, and we found little stashes of cans, drug paraphernalia and endless piles of dog shit. The site is clearly used by someone but we didn't see a soul when we were there.
Tout Quarry is now a sculpture park, formed in 1983 with the creation of the Portland Sculpture and Quarry Trust. A large group of site specific sculptures have been created in the quarry, but as the park is easily accessible to the public at all times of day these sculptures have been vulnerable to vandalism, as well as the weather.
We took a trip here when recently in Dorset. We dumped the car on double yellow lines in a cul de sac leading nowhere, surrounded by faintly menacing portacabins and industrial sheds of no specific purpose. The first set of sculptures appear on your left as you head down the hill into the park. There are no explanatory boards or interpretation materials that you might expect from such a project. In fact, the site appears almost as a waste land. However, trawling online suggests that new work is being commissioned for the Olympics.
To us it seemed a place devoid of human agency. Fragments of sculpture emerge from the pale stone. Some sculptures have clearly been damaged but others seem half formed. As you move down into the basin of the quarry you are fully surrounded by the white stone and more pieces appear. We found ourselves intrigued by the site, its seeming dereliction, and its unrealness, somewhere between a film set and an alien landscape. It felt like a place where furtive secret activity occurs, and we found little stashes of cans, drug paraphernalia and endless piles of dog shit. The site is clearly used by someone but we didn't see a soul when we were there.
Live on Resonance FM
Less than twelve hours after playing our Tate Britain processional piece, we were in another gallery, this time Home Front in Herne Hill. We had been very kindly asked to perform live as part of a special outside broadcast for the Hello Goodbye show's 10th birthday. Click on the image above for the live recording, which includes a few of the tracks we performed at Tate.
Home Front made us very welcome and liberally bestowed us with croissants and home brewed ales from their Spit and Sawdust geodesic dome.
Thank you to everyone who made this possible, we had a really fun time and were super pleased with the resulting session. Special thanks to all of the Resonance engineers in attendance. I will leave it to you to decide what the plural is for a group of Resonance engineers. And happy birthday to Hello Goodbye, who have been supportive of us for many years now (even as far back as the Hands on Heads days!).
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