A delightfully unexpected encounter with Claire Hignett

Earlier in the year I signed up to participate in a Practice Makes Practice weekend event organised by The NewBridge Project in which NewBridge members could engage with a group of artists from Islington Mill, Salford. Unfortunately the event had to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances, but it is due to be rearranged in the future. After doing some research into Islington Mill, I had ear-marked it as a place to visit.

Last week I made a visit to Manchester for a variety of art related events, and ended up spending most of my time in Salford. As I waited for entry into the exhibition at ArtWork Atelier, I got talking to a woman who was also waiting to see the exhibition. It turned out that I was talking to Claire Hignett, an artist with a studio at Islington Mill who had also intended to attend the NewBridge Project/Islington Mill weekend event earlier in the year. Claire kindly offered to show me around Islington Mill (see earlier blog post) http://helenshaddock.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/islington-mill.html and introduce me to her work.



Claire writes,

"I am fascinated by the effect time has on memory. How memories start to fragment and merge with others. How, as we move through time and gather new experiences, our perception of our memories changes. I am particularly intrigued by the way we attach memory to objects and how we keep things that are broken, useless or were cherished by someone else to try and hold on to our memories and to stop them fragmenting any more."

In 2012 Claire began working on a project "to find out more about a group of Basque refugee children who came to Salford following the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War."

In June 1937, 4000 Basque children arrived in Southampton as refugees and were dispersed around the country in “colonies”. One of these colonies was in Salford at Harold’s Memorial Orphanage, now demolished but only five minutes walk from Claire's current home, and they were taught at the Local Quaker Meeting House, now a British Legion building just a little further on. Claire mentioned the children to her friend’s Mum (age 83) and she was delighted to be asked. She remembered being 9 years old and leaving hospital after a bout of mumps. She went with her friends to look at the refugees because “we thought they would be exotic but [we] were dead disappointed because they looked just like us!”



Claire is in the process of preparing for her exhibition at Ordsall Hall from July 18th to 24th September 2017. Her exhibition will be based on the story of the Basque Children in Salford. "Finding stories in old newspapers and talking to people who still remember them, she will create the exhibition to tell this hidden story."

While in her studio at Islington Mill I saw some of the work that she has been developing for the exhibition, and I look forward to going to see the end result in the Summer.



For more about Claire's work visit her website:

http://www.clairehignett.co.uk/

and her blog:

http://www.clairehignett.co.uk/blog/

Claire is a member of the Islington Mill Art Academy, "a peer-led experiment into alternative modes of art education. Founded in 2007, IMAA emphasises shared responsibility, and its nature changes with its membership, with each member bringing their own ideas and energy. Within IMAA there is no differentiation between professor and pupil, and there are no set courses, but rather a shared propensity to learn and to strive for understanding. The group seek out and utilise the resources which they can find around them, and employ 'art method' towards diverse, and not necessarily artistic, outcomes. Whilst the nature of IMAA is fluid and subject to change, it is always crucial to share ideas, and to embrace the skills and knowledge of members."

For more information about the Islington Mill Art Academy visit:

http://islingtonmillartacademy.blogspot.co.uk/

Make Place by Sophie Lee at ArtWork Atelier, Salford

During my recent visit to Salford, I visited gallery and studio space, ArtWork Atelier. The exhibition in the gallery was Make Place by Sophie Lee.

The exhibition consisted of a number of video projections running simultaneously with a sound installation featuring two voices in dialogue, sometimes overlapping, coming from speakers positioned around the gallery. The projections mainly focused on the Icelandic coastline and seashots, but one projection included images of objects arranged in a domestic setting and an image of a space that was constructed in the gallery.

"Make Place is a solo exhibition by Sophie Lee investigating the artist’s interpretations into notions of the home and identity. Taking inspiration from her recent visit to a group of family owned islands off the West Coast of Iceland, Lee presents a gallery installation bringing together research from over the last eight-months.

During her visit to Iceland, Lee spent time with the family’s last remaining son, who in 1981, after the passing of his mother, took it upon himself to safe hold the family’s islands from the threat of sale. Taking up sole residency on the islands, he set about building wooden, family sized houses. Now, at the age of 75, having built twenty houses and one library, he continues his work, living in almost total isolation. Holding on to a sense of the un-finished, each house is unique and marks a lasting tribute to his mother and siblings. A place of contradictions and myth, the island and its inhabitant are fixed in a state of anticipation, nostalgia, transformation and change.

Bringing together her own narratives, experiences and documentation, Make Place is an exhibition that reinterprets this story from the experiences of the artist. Within the exhibition, Lee presents a fictional spoken word narrative between the island and the inhabitant.

Make Place has been developed and produced by Mark Devereux Projects with Sophie Lee over the last year. This exhibition signals the completion of the first research and development phase of the project, which has also included a talks programme concentrating on the thematics of domesticity and identity at Salford Museum & Art Gallery."

http://sophie-lee.com/

http://www.markdevereuxprojects.com/portfolio_page/sophie-lee-make-place-exhibition/

I attended one of the talks programmed alongside the exhibition.

Edward Hollis, architect, writer and teacher discussed the notion of what makes a home.

Drawing on his book, How to make a home, Hollis spoke about how our concept of home has changed over time. The desire for privacy is a modern invention.

We were asked to spend 60 seconds drawing a house. All but one of us in the audience drew a 2-storey building with a roof, windows, door, chimney and path. Hollis explained the tendency for us to draw such symmetrical buildings - a house is a place that presents an ordered facade to the world. 

A house offers shelter, warmth and food, and is detached from the rest of the world.

The stuff in our houses remind us of who we are and what we have to do.