GHOSTS OF THE RESTLESS SHORE

GHOSTS OF THE RESTLESS SHORE Space, Place and Memory of the Sefton Coast

GHOSTS OF THE RESTLESS SHORE Space, Place and Memory of the Sefton Coast Edited by Mike Collier Art Editions North 2015

Art Editions North

First published in 2015 by Art Editions North on the occasion of the exhibition Ghosts of the Restless Shore: Space, Place and Memory of the Sefton Coast At The Atkinson, Lord Street, Southport, PR8 1DB 22 August–15 November 2015

A British Library CIP record is available ISBN: 978-1-906832-26-1

Distributed by Cornerhouse Publications 70 Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5NH, England tel: +44 (0) 161 200 1503 fax: + 44 (0) 161 200 1504 email: publications@cornerhouse.org www.cornerhouse.org/publications

Art Editions North is an imprint of the University of Sunderland Co-published with The Atkinson

Production and Design by Manny Ling Edited by Mike Collier

Cover photography by Tim Collier All photographs in this publication are by Tim Collier unless stated otherwise.

The exhibition Ghosts of the Restless Shore: Space, Place and Memory of the Sefton Coast has been curated by Mike Collier of WALK (Walking, Art, Landskip and Knowledge) at the University of Sunderland Exhibition organised by Mike Collier

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Copyright in this compilation by Jake Campbell, Mike Collier, Tim Collier, Geraldine Reid, Jean Sprackland, Robert Strachan and Stephen Whittle.

Copyright in the contributions remains with the contributors.

Contacts: aen@sunderland.ac.uk

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For Liam and Mia

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CON T EN T S

Foreword Jean Sprackland

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Introduction Ghosts of the Restless Shore: Space, Place and Memory of the Sefton Coast by Dr. Mike Collier

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Essays The Pursuit Of Leisure by Stephen Whittle

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At First It Was Easy by John Dempsey

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‘Memory is the Diary We All Carry Round With Us’ by Tim Collier

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Diatoms: a Microscopic World of Wonder by Dr. Geraldine Reid

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In-Between Spaces by Dr. Robert Strachan

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The Wild Coast of Sefton by Jake Campbell

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Picturing Language Back into the Land by Dr. Mike Collier

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Catalogue of Work

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Biographies

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Acknowledgements

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F OR EWOR D JEAN SPRACKLAND

and sandy, wet and springy, thick and spiky with marram grass. The air was full of enigmatic scents. And the toads, the cosmic sound of them clamouring all around me. I knew it was the males calling the females to the mating pools, but it seemed, as I stood alone in that vertiginous darkness, that they were throwing their voices into the sky, a sound as timeless as the stars themselves.

The Sefton coast is a haunted place, where the past can suddenly reappear, bursting into the present, the way a gust of wind in a ghost story flings open a loose window and rushes into the room.

Concealment and revelation are its talents. It knows how to throw a covering of sand over a wrecked ship, to suck it down into its underground chambers and keep it there. This stretch of coast was once notoriously difficult to navigate, and no one knows how many shipwrecks are still buried in the intertidal zone.

But a few, like the Star of Hope, rise to the surface every now and then and take the air for a few days. She sits becalmed in a muddy puddle, barnacled, black and rotting in places, before sinking back into the sand, in an eerie reenactment of the first calamity a hundred and thirty years ago, when a storm drove her onto a treacherous sandbank called Mad Wharf.

The next morning, I went back in daylight, hoping to find a fragment of prehistory. I had read that the footprints of people, animals and birds who lived and hunted on the muddy foreshore at Formby Point had survived for five thousand years, and that it was possible to visit them at low tide. There’s a bittersweet flavour to the excitement of these discoveries, because you know they will be washed away by the next tide and erased forever. The processes are natural and explicable—a combination of certain weather and tidal conditions—but it is nevertheless miraculous. Our connection with the people of that remote past, before there was written language in which to communicate experience, is generally limited to artefacts and to images painted on the walls of caves. But to see the indentation a human foot has made, and to put your own bare foot right inside it, is to experience a real physical connection.

I’m not a native of this part of England. I grew up in a landlocked town, and to me the coast has always meant excitement, escape, otherness. I was a blowin, intending to live here a year or two, but stayed for twenty. I didn’t fall in love with it straight away. It doesn’t advertise its charms; there are none of the picturesque cliffs or rockpools or crashing surf I remembered from the seaside holidays of my childhood. It can look empty: nothing but huge skies, broad expanses of sand, gleaming wet or windblown and racing, and the sea, two miles distant at low tide. An austere palette of greys and blues, lit up by flocks of sandpipers and oystercatchers. You are always aware, walking here, that you are close to the edge of the world.

That was the start of my obsession. One discovery led to another. As I walked this place again and again, its emptiness—the simplicity of the space, its elemental qualities—became essential to me. I began to notice change, to see how the apparent uniformity of sand, water and sky varied with the effects of wind and rain, the seasons, tidal rhythms. It was impossible, too, to predict what freight of things, manmade and natural, the tide would have brought. My heart would beat faster as I took the last fifty yards of the path through the dunes and out onto the beach. It was as passionate as any love affair, and I’ve been haunted by it ever since.

It all began for me with the Natterjack Toad, and my discovery of its two evocative local nicknames: the 'Bootle Organ' and the 'Birkdale Nightingale'.

When I learnt that the Sefton sand-dunes are one of the natterjack’s last strongholds, I knew I had to go and hear it for myself. Being out in the dunes at night was a revelation—the scale and sheer wildness of the terrain was acutely apparent, now I had only the stars to guide me. I stumbled up and down hill, sensing every change in the texture of the ground beneath me—dry

Jean Sprackland Author of Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach (Cape, 2012)

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I N T ROD UCT I ON GHOSTS OF THE RESTLESS SHORE: SPACE, PLACE AND MEMORY OF THE SEFTON COAST MIKE COLLIER An exhibition of new, mixed media by Jake Campbell (poet), Mike Collier (artist), Tim Collier (photographer), Robert Strachan (sound artist) and Sam Wiehl (artist) inspired by walking together along the Sefton Coastal Footpath in the summer of 2014.

‘It is vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves, There is none such. It is the bog in our brain and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream.’ —Henry David Thoreau1

I. Background

locally and members of the public were invited to join us and share their

This collaborative project, organized by WALK, began life as a walk

own experiences. The walk was led by natural historian John Dempsey

(which developed into a ‘walking symposium’) along the Sefton Coastal

and was structured to allow people without cars to participate, so:

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Footpath in 2014. This walk, or event … or performance … was called Walking Through the Sands of Time: A Walk Along the Sefton

• Walk one started at Waterloo Station and

Coastal Footpath, and it was timed to coincide with the showing of

finished at Hightown Station—4.4 miles

the exhibition Walk On: From Richard Long to Janet Cardiff—40

• Walk two started at Hightown Station and

Years of Art Walking at The Atkinson (from 12 April to 9 August

finished at Freshfield Station—4.7 miles

2014) which I co-curated.

• Walk three started at Freshfield Station and

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finished at Ainsdale Station—4.4 miles The Sefton Coastal Footpath is approximately 22.5 miles long and is a

• Walk four started at Ainsdale Station and

recognised ‘National Path’. We completed the walk (or, rather, meander)

finished at the RSPB Centre at Marshside,

from start to finish over 4 days (2 weekends—12/13 & 20/21) in July

Southport; with a minibus to take participants

2014. The walk was supported with funds from The Heritage Lottery

from Weld Road to Marshside (http://www.rspb.

Fund and the Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership. It was advertised

org.uk/reserves/guide/m/marshside/)—4.7 miles.

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Robert Strachan, sound recording on the Sefton Coast, July 2014.

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Over thirty people joined us on the walk. Tim Collier passed on some of his photographic expertise to participants who had brought their own cameras. Sound artist Robert Strachan was happy to let people listen to the soundscapes on the walk through headphones using his audio equipment and poet Jake Campbell talked to people about how he fashions words and poems, and at a number of points on the walk he read some of his poems about the coast. The participants who walked with us were encouraged to interpret their experiences creatively.

II. About the Sefton Coast From the mouth of the River Mersey to the Ribble estuary stretches England’s largest undeveloped dune system—the Sefton Coast. This coast has a fascinating history, containing a National Nature Reserve, many Sites of Special Scientific Interest and is a European Special Protection Area because of the importance of its natural heritage. The landscape comprises ‘endless’ beaches, coastal marshes, pine woods,

Figure 1, the German barque Star of Hope was caught in a Force 10 gale off the Sefton Coast in 1883.

heaths and tidal estuaries, which permeate the perception of all of those that visit.

It is landscape alive with special wildlife and its coastal waters are home

The Sefton Coast’s special flora and fauna comprises nationally scarce

to famous shipwrecks like the ‘Star of Hope’ (figure 1), and the loss of

examples and its big skies offer views across the Irish Sea, to North

life associated with these wrecks prompted the building of Britain’s

Wales’ distant promontories and mountain peaks and, to the north,

first lifeboat station at Formby Point, in 1775. This coast also has a long

Blackpool and the summits of the southern Lake District. It is a wind-

and rich history of leisure and tourism, dating back to the mid-1800s

blown land that is constantly in motion; its stories are fixed in history

and is littered with the remnants of buildings and operational sites

and the artists in Ghosts of the Restless Shore have explored not just the

from the First and Second World Wars. This history is explained in

sands of time, but the sand beneath their feet; passing literally, and

more detail in Stephen Whittle’s essay in this publication (page 22).

figuratively, on their way through Sefton’s history, ‘step by step’.

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III. The Phenomenological Walk

show what is there from the perspective of the

Much of the work I make myself (and with WALK) is based around

flesh, from embodied experiences. Such a walk

my practice of walking or, more properly, meandering, with a group

is utterly different from an ordinary walk in

of people, often led by a natural historian. Moving slowly (or

space-time since it involves temporal expansion.

meandering) through an environment affects our experience in ways

Attempting to write (or give sound/vision) to such

that are not immediately apparent. It allows the walker time to stop

a walk involves pausing, looking around, sensing

whenever and wherever they find something interesting to explore,

from different perspectives along the route, going

and time to respond to the weather patterns and soundscapes of an

back as well as forward. There is always sensory

environment. For me, the relationship between walking and artistic

overload and decisions have to be taken with

practice is a complex one, involving collaboration, participation and

regards to what appears to be significant. Such a

conversational exchange. Meandering in a group seems to encourage

walk takes time and is far from spontaneous. It is an

discussion that ‘meanders’ across natural history, social history,

analytical walk that selects from experiences often

politics and philosophy. Each walk is different; sometimes (if along

gathered at different times to create the narrative.

the same route) repeatable, but never replicable; the vagaries of

The process of walking is one in which a person

weather, group dynamic and seasonal patterns ensuring this. These

perceives in order to know. To know is to know

shared experiences with fellow walkers generate new knowledge, new

how to perceive and bodily perception is a form

ways of experiencing the world.

of cultural knowledge. As well as describing some perceptual experiences it must inevitably filter out

The walks I organize through WALK are, of course, different to a Sunday

or ignore others.4

afternoon stroll that we may take with our family (though no more or less important—just different). This particular walk along the Sefton

Robert Strachan writes about how, during the walk along the Sefton

Coast involved ‘a gathering together of synaesthetic material and social

Coast (and on subsequent visits) ‘the environment itself affords

sensory experiences as they unfold in the sequence and duration of the

different levels of engagement, different modes of exploring the world

walk’. It attempted to:

around us. The suspension of everyday modes of time and attention lead us to look closely, to be engulfed in a constant sonic environment that suspends linearity or to exercise selective attention in the way we

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Figures 2 to 8, Walking Through the Sands of Time— a walk along the Sefton Coast with the artists and members of the public in July 2014.

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John Dempsey explaining the origins of the submerged forest at Hightown during Walking Through the Sands of Time, July 2014.

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listen to the environment’ (figure 4). He ends his essay by asserting that ‘our responses to landscape, the imaginative end creative turns that we take from it, are always refracted through the prism of contemporary culture’.

Tim Collier talks about how layered memories of the Sefton Coast have built up from each of his walks along the coast over the period of his life, often ‘separated by prolonged periods of real time, yet stacked up together to produce a seamless continuity of imagined time’.

John Dempsey not only walks the coast, he regularly (like the poet John Clare) lowers himself to the ground—crawling though the sand and

Figure 9 Petalwort

mud to properly experience the coast and its teeming life: I crawl around on my hands and knees, dampness and cold ebbing into my joints, in search of Petalwort on cold winter days, just as collectors driven by a fascination for mosses did in Victorian times.

The search for this tiny lower plant is all engrossing, a planet shrunk to a few millimetres of dune earth, a world in miniature, yet you can feel the hunt still

Figure 10 Poet Jake Campbell making notes, Sefton Coast, July 2014.

developing into a towering obsession. (Figure 9)

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And Jake Campbell writes that he experienced the walk as ‘a gathering—

at Formby, you can literally step back several thousand years into the

of names, of words, of artefacts. New names and words, rolled on the

lives of nomadic hunter-gatherers, whose footprints, when the tide

tongue, tested out in whispers, cross-referred to maps and articles.

cares to reveal them, can be seen hollowed into the sediment’.

New words which find shape and form, become real, on the beach’ (figure 10).

When writing or thinking about place, we often use the term landscape—the landscape of the Sefton Coast, for instance. However, it is just as relevant to talk about the soundscape of the Sefton Coast. ‘The

IV. Space, Place and Memory

word soundscape first appeared in our language towards the end of the

This project is ABOUT a place. The Sefton Coast. Curator Stephen

last century … The term is credited to Murray Schaffer, who embraced

Whittle’s essay provides an excellent background to the subsequent

and studied the sounds of various habitats. Schafer was searching for

chapters in this book, defining the historical and geographical

ways to frame the experience of sound in new, nonvisual contexts’.5 The

significance of the Sefton Coast in history. Each of the artists/

work of Strachan in this exhibition extends this idea of a particular

writers in this volume describe a different set of relationships to, and

soundscape in relation to place.

understanding of, this special place. Strachan describes it ‘as a liminal, or in-between space … a transitional point between the known and

Each of the artists/writers here explores how in, and through place,

unknown, a place between danger and safety, between everyday

the world ‘presents’ itself, in vision, sound, touch or smell. ‘The way

settlement and wilderness, in which its natural cycles work as both

in which human identity might be tied to place is … merely indicative

an obscuring and revealing force’. For Dempsey, the coast is constantly

of the fundamental character of our engagement with the world—of

changing, ‘The notion of constant movement, of change and transit is

all our encounters with persons and things—as always taking place in

inescapable here—tens of thousands of wading birds move along the

place.’6 Malpas (1999) writes that ‘The notion that there is an intimate

coast in spring and autumn, stopping off as we would at a motorway

connection between person and place, and so also between self and

service station to fuel up before northward journeys to the arctic—or

environing world, is … neither a peculiar idiosyncrasy to be found in

southbound migrations to African shores in autumn resume.’ Collier

works of literature nor a leftover from pre-modern societies—nor does

(Tim) writes about finding himself ‘drawn to the coast, always preferring

it seem likely to be a merely contingent feature of human psychology.

winter when the vast horizons seem endless and you can spend all day

There is good reason to suppose that the human relationship to place

without coming across a soul’. And Campbell writes that ‘on the beach

is a fundamental structure in what makes possible the sort of life

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that is characteristically human.’7 A further issue raised by Campbell

that ‘to have a sense of one’s self, whether in terms of one’s culture

foregrounds the fact that he is only recently acquainted with the Sefton

or one’s person, is, in a sense, … to have a sense of [space]’.11 All of

Coast, having been born and lived in the North East of England for

the writers/artists in this publication make this link between inner

much of his life. Campbell uses this sense of dislocation to forensically

and outer space (as well as between the micro and macro elements of

and poetically explore areas of commonality and difference in an

the world they perceive) either directly or indirectly, especially as they

approach that clearly sharpens his sense and sensual experience of

reflect on the role memory plays in defining a sense of place and space.

place. Turning again to Malpas, we understand that ‘in the emphasis on the idea of being ‘beyond’ or out of one’s knowledge’ we find a sense

Memory clearly plays a crucial role in our understanding of space and

of knowledge that ties knowledge closely to a familiar location’. This

place, and Campbell, Collier, Strachan and Dempsey explore this in

feeling of knowledge experienced beyond knowledge is also shared

different ways. Each describes a kind of layering of memories (short

by Collier (Tim) as he suggests in his essay that, although he still

or long term) that together ‘construct’ as sense of space and place. As

regards the Sefton Coast as his home, he hasn’t lived there for over

Malpas further explains ‘we understand a particular space through

thirty years, and his experiences of the area, when he returns (which

being able to grasp the sorts of narratives of action that are possible

he does regularly), are significantly sharpened by this geographical and

within that space; we understand a place and a landscape [soundscape]

temporal distance.

through the historical and personal narratives that are marked out

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within it and give that place a particular unity and establish a particular And what of the term ‘space’ in the title of the show? Space, as defined

set or possibilities within it’.12

here, describes our sensual and emotional relationship to a geographical area. It is defined by our embodied experience of the world. It is a space for movement (hence the focus on walking in this project) and activity.

V. Afterword

It describes our interaction with a place as we move through the world

The work in this exhibition and catalogue has developed over a period

and experience it with all our senses. However, there are two kinds of

of twelve months. Following the walk along the Sefton Coast in 2014,

space, says Bachelard ‘intimate space and exterior space’ —and these

the artists and Dempsey stayed in touch with each other and continued

‘kinds of space’ keep encouraging and nourishing each other ‘as it were,

to meet. A subsequent visit to see Geraldine Reid, Head of the Botany

in their growth’. As Rilke said ‘Through every human being, unique

Department at the World Museum in Liverpool, was crucial in

space, intimate space, opens up to the world’. And Malpas suggests

bringing together many of our thoughts surrounding the relationship

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Mussel wreck, between Ainsdale and Freshfield, 2015.

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between art and science, and indeed of our place within the world.

5. Krause, B. (2012) The Great Animal Orchestra. London: Profile Books, pp.26-7.

It is my own personal experience that many of the scientists (mostly natural historians) I have walked and worked with over the years

6. Malpas, J. E. (1999) Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.15.

have an innate, embodied engagement with the world. They collect

7. Ibid, p.13.

data, of course, but their enthusiasm for, and understanding of, their

8. Ibid, p.189.

environment is emotional and passionate. They perceive the world,

9. Bachelard, G. (2014) The Poetics of Space. New York: Penguin Books, p. 218.

I think, in a fundamentally phenomenological way. A questioning of

10. Ibid.

the relationship between art and science, technology and the earth,

11. Malpas, J. E. (1999) Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.188.

runs throughout this publication, and the exhibition has been tightly hung, referencing the way natural history collections are presented. I

12. Ibid.

am indebted to Reid for her essay on diatoms—a subject that has been explored by all of the artists in this exhibition and book—and a further result of this dialogue was the development of a number of collaborative works/projects (between the Colliers, Reid and Campbell for instance, as well as between Wiehl and Strachan) and a continuing exchange of information and further forays into the dunes with Dempsey. This has been a richly rewarding set of collaborations which will continue into the future and develop in new directions especially through our website, www.ghosts–of–the–restless–shore.co.uk.

Endnotes 1. Schama, S. (1996) Landscape and Memory. London: Fontana Press, p.578.

2. WALK (Walking. Art, Landskip and Knowledge) is a research centre at the University of Sunderland that explores how we creatively experience the world as we walk through it.

3. The title for the project was inspired by Phil Smith’s excellent book, The Sands of Time: An Introduction to the Sand Dunes of the Sefton Coast. (2009). Stroud: Amberley Publishing.

Figure 11, symposium at the offices of the Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership.

From left to right: Jane Brown; Stephen Whittle; Mike Collier; John Dempsey; Jake Campbell; Tim Collier; Robert Strachan. April 2015.

4. Tilley, C. (2012) ‘Walking the Past in the Present’ in Árnason, A; Ellison, N; Vergunst, J and Whitehouse, A (eds) Landscapes Beyond Land. Oxford: Berghahn Books, p.29.

Opposite: figures 12 to 15, the artists visit Dr. Geraldine Reid, Head of Botany at the World Museum, Liverpool in April 2015.

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T HE PUR SUI T OF LEI SU R E STEPHEN WHITTLE

The Sefton coast has been a place of recreation and recuperation since

it ever was, and nature is only held in check by the constant operation

the late eighteenth century, attracting holiday-makers, convalescents,

of pumping stations, the maintenance of a complex system of drainage

sportsmen and naturalists. Previously the twenty-mile stretch of

channels and constant efforts to keep both the sand dunes and the

marginal land between the Mersey and the Ribble was little valued and

encroaching sea in check.

only thinly populated. High sand dunes bounded the coast to the west and further inland mossy wetlands made travel difficult and sometimes

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the growth of major

dangerous. The marshes around Martin Mere Lake, stretching from east

industrial centres like Preston, Wigan and Liverpool, the largely

to west, presented another major hazard and obstruction to travellers,

undeveloped sands and mosses of the Sefton coast became increasingly

famously parting ‘many a man and his mare’.

attractive as places of retreat and recreation. With Europe largely out of bounds during the Napoleonic wars, the British seaside had

Although Sefton has only existed as a borough since 1974, the area that

become a fashionable holiday destination for the aristocracy. The

it encompasses, broadly speaking from Southport to Bootle, has always

growing urban middle-class quickly followed suit, and sleepy little

been defined by its natural boundaries. Sefton’s topography has closely

coastal villages like Bootle and Crosby found themselves overrun by

dictated its history, though that may not be so obvious today, now that

holiday-makers, many of them gripped by the national craze for sea-

most of the wetlands have been drained and precisely ordered in the

bathing (figure 16). They became spa towns and weekend resorts for

service of modern agriculture. Housing developments have also spread

Liverpool’s growing population:

across the borough and where once two or three thousand people lived in scattered settlements, there are now homes for well over a quarter of

the middle classes, and the wealthy shopkeepers,

a million people. Yet Sefton’s coast is as changeable and as dynamic as

have also their Brightons and Margates, in the seavillages of Bootle and Crosby Waterloo.1

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Figure 16, Bootle Foreshore, c.1805 by C. Crawley 23

By 1855 thousands of day-trippers were visiting Bootle Bay, much to

on recently drained farmland near Altcar. Hare-coursing and other

the dismay of contemporary writer Henry Grazebrook:

blood sports were already popular in the area, with the Ridgway and South Lancashire Coursing Clubs meeting regularly in Southport.

myriads of the unwashed from the purlieus of

Other less organised events, such as bull-baiting, wild-fowling, otter

Liverpool, repair to this spot, and at high water

and fox hunts and badger-baiting, were also very popular. Presented

advance boldly into the sea, male and female

as a spectacle for the masses, the Waterloo Cup became a national

promiscuously, each supplied with a square of

institution. It attracted nearly 20,000 visitors a day at the height of its

yellow soap.

popularity, and on one occasion the winner was presented to Queen

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Victoria. Lynn also popularised horse racing in the area, leasing land Bootle’s tourist invasion was relatively short-lived. The lines of bathing

at Aintree from Lord Sefton in 1829 for a flat race meeting known as

huts and fashionable salt-water baths had to give way to the system

the Croxteth Stakes. In 1836 Lynn presented his first steeplechase race.

of docks, warehouses and working-class housing, expanding ever

Known as the Grand National since 1839, it’s now one of the nation’s

outwards from Liverpool. One of the few reminders that Bootle was

premiere sporting events.

once described as ‘the most popular bathing town on the Lancashire coast’3 is the survival of Bath Street in the area later named Waterloo,

In 1847, a Parliamentary Bill was passed for the construction of the

now separated from the sea by Princes Dock. The American author

Liverpool, Crosby and Southport railway. With very few physical

Herman Melville described the dock in 1849 as part of ‘a chain of

obstructions other than sand dunes and the River Alt to negotiate, it

immense fortresses’, separating the land from the sea.

was built in the remarkable time of just three months. In July 1848 the

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locomotive ‘Sefton’ pulled a train from Waterloo to Southport, opening With a growing, tightly-packed urban population and undeveloped

the coast for further development. A connecting line was opened

land close by, it was only a matter of time before someone spotted an

towards Liverpool two years later. The coastal strip of land that had

opportunity for profit. Relatively small, unorganized country leisure

once been described by one of the major landowners as ‘an unprofitable

pursuits were about to become big business.

waste’ was now within easy reach of the industrial towns of Lancashire.

In 1836 William Lynn, a pub landlord at The Waterloo Hotel in

Rather than creating dormitory towns for the working classes of

Liverpool, persuaded the Earl of Sefton to host a hare-coursing event

Liverpool and Preston, the landowners of Sefton hoped that the

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railway would prompt the development of exclusive residential villas,

perfect, creating their first course at Hoylake near Liverpool in 1869.

‘in which the ‘merchant princes’ may spend their leisure hours in some

Members of the Royal Liverpool club at Hoylake then founded the

ease and retirement’. Development was slow and surprisingly cautious

West Lancashire club at Blundellsands in 1873. The game initially

throughout the 1850s and ’60s. It was the spread of a new leisure craze

attracted ridicule, with players characterised as ‘demented Scotchmen

in the 1870s that eventually fuelled the eagerly awaited building boom

playing old man’s hockey’,5 but it thrived among Sefton’s professional

along the coast.

and business communities, with the number of courses running well into double figures by the early twentieth century.

In Links Along the Line, local historian and keen golfer Harry Foster, traced the close connection between the major land-owning families, railway

Today over twenty-five per cent of the surviving dune systems on the

companies and groups of enthusiastic sportsmen who created an

Sefton coast are occupied by golf courses. Only about a third of most

unrivalled series of golf clubs stretching from Liverpool to Southport.

courses are clipped and trimmed into fairways and putting greens, the

Property along the coast was in the hands of very few landowners,

remaining land providing a significant amount of protection for rare

principally the Blundells of Crosby Hall and the Weld-Blundells of Ince

and endangered species. Over two hundred and twenty plant species,

Blundell to the south and the Heskeths and Scarisbricks in the north.

including the Marsh Helleborine, Bee and Pyramidal Orchids, have

All had major share-holdings in the railways, and they were able to

been recorded at West Lancashire golf course,6 while important species

dictate the routes of the railway lines through otherwise unproductive

like Petalwort and rare creatures such as the Natterjack Toads and Sand

sand hills and rabbit warrens. They could also control the size and

Lizard thrive at Royal Birkdale.

nature of housing developments and, with the landowners favouring middle-class villas, conditions were ideal for the creation of numerous

The coming of the railway also meant a dramatic increase in the

golf courses along the line of coastal sand dunes.

number of day-trippers to the coast. Southport had begun to develop as a seaside resort from about 1792, when William Sutton, a pub landlord

Links courses, like the earliest Scottish golf courses at Musselburgh

from Churchtown known as the Old Duke, built a bathing shelter in

and St. Andrews, are found in rough, grassy areas between the land

the sand dunes at South Hawes. Five years later Mrs Walmsley opened a

and the sea. Ideally the soil should be sandy and free-draining so that

guesthouse called ‘Belle Vue’, prompting Sutton to open the South Port

play is possible almost all year round. Scottish businessmen based

Hotel in 1798. The hotel was thought to be so remote from Churchtown

in Liverpool found the conditions along the north-west coast to be

and the journey by donkey cart over the sand dunes so difficult, that the

25

hotel was known as Duke’s Folly. Sutton was very quickly proved right

the Southport Regatta attracted over 5000 visitors. A correspondent to

however as the area began to attract inns, lodging houses, assembly

the Southport Visiter objected that the Regatta was:

rooms and baths over the next decade. Sea bathing was already popular at Churchtown, where the annual ‘Big Bathing Sunday’ fair attracted

a scheme to collect all the rubbish of the country

people from up to twenty miles away, many of them arriving on the

together … which will entirely supersede the

Leeds and Liverpool canal which brought travellers to Scarisbrick, just

intent and meaning of this place of retirement

over four miles away. The quality of the sand was much better suited to

and quietness.9

bathing at South Hawes, or Southport as it was known by 1805. It was further away from the relatively muddy Ribble Estuary and the area

The American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne stayed in Southport with

was repeatedly spoken of as a fashionable resort during the first decade

his family in 1856 and ’57, finding it to be more of a noisy tourist trap

of the nineteenth century.

than a fashionable spa:

By 1848 the imminent arrival of the railway in Southport, bringing

from morning till night, comes a succession of

with it an influx of new residents and day-trippers, was eagerly

organ-grinders, playing interminably under your

anticipated by the town’s shopkeepers and traders. Canal boats and

window; and a man with a bassoon, and a monkey

stagecoaches were about to be superseded, it was said, by a mode of

… and wandering minstrels, with guitar and voice;

transport ‘combining the speed of lightning with the comfort of a

and a highland bagpiper, squealing out a tangled

chair at your own home’. It was a worrying development however for

skein of discord, together with a highland maid

some of the earlier, wealthier residents who resented the intrusion on

who dances a hornpipe; and Punch and Judy; in a

their privacy. At first the attractions of visiting the seaside had been

word, we have specimens of all manner of vagrancy

relatively staid and genteel. They were listed in an 1848 guide to the

that infests England.10

7

town as ‘promenading, riding, sailing, botanising, bathing, shopping and lounging in the bazaars and libraries’,8 with local fishermen

The popularity of the town continued to grow and by 1880 it was

operating the bathing machines, providing donkey rides and boat trips

the third most popular resort in Britain, the class war that had

along the coast (figure 17). Now large-scale special events and activities

characterised its early development continuing to shape its physical

were being organised annually to promote tourism and as early as 1835

layout. J. Ernest Jarratt, Southport’s Town Clerk from 1900 to 1930,

26

Figure 17, Donkey Riding on Southport Sands, 1869, oil on canvas by William Watson II. 27

recorded how, in the 1890s, the hedges surrounding the new Marine

made attractions, adopting the tourist slogan ‘Southport for a Holiday

Park were thickly planted with the intention ‘of hiding from the view

in Wintertime’ (figure 18). Fortunino Matania’s iconic designs for

of the Promenade the very unsightly donkey run and fairground’. The

tourism posters in the late 1920s feature the elegant art deco Garrick

individual fairground attractions were moved to the southern edge of

theatre, a Venetian regatta on the Marine Lake, the newly opened Sea

the Marine Park and eventually brought together as the Pleasureland

Bathing Lake and shopping on Lord Street. The streets of Southport

development in 1922. As the new Town Clerk, Mr Perrins, said in 1933,

also became home to a new breed of wealthy motoring enthusiast at

‘Those who desired the quieter holiday came to Southport’.

the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1903 the Southport Motor

11

12

Club met for the first time outside the Scarisbrick Arms in their We think of the rebranding of towns and resorts as a relatively

experimental vehicles. A circular racecourse was devised taking in the

modern concept but the Sefton coast, and Southport in particular,

Promenade and Lord Street but it eventually proved too disruptive to

has consciously refashioned its identity many times in the last

trade. Racing and speed trials then moved on to the beach at Birkdale

200 years. In the mid-1820s Southport was being described as ‘The

and Ainsdale. Henry Segrave famously broke the world land speed

Montpellier of England’. The French University town was a centre for

record on the beach in 1926, while the marathon 100-mile race in the

advanced medical research and there was a very conscious attempt by

1920s attracted up to 100,000 spectators in its heyday. Motor racing

Southport’s councillors and medical professionals to adopt the identity

on the sands continued to be a major attraction throughout the 1930s

of a health resort, as Margate had done very successfully as early as

with bandleader Billy Cotton winning the 100-mile race in 1937.

1750. By the middle of the nineteenth century Southport was widely known as ‘England’s Seaside Garden City’, because of its many parks,

The gentler pursuits of bird-watching and walking have come back into

gardens, tree-lined avenues and the town’s extensive private gardens.

fashion in recent years with the establishment of nature reserves at

This slogan was still in use on railway posters well into the 1940s and

Marshside, Ainsdale and Freshfield, as well as numerous nature trails

was recently revived along with a new more generic description, ‘The

and coastal walks. The ‘greening’ of Southport beach is regretted by

Classic Resort’.

many as a movement away from the traditional bucket-and-spade image of a seaside resort, though the spread of salt marsh and the formation of

As the sea noticeably retreated from Southport in the 1890s, and the

new dune systems are changes that can be mitigated or adapted to but

beach silted up with sand and sediment dredged from the Ribble and

not effectively controlled. The arrival of Antony Gormley’s sculptural

the Mersey, the Corporation focused on the town itself and man-

installation Another Place at Crosby beach in 2005, one hundred silent,

28

naked figures, set against the backdrop of Bootle docks, the distant Welsh hills, off-shore windmills and passing container ships, offers an eloquent commentary on our continuing relationship with a coastal landscape that we can set a mark upon but never entirely master.

Endnotes 1. Granville, A. B. (1841) The Spas of England and Principal Sea-bathing Places. London: Henry Colburn, p.18.

2. Grazebrook, H. (1855) Lights Along the Line. Liverpool: Edward Howell, p.37.

3. Bailey, F. A. (1955) A History of Southport. Southport: Angus Downie, p.32.

4. Melville, H. (1849) Redburn, His First Voyage. London: Richard Bentley, p.124.

5. Coyne, B. (2008) The West Lancashire Golf Club. Liverpool: Custom Print, p.1.

6. Ibid, p.176.

7. Robinson, F. (1848) A Descriptive History of the Popular Watering-Place of Southport.

London: Arthur Hall & Co, p.49.

8. Ibid, p.43.

9. Bailey, F. A. (1955) A History of Southport. Southport: Angus Downie, p.163.

10. Ibid. p.167.

11. Jarratt, J. E. (1932) Municipal Recollections: Southport 1900 to 1930. London, p.11.

12. Bailey, F. A. (1955) A History of Southport. Southport: Angus Downie, p.171.

Figure 18, Winter’s Day, Lord Street, 1930, watercolour by Fortunino Matania.

29

AT F I R ST I T WA S EA SY JOHN DEMPSEY

At first it was easy.

gales, links start leaping across the synapses … I see the remote massif of St Kilda where these diminutive seabirds breed; I try to imagine what

I’d struggle over autumn dunes, settle down to be buffeted in a north

it must have been like for crews on stricken ships when hurricane-

westerly, then scour the waves for shearwaters, petrels and skuas

force winds turned the bay into a maelstrom in the Victorian era.

through binoculars that first saw action on the racecourses and dog tracks of southern Ireland, before the passing of my Uncle Jim meant

Leach’s Petrels move as gracefully as ice skaters over the crests and

they came to me.

troughs that claimed vessels like the Star of Hope, the Ionic Star and Pegu and, of course, the Mexico and Charles Livingstone.

A small boy looking out on the grey vastness of Liverpool Bay. Perhaps the supreme skill with which true seabirds master the air in Go out. See seabirds. Easy.

even the wildest of conditions is what makes them so alluring—that and their far-flung destinations.

Now it is not so straightforward—the more I learn about the history of the place, the more I find it difficult to look at any element of

From the Bay of Biscay to Tierra Del Fuego they roam the wild seas

the coast in isolation—maritime history, botany, world wars, trade,

outside the breeding season.

habitat damage, ecology, habitat management, pollution, agriculture, conservation, climate change, erosion—they all start merging together.

The romance of a bundle of feathers winging off to the southern Atlantic

I still spend way too long looking at birds, sure, but now when I watch

to wander deserted oceans while we batten down the hatches for a

a Leach’s Petrel sailing through the terrifying swell of raging autumn

northern winter grabbed my attention at eight years of age, as surely

30

Figures 19 to 23, clockwise from top left: Asparagus Beetle; Sea Holly; Yellow Horned-poppy; Ionic Star—shipwreck, Formby, Autumn Fungi. All photos by John Dempsey.

31

as the thought of the trade routes and the potential of ‘destination

calls are ingrained in the subconscious of anyone who has lived here

anywhere’ did when I learnt more about the incredible maritime

for any length of time.

history of Liverpool Bay. They spend their days commuting from the safety of roosting sites out I’ve always been a sucker for a horizon, or to be more accurate, what

on the Alt and Ribble estuaries, where no fox can catch them unawares

lies beyond it.

on the open sand and mud, to the rich peaty fields of the Lancashire mosslands that surround the dune system.

Cotton traders and whalers. Petrels and Shearweaters. The same.

But they’ll still go back to Iceland to breed, leaving a vacuum in grey The notion of constant movement, of change and transit is inescapable

skies that is filled each spring with Swallows and Swifts, albeit in

here—tens of thousands of wading birds move along the coast in spring

numbers that diminish each year.

and autumn, stopping off as we would at a motorway service station to fuel up before northward journeys to the arctic—or southbound

Pink-footed Geese. Shrimping families ‘putting’ the estuary. The same.

migrations to African shores in autumn resume.

It’s impossible to walk on the coast, to admire the flora and fauna, and Their names are as marvellous as their journeys: Sanderling, Knot, Bar

not divert into other histories.

Tailed Godwit, Dunlin, Turnstone.

They crowd in like parallel universes.

As we watch the waders, tens of thousands of tonnes of shipping cargo slip out of Liverpool Bay behind them, heading to destinations as

I crawl around on my hands and knees, dampness and cold ebbing into

distant and romantic as any migration goal.

my joints, in search of Petalwort on cold winter days, just as collectors driven by a fascination for mosses did in Victorian times.

Orchids sprout and bloom, are admired and photographed, then wither all too quickly for another year.

The search for this tiny lower plant is all-engrossing, a planet shrunk to a few millimetres of dune earth, a world in miniature, yet you can

Pink-footed Geese darken October skies in staggering numbers—their

feel the hunt still developing into a towering obsession.

32

Literary giant Nathaniel Hawthorne strode the same dunes during

With the exception of one or two ongoing concerns, all that remains

his time as American consul in Liverpool, and maybe steered Herman

of the area’s famous asparagus farms are furrows masked by a carpet of

Melville through pipe smoke and advice to the shores of genius that lie

Dewberry and Bird's-foot Trefoil.

in Moby Dick, who knows?

The wild flowers draw you in as the days lengthen—dune slacks full Some experts suggest Hawthorne hated his time here.

to bursting with a dizzying array of species, some extremely rare, yet flourishing in this incredible eco-system.

If true, that’s something I could never let pass … how can the dunes and sands not grab you? How can you not be impressed by the scale of the

Trying to put a name to them all is overwhelming—their life stories

place, the isolation that seems to actively resist permanent structures?

luring you off again into other spheres.

The remains of a few shipwrecks, like the skeletons of beached dinosaurs, are all that seem to last for any length of time on the sands.

But seeing them in flower afresh each year is like meeting up with old friends.

La Brea-on-Sea. Evening Primrose trumpets yellow everywhere in the dunes from Most have amazing stories—the tale of the Pegu’s demise rivals Whisky

midsummer into late autumn, yet its origins are in the New World—

Galore—but there are those we know nothing about too—what brought

seeds came over in ballast on ships from North America.

the ‘Mystery wreck’ and the ‘Mussel wreck’ to their fates, I wonder?

American GIs arriving in the north-west in WW2. Evening Primrose.

Boardwalks are consumed by shifting dunes, and cafes tumbled onto

The same.

the shore as other dunes disappeared beneath them.

Grass of Parnassus and Round-leaved Wintergreen can sometimes The pier at Southport still juts out like a challenge into the southern

bloom in such numbers that convincing visitors of their rarity is a

channels of the Ribble estuary, defiantly resisting the vibrant

hard task, but the exotic nature of our orchid species need no such hard

saltmarsh's attempts to maroon it in a sea of green … for now at least.

sell, they are all beautiful.

33

34

John Dempsey, sea-watching at Ainsdale, 2015.

35

With the summer days come our insects—Forester moths, Northern

New pools are created when funds allow, and rangers beg visitors not

Dune Tiger Beetles, Dark Green Fritillaries, Graylings and the truly

to disturb breeding ponds by keeping dogs and curious youngsters out

bizarre Sandhill Rustic moth, which spends most of its time under the

of the water, but each year breeding success is down to getting the

sand, apart from a few warm August nights.

right amount of rain and sufficient high temperatures to warm the shallow waters these little amphibians depend on.

They are as tied to specific plants and habitats on the coast as the more famous residents like Natterjack Toads, Sand Lizards and Red Squirrels.

It is a tough existence in a landscape that changes constantly thanks to the wind and tide.

These are the ones everyone wants to see. Some are easy, others not.

They cling on like Britain’s first lifeboat station, launched in 1774, did A chorus of Natterjacks—‘Birkdale Nightingales’ or ‘Bootle Organs’,

at Formby Point before the coast shape-shifted and made it redundant.

depending on your neighbourhood loyalties, is almost primeval on a

Natterjack Toads. Watchers in the dunes. The same.

mild and cloudy spring night.

The elements are forever remoulding the outline of the coast—no two It is certainly eerie.

sets of aerial photographs taken for vital monitoring work are ever alike; saltation, erosion and accretion see to that.

The sound is as inseparable from this coast as the Marram Grass that binds the dunes, or the skittering trails left behind by startled Sand

No respecter of age, the coast sacrifices prehistoric footprints trapped

Lizards on hot May mornings.

for thousands of years in sediment beds to the wind and tide as surely as the seasons turn.

To lose the chorus would be unthinkable.

We stand beside tracks left by hunter-gatherers in the Mesolithic and Like all pioneer species they rely on just the right depth of warm

feel the giddying swirl of time travel as archaeologists interpret gait

shallow water to spawn in—too much rain and the pools are too deep

and stature.

for these small toads, too little and the pools dry up before Natterjack spawn can metamorphosise into tiny toadlets.

36

Closer examination of these sediment layers may reveal the tracks of Cranes, Red Deer or the mighty Aurochs, but the wind and tide will still break up the beds at some point.

The only record of what was there is carefully documented and GPSed, frozen in photographs captured by those unable to ignore these astonishing windows into prehistory.

At first it was easy.

Blue-tailed Damselfly 37

38

39

High tide at the mouth of the River Alt. The ‘beach’ was created out of rubble from the Liverpool blitz of the 1940s to act as erosion protection. Liverpool was the most heavily bombed city after London during the Second World War.

Figures 24 and 25. Mike Collier (aged 10) and Tim Collier (aged 6) in 1964 on the Sefton Coast.

40

‘ME MORY IS T HE DI A RY W E A LL CA R RY RO U N D WI TH U S ’ TIM COLLIER ‘And if a child’s vision of nature can already be loaded with complicating memories, myths, and meanings, how much more elaborately is the frame through which our adult eyes survey the landscape. For although we are accustomed to separate nature and human perception into two realms, they are, in fact, indivisible. Before it can ever be a repose for the senses, landscape is the work of the mind.

Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.’—Simon Schama1

I’m from these parts. As I write this, however, I’m over 130 miles away

and my two brothers spent many afternoons walking along Fisherman’s

as the crow flies and many more by road from the Sefton Coast. I now

Path, following the pinewoods through Massam’s Slack and onto the

live and work in South Wales, having left Liverpool nearly forty years

shore between Freshfield and Ainsdale. Mum would have her Illustrations

ago to follow a career in photography.

of the British Flora by W. H. Fitch and W. G. Smith in tandem with the Handbook of the British Flora by George Bentham and Sir J. D. Hooker

It’s a place that holds many memories and has very much shaped who

(she would hand-colour the illustrations and date them in the book)

I am. With family ties close to the coast in Crosby I’ve continued a

and dad, his 35mm Ilford Sportsman camera. Mike, Phil and I would

distant yet powerful relationship with the twenty or so miles that take

have open spaces and places to explore as well as things to collect, Mike

you from Gormley’s Another Place at Waterloo to the wild open reaches

with his frogs and toads (Natterjacks among them, it was OK fifty years

of the salt marshes of Southport. Each time I visit family, I find myself

ago!), Phil and I anything that might compete with an older brother.

drawn to the coast, always preferring winter when the vast horizons seem endless and you can spend all day without coming across a soul.

Memories are created out of such experiences and shaped by time. They are reinforced, embellished, never quite forgotten and always building,

Behind these expansive tracts of sand lie the largest dune system in

one upon another; layers of memories.

England; a great playground for a young family. Together mum and dad

41

I was about ten, adventurous, a little headstrong and far too sure of

There are physical reactions to memories and mine of that day, some

myself. More dangerously, I was old enough to believe I could explore,

forty-seven years ago, is deeply articulated in my response to the dunes

yet be safe. In that dune system, paths are everywhere and to a raw

and pinewoods today. It shapes my sense of the present and I feel a

ten-year-old the landscape was huge and identical whichever way you

deep sense of unease as I try to navigate alone through the lowland

looked; at ten who wants a path anyway? Even today finding a spot you

dune heath, woodland and shrub that make up this wild, expansive

earmarked for revisiting at a later date is unusually difficult. So I got

landscape. It is real and palpable and any present relationship with a

lost, really lost, hopelessly lost, lost for a full day—and at ten that’s an

place that you have known before cannot and does not exist without

eternity (figure 27).

memories.

Exploring takes you beyond safety and is a close relative to being lost.

Layered memories of the Sefton Coast have built up from each of my

Henry David Thoreau in Walden states,

visits over the period of my life, often lately separated by prolonged periods of real time, yet stacked up together to produce a seamless

It is surprising and memorable as well as valuable

continuity of imagined time.

to be lost in the woods anytime.

2

42

Taking home an oiled Guillemot from the Alt Estuary, attempting to

Sefton Coast; pick up the aroma of the sweetness of the pinewoods and

clean it up with soft detergent and feeding it fish of various types;

feel the change underfoot as I move across the bomb rubble (tipped

stroking a windblown and exhausted Little Stint by the boat yard

to act as erosion protection), onto firmer sand and then sinking mud

at Hightown; ringing that sage of birding in the north-west, Eric

and out towards the incoming tide at Burbo Bank; hear the ‘wink

Hardy, on coming across a Black Tern and Spoonbill, then seeing them

wink’ of individual Pink-feet on a still, frozen early morning and the

reported in his column in the Liverpool Daily Post; being shat upon by

undercurrent of low drumming conversation as they amass in the

over 5,000 Pink-footed Geese whilst on my bike birdwatching around

feeding fields behind the sand banks that provide a safe haven for

the Flea Moss lanes; more recently seeing my first Great-white Egret

their nightly roosts; the lower pitched ‘knut’ of tightly packed feeding

coming into roost at the marina in Southport along with over forty

Knot which flock together with Black and Bar-tailed Godwits, Dunlin,

Little Egrets on a cold February evening. These are more than memories

Sanderling, Grey and Ringed Plover and the odd migratory surprise;

and, like being lost in the dunes, they are perceptible in who I am today.

wind-rush through Marram; gun fire from the firing range at Great Altcar; the baleful ‘clink clink’ of the folded mainsail against the mast

From my studio in South Wales I can taste the salt in the sea air of the

supports of the boats anchored in the River Alt.

Figure 27, Pinewoods, Freshfield.

43

44

The visual recollection for me as a photographer and artist is perhaps a little more complex. As with all the other senses, the visual is with me all the time, not as single images (of which I have thousands of this part of the coast), but rather as a visual symphony born of all the encounters with the coast over the years, some with a camera and others without.

Storms, fog, wind, rain, baking hot uncomfortable days, days when even the sea at Southport froze; spring and neap tides, birds photographed or just seen, lists made, sunrises, sunsets, night forays, subtle shifts of light over short stretches of time and profound changes of the shape of the restless shore over longer periods of time.

