CURIO•SEA•TY LORNA BARROWCLOUGH HONDARTZA FRAGA
www.curioseaty.wordpress.com
Curio•sea•ty (noun) A strong desire to know or learn anything and everything relating to the world’s seas and oceans. An unusual or interesting object or fact from or relating to the world’s seas and oceans.
Curio•sea•ty started in June 2014. The project was conceived as an opportunity for research and experimentation around theme of the sea and our relationships with it. The main part of the project was to spend time visiting some key maritime research centres and museums, feeding from each other’s practices and methodologies, exchanging our knowledge and learning new skills. We then used the research and all the materials gathered during the trips to create new works, both individually and in collaboration with each other. Alongside the new works we wanted to produce a publication that would contain some of the work-in-progress and images that had grabbed our attention.
This book is therefore like a cabinet of, from and for Curio•sea•ty where we have collected some of the objects and images that we have encountered during this project alongside our sketches, photographs and collages. Each page is like a drawer where items tell stories without words. Over the last few months we have found, played with and homed various traditional skills to enable us to produce new pieces of works as part of this project. There is no narrative or finished works in this book, but a weaving of fragments, thoughts and ideas. Like a sea chest where we keep the miscellanea from our expedition. We hope this book will be a glimpse into the process of our work and the research we have undertaken. Lorna & Hondartza
“One of the most common children’s customs in the nineteenth and twentieth century London was to build a grotto in the street…Materials: If possible, shells-oyster shells for choice - are procured… ‘It is grotto time now,’ said one….” Steve Roud, London Lore, 2008
(left) Grotto by the coast, photograph (right) Shell-ter Shell-ter, drawing on paper, oyster shell
...to see a spear, escape in haste
(left) Harpoons, collage (right) Safety-harpoon, pencil on paper
(left) Grafted Sea Spears, mixed materials (right) Whale- arch, collage
(left) Shipwrecks, ink on paper (right) Island and Ship, collage
Globster Unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of an ocean or other body of water, distinguished from a normal beached carcass by being hard to identify, at least by initial untrained observers.
(left) Globster, collage (right) Globster, photograph
(left) Spout, ink on paper (right) Salted ropes, photograph
When a rope receives a designated function aboard a ship, it is no longer called rope but line.
(left) Rope coil, acrylic and ink on newsprint paper (right) Rope, collage
Shell-ters. Left-over homes, plundered, their hosts consumed. With their miniature geographies of nooks, caves, hills, cliffs and rocks.
(left and right) Shell-ters, pencil on paper, oyster shells
Islands Remote, disappeared, imagined, unihabited, abandoned, inhospitable, paradisiacal, incomplete utopias. Unreachable, unescapable.
(left) Bear Island, ink on paper (right) Uninhabited Island, typewriter ink on paper
(left) Net, embossing on paper (right) Untitled collage
Oceanus is a figure from Greek mythology, personifying the great river encircling the world. Originally thought to represent just the bodies of salt water known to the ancient Greeks, but as geography became more accurate, Oceanus came to signify the stranger, more unknown waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
(left) Seamapbergs, collage pieces (right) Oceanus, first draft, ink on paper
(left) Oceanus, drafts, ink on paper (right) Oceanus, final outline, ink on paper
(left and right) Seamapbergs, collages
Witches Stones are used as both a weight and a further means of protecting nets. The witch stone, usually found on beaches, was used to protect sailors and fishermen from witchcraft, charms and spells.
(left) Netter, ink on paper (right) Witches Stones, photograph
Salted Netters A rework of an old ‘knitting tool’, to be used with ‘salted’ strings for good luck, as per the salting of nets done by fishermen’s wives before their husbands went out to sea.
(left) Salted Netter, wood, adhesive, paper, nails, string (right) Rose Salt Quartz, photograph
Salt is ever present linking the land and the sea. Gathered, transported, distributed and finally consumed. Once seen as a vital tool for preserving, it maintained and created wealth and communities of people. It now lives out a simple quiet life.
(left) Salted fish, intervention on photograph (right) Salt-Quartz, collage
(left) Casting the doily, embossing and pencil on paper (right) Fish knives, grafting, Himalayan Rock Salt
Lorna Barrowclough
Hondartza Fraga
Visual artist working predominantly with sculpture, collage and photography. Her work is inclusive and experimental and whilst there is a respect for traditional techniques, she endeavors to offer a refreshing open approach to the materials and methods that might be utilised. Her site-specific pieces have engaged with objects and materials that have particular place meaning; a process of importing a history, to export it back out to the place in reference. To either reinforce an already acknowledged site or industry heritage to the viewer; or reawaken a heritage that should be remembered.
Using drawing, photography, animation and video as her main mediums. Her explores our individual and collective relation to the world around us, the different ‘distances’ between ourselves and everything else: spatial, temporal, emotional, cultural and imagined. Featured in her work are model ships, maps, earth globes and other domestic objects that evoke an idea of travel or faraway places. In the work, these objects act as links between home and elsewhere, questionning the meaning of both terms and our position in-between.
lornabarrowclough.com
hondartzafraga.com
We would like to thank all our family and friends for their constant encouragement and everyone who gave their support in our initial Kickstarter campaign.
ISBN 978-1-906470-12-8 First Edition Published by East Street Arts Leeds, 2015 all contents © the artists, 2015 No contents of this book may be reproduced without prior written consent from the authors. Curio•sea•ty has been supported by: