These works by Discipula, Liz Hingley and Tom Hunter, exploring the habitat of Ashfield, Mansfield, Bolsover and North East Derbyshire aim to celebrate the creativity and cultural ecology of the region which has previously been defined by its past as “ex-coalfield” or “ex-industrial” rather than the identity, pride and purpose of the present.
Strata, by artist collective Discipula, reflects the history of the East Midlands mining community by combining new landscape photographs with archival materials from Mansfield Coal Authority and details taken from banners representing the local miners’ trade unions. The original photographs by Discipula represent the response of outsiders discovering an unfamiliar territory, whilst the materials selected from the Mansfield Coal Authority archive and trade union banners reveal the formal and institutional view of the established relationship between the people, land and resources, and how they have been shaped by the coal mining industry. Intertwined with texts by Discipula, these sources reassess the legacy of the miners in a time of political and economic reconfiguration.
Breathing Brass, by Liz Hingley explores the relationship between brass instruments and players from the ex-mining area of Bolsover. The dedicated members of Bolsover’s brass bands today include accountants, professors, music students aged from five to 80, and even entire families stretching back generations. Clearing the lungs of coal miners was one of the initial functions of many brass bands. Fascinated by the way that a player’s breath moves around an instrument to create sound, Hingley employed a specialist FLIR infrared optical gas imaging camera, which is normally used in heavy industry to pinpoint gas leaks. This technique reveals the journey a player’s breath takes as it passes through a brass instrument, while simultaneously leaving a trace of their DNA, and tarnishing the metal.
The unique Breathing Brass augmented reality app reveals videos of players’ breath emitting from instruments accompanied by a dynamic soundscape.
For this commission, photographer Tom Hunter crisscrossed the landscape from medieval Sherwood forest to the borders of the Peak District for Flâneur, a network project financed by UNESCO, in the Ancient Landscape. This area is home to 400,000 people and rich with ancient legends and myths. Tales of The Green Man and outlaws hiding out in the heaths and woodlands, living by their own codes and defying authority, go hand in hand with the mining communities that have latterly come to define this area of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. With the disappearance of the mining industry, the spoils of the slagheaps have been regenerated into plantations and the green fingers of the forest rise up once again. An image of the young boy with the “No Frack” placard in the woods takes on some of the exuberant defiance of the ancient forest outlaws or the striking miners, who throughout the centuries have stood up for their beliefs against authoritarian dictates. Hunter has captured the human and industrial heritage – abandoned, reclaimed and reborn.
Flâneur, New Urban Narratives
24 March – 23 April 2017
Cathedral Green
Derby
United Kingdom
