| Project title: | A Saintly Tale |
| Location: | Bishop Bonner’s Cottage Museum, Dereham, Norfolk |
| Date: | Saturday 14th December 2024 |
Artist Statement
My work is inspired by feelings of nostalgia, transformation, the kitsch, found items and memories.
I am motivated by personal experience. Growing up in 80s East End London, rummaging around market stalls in Hackney with my Dad, and visiting my alcoholic aunt in her prefab, and other memories all play a part in my work. Looking at second-hand items, picking out small ornaments or anything that glistened or caught my eye, influenced me.
I work with collage and assemblage using paper and 3D objects that I have collected over the years. I source and find these materials, sometimes broken and worn ceramic ornaments or tacky souvenir items which are rich in nostalgia. Old or new, anything exciting and intriguing is used to create my own little fantasy world rich in emotions of sentimentality, wistfulness, loss, fond memories, history and a sense of passage and pilgrimage through time. Nostalgia is central in my work, the juxtaposition of feeling pleasure but also sadness about things that happened in the past.
These themes have led me to folklore, using stop-motion animation to re-animate images and stories that have only existed in people’s memories through the unseen and oral tradition. These stories have been passed down through time and are our heritage. I try to create a dream-like world.
I am drawn to strong bold colours and feel attracted to the brightness and energy of them. As well as exploring feelings of pleasure and sadness in my practice, I work with colours in the same vein, to push the boundaries of comfortable and uncomfortable, sometimes over-colouring or adorning my work. I want to open new interpretive possibilities with my practice, go beyond the established and expected, pushing into the uncanny, and changing and morphing familiar artefacts.
My paintings run on similar themes, exploring figures with masks. This runs alongside themes of the unseen, and images at the edge of our vision. The mask is uncanny, conceals, it can hide and withhold, disguise, or it may even amuse or frighten the viewer. It’s a way of changing and morphing an image. Change like this is a strong thread in my work, whether it’s altering images, or the unsettled, fluid shifting of folk tales through time, I want to capture these emotions and sensations in my work.
Contextual Statement
My project has been an investigation into folklore and tales of Norfolk. I have been asking why there is a social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life, and why there is a transmission of storytelling through communities. Having relocated to Dereham in Norfolk from London, this project has culminated in making a stop-motion animation entitled, ‘A Saintly Tale’. I chose the story of Saint Withburga. In 654 she founded a convent in Dereham. During a time of famine and hardship, after prayer, she was told in a dream to feed her builders and nuns from the milk of two does which appeared at the well at Saint Nicholas’ church. A local official did not like Withburga or her miracles, and decided to hunt down the does with dogs to prevent them from coming to be milked. He was punished for his cruelty when he was thrown from his horse and broke his neck.
I chose this story on which to base my stop-motion animation, to be projected onto a wall in one of the rooms of Bishop Bonner’s Cottage Museum in Dereham. Saint Nicholas’ church is next to the museum and is the site where she is said to have lived. I wanted to use paper-cut as a medium for this animation, which then developed into using collage and found images too. It has been enthralling to be on this journey and experiencing the project evolving and changing, and to see the images developing and coming to life in the animation. Paper as a medium is versatile and has been used for centuries to contain and pass on information. In animation, paper is vibrant, clear and can have a naïve, almost innocent effect which I believe is characteristic of folk art. Folk art and folk tales were, and are traditionally accessible to everyday people, and this sense of community and bringing people together has been paramount in my project. Christine Y. House in her essay, Cultural Understanding through folklore says, ‘Folktales continue to enchant people today for many reasons. They tell us our history, they describe where we live, what our values are and ultimately who we are’. Through this project, I’ve sought to enter into this tradition by way of a stop-motion animation, in which I bring together elements of the traditional story of St. Withburga; for example, the female deer who came to her aid, with the addition of other exaggerated images using collage which are synonymous with folk tales, providing theatrics and embellishment. I explore feelings of pleasure and sadness in my practice, and work with colour in the same vein, to push the boundaries of comfortable and uncomfortable, sometimes over colouring or adorning my work. I like to open new interpretive possibilities with my work, go beyond the established and expected, pushing into the uncanny, and changing and morphing familiar artifacts. I explore the unseen, the edge of vision, and feel drawn to the artists, Joseph Cornell, Hannah Hoch, John Currin, Matthew Weir and feel a connection to paper artists, Hazel Glass, and John De Vera.
I used the stop-motion studio app to achieve the animation. For me, the project developed not just with the methodologies of adding found paper images but also the theories behind it. I wanted the animation to explore the experience of storytelling, and how tales can change or distort and be exaggerated over time. They can bring warnings, fear, intrigue, and fire the imagination with their fantastical, vivid storylines. I have hoped that intertwining folk tales and characteristics of folk art using collage, paper-cut and music which I composed, will provide a memorable experience for the viewer and encourage them to think about the broader aspects of community, togetherness, and a sense of tradition. In the catalogue for the exhibition, The Flowering of American Folk Art 1974, Alice Winchester wrote: “One may look for, and find, originality of concept, creativity of design, craftsmanly use of the medium, and flashes of inspiration, even genius. Folk art makes it’s appeal directly and intimately, even to people quite uninitiated into the mysteries of art”. (Foster, u.d).
Animation: A Saintly Tale
Photos of the event at Bishop Bonner’s Cottage Museum:
