Sara Grisewood

I wrote some text which I had on the wall for the show :

 

 

Off The Wall

 

Lewes Town Hall 

Artwave Festival

18thAugust – 3nd September

 

This exhibition represents work in progress made as part of my MA studies in Painting at Wimbledon College of Art. My current practice is concerned with post-industrial urban land use, exploring processes of demolition and rebuilding in our towns and cities. The work exhibited here relates to local brownfield sites, including the Phoenix Industrial Estate, the disused Wenban Timber Yard now owned by Waitrose Supermarket and Green Wall, a medieval twitten running along the edge of the North Street Industrial Estate.

 

I am interested in change, and what has happened to the sites over time. My research incorporates the practice of wandering and exploring the sites, drawing in situ, and later a curiosity into the histories of the spaces I find myself in. These areas have a long history of industry all based along the river Ouse, the main transportation for pig iron for the Phoenix Ironworks founded in 1832, alongside the  timberyards, boatbuilders and paper mills . When I visit the site now remnants of this are not immediately obvious, yet through my explorations into local histories I have learnt that many of the towns coal covers and railings cast at the foundry  still remain. Although I am fascinated with knowing the history of the sites I explore, it is in fact the atmosphere of absence, the lack of much tangible evidence, that I am interested in. 

 

I have been collecting small found materials from around the sites, between the river Ouse and Green Wall, especially in the remains of the Compass Bus garage and the still accessible areas up to the Gosnell Soap factory, although much is now boarded up.. These are the starting points for this work, what is often identified as pieces of rubbish. The different materials represent memories of buildings and time past, they are relics, little scraps, nothing valuable, including materials used for the kind of recent industrial buildings in this area. Plywood, hardboard, plaster, timber, cheap building materials. They are already breaking down and mixing in now with many plants growing there too; buddleia, rosebay willow herb, different mosses and grasses. The inside and outside indistinguishable, the little traces of graffiti, remnants of fabric and squishy cardboard and sodden chipboard, fragments of broken ceramic and vinyl tiles with glue patterns on the reverse, old linoleum, plasterboard and rusty nails. These pieces are all that are left and barely constitute any clearly defined memories. Last year my sister died very suddenly and this has somehow propelled my focus on these fragments and remnants and how a seemingly unimportant piece of material can be imbued with memory. I have taken black and white photographs of the sites over the past year, and in the same way these have now become well worn references and relics of my visits to the spaces.  

 

How do we best remember people? The found objects are tangible, they are something real, even when decay has set in.  What isn’t visible during my wanderings are the lives that were lived there, the histories of the people doing their washing by the town ditch along Green Wall. There are many layers of history here and who can say which should be preserved or remembered. I include this quote by geographer Doreen Massey about the landscape of southern England; “And everything is on the move. Even the rocks beneath our feet. And in consequence everything is also from somewhere else – even the chalk.. but we can find here a place of the imagination of longer, deeper temporality and wonder at the forces that have brought them here.” (26: 2005). The land will soon be on the move again, as the Industrial Estate is developed, and a large building site is created.

 

These are relief paintings made up of some three-dimensional elements with small areas of painting. With the juxtapositions of materials and random objects I am trying to echo the messiness and non-conformity of the liminal landscapes they were collected from. I have chosen to exhibit in the foyer of Lewes Town Hall, not an art gallery, as this work is not intended for sale but rather some findings, work in progress, sketches, for further work. I like the history of the space, the portraits on the wall, the mosaic floor, grand staircase, and safety notices.

 

If you would like to follow my progress with this project you can look on instagram (saragrisewood1) or leave an email address for future exhibitions. 

 

Sara Grisewood August 2018.