Field Notes began life as a trip for Howard Skempton and I to the Shropshire Archive in Shrewsbury. Following an initial meeting in my studio, where we discussed graphic scores, time, journeys, topography and maps it was suggested that we might begin the project by looking at some ancient maps in Shrewsbury.
The maps that had been laid out were intensely exciting not just visually but in terms of their material and physical presence. Some were paper thin, eggshell like sheets that clung to the table perfectly flat. Others were landscapes of undulating roughly shaped vellum that drifted across the tables. Amongst these ancient horizontal planes of parchment the Leeke Survey sat upright. A book of fields, each page trapping ancient enclosures within a frame of red borders. Fields stretched out like folded and cut cloth. Complex pattern pieces criss-crossed with pathways of ochre, dotted lines and bands of yellow that break and bisect each field into delineated strips and folds.
These fields are fragments, floating free of any surrounding landscape. Ancient outlines trapped and pressed for all time in the pages of a book with names that point to an ancient history of use and ownership.
The New Peeces
The Windmill field
The Alin Hop Lower
The Wergs
Pitt Croft Whip Ha
Little Mead
The 8 Day Math
The 5 Day Math
The Moore Field
Of all the things on show that morning, this is the one that has stayed with me and worked its way into my thoughts and making.
absolutely fascinating and beautiful to see the genesis of ideas
Watched this clip again and so beautiful the see the creation and development of ideas.To hear and see the shared thoughts unfoldingh. what very lovely maps.
Your work is free and interesting Matthew, I am doing mono-prints which are quite exiting as an art form but your foldings add another ingredient I will try it out.
Angela