Figure 28, human and animal footprints can be found in the silt bands on the shore. Not fossils, but hardened mud-baked dry and subsequently covered by shifting sand, they reveal themselves only to be weathered and broken down in a matter of days; a transitory glimpse of life thousands of years ago.

All these come together to form a fragmented yet still coherent memory that remains tangible and as Miss Prism in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ says, in replying to Cecily on keeping a diary,

Yet further strata accrue through more meditative moments. Simply

Memory, my Dear Cecily, is the diary that we all

sitting quietly as the day unfolds, alone, watching and waiting for

carry round with us.3

whatever might present itself; standing next to prehistoric footprints of deer and more astonishingly our own ancestry, revealed momentarily

My ‘diary’ includes both written pages, physical images (contacts,

as the shifting sands give glimpses of a landscape inhabited by hunter-

both analogue and digital) along with layers of memories. The images

gatherers some 7,000 years ago (figure 28); wondering how so many

themselves are approximations of moments but are mute without

wrecks have gone to ground on a seemingly benign coast, no jagged

this layered context and to anyone other than myself and perhaps

rocks here; walking gingerly through stumps of ancient forests at low

my closest family, mean very little. They are only ‘aide memoires’ and

tide, lying low with them to get a new sense of perspective as they rise,

nothing more.

mountain-like, from the silt banks.

Opposite page: tightly packed Knott at Southport beach.

45

There is, however, a curious relationship that exists between the

Later in the same essay he goes on to state that,

photograph and memory. They are often linked too closely together and must be understood within the broader context that one, photography,

a photograph remains surrounded by the meaning

has a definable history, a beginning so to speak and the other, memory,

from which it was severed. A mechanical device,

is intrinsically something of what makes us human, cognitive beings.

the camera has been used as an instrument to

I have a visual diary of contacts (small thumbnail images of every

contribute to a living memory. The photograph is a

photograph I’ve ever taken) going back forty years and can chart my

memento from a life being lived.5

life from seventeen to the present day through images. They spark memories but never supplant them. Memories are private, born of so

Memento in this sense is to be taken as meaning a keepsake or souvenir

much more than an image.

and nothing more. In its earliest use in language the word memento actually meant ‘something that serves to warn’ and it may be better to

Any photograph that I’ve ever taken is an encounter and experience

see the photograph in this way rather than as something that defines

committed to film or the digital file, but without me, it is as nothing;

to us the moment recorded.

context is so important to understanding. John Berger, in his seminal I remember without photographs too; we all do, and did so before the

essay Uses of Photography—For Susan Sontag, says:

invention of photography. The oiled Guillemot, the exhausted Little Yet, unlike memory, photographs do not in

Stint and 5,000 geese just above me were not committed to film, but

themselves

offer

remain deeply etched on my memory. I’m currently working on a series

appearances—with all the credibility and gravity

of recordings with my mum, who has just turned ninety this year. We

we normally lend to appearances—prised away

lost a box of old family photographs during a house move in the early

from their meaning. Meaning is the result of

80s. It hurt mum then and continues to do so now, and I would have

understanding functions. “And functioning takes

loved to have seen a photograph or two of my great-grandparents. Yet

place in time, and must be explained in time. Only

in talking with mum, we have recalled so much of her early days and

that which narrates can make us understand.”

of the formative years of my brothers and me growing up in Liverpool;

Photographs in themselves do not narrate.

of days out at Freshfield and Formby. We haven’t needed images, just

preserve

meaning.

They

4

time; time that takes you on a trawl through the recesses of the mind.

46

Figure 29, Tim Collier, Football and Pink-footed Geese, 2015, produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

Maybe photographs strip us of this deeper connection with the past.

and goals remembered between ninety minutes from 3.00pm to 4.45pm

We become lazy—‘we have the photographs’.

on a Saturday (all games kicked off at the same time back then, free of the commercial pressure from television); of days out birdwatching and

As a seventeen-year-old my life revolved around watching Liverpool

seeing, for my first time, the many birds encountered along the coast,

Football Club, playing for the school team and birdwatching. I have

waders, terns, warblers and many more. The photograph I took on that

the written diaries of the bird outings from those early years; the

recent visit back home of the geese and the goalpost remains mute

birdwatching trips were often taken on my bike at weekends or before

without the additional artefacts and recollections; in short without a

and after school. I have the football programmes of the matches I went to

layered context it means very little (figure 29).

see at Anfield. These physical artefacts are as strong as any photographs and when, on a recent trip to Liverpool, I passed by my old school playing

Alongside my own unique history of this personal relationship to the

fields, which border the Lancashire mosses, and saw a sizeable flock of

coast, memories and photographic contacts, comes a shared heritage

Pink-footed Geese in front of the goal posts I used to stand between

and knowledge gained through reading, conversations and guided

(I like to think I was a half-decent goalkeeper in those far off days!),

walks. Phil Smith’s definitive The Sands of Time,6 Jean Sprackland’s

memories flooded back. Teams and school mates I played with; games

Strands7 and David Bryant’s In the footsteps of Eric Hardy;8 conversations

47

48

with Geraldine Reid, Head of Botany at the World Museum in Liverpool,

itself. It can and does, however, function on another level outside of

about diatoms (something I was shamefully unaware of); guided walks

this relationship.

and days out with John Dempsey, Project Officer for the Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership, who has a deeply infectious way of sharing his

I photograph because it is a language through which I can best

immense knowledge of the natural, cultural and social history of the

articulate and understand the link between the ‘natural’ world and

area; working collaboratively with the other artists involved in Ghosts

myself. It reinforces a deeper connection that exists between ‘natural

of the Restless Shore and particularly with my brother Mike, with whom I

form’ and my inner self. I need open spaces, and the vastness of the

have a unique shared history. All these encounters provide a context of

people-less coastal reaches here afford that link. Landscapes such as

understanding within which I produce my own work.

those encountered on the Sefton Coast provide me with something called ‘equivalents’, the term coined by the pioneering American

Time is the determining link between all these layers. It is continuous

photographer Alfred Stieglitz in the 1920s to express his inner

but also curiously held. The volatile landscape of the dunes and coast

thoughts, emotions and states of mind:

are forever changing, daily after huge storms and more slowly over decades as a noticeable creep of erosion and accretion becomes apparent.

In all the photographs he had taken since the

The sands of the restless shore continue to reveal and conceal. Bird

war, but most especially in his extended portrait

populations change. In the 70s to have glimpsed an Avocet anywhere in

of O’Keeffe, Stieglitz attempted to give form to

Britain would have been a special moment; now they breed in healthy

the emotions he experienced, emotions which, it

numbers at RSPB Marshside, Southport (figure 30). The disappearance

seemed to him, rebounded from the objects of his

of natural habitat and the worrying phenomenon of climate change

rapt attention. The intellect was not involved in

are clear to see and with this comes a real threat to the native flora and

this circuit of feeling; what was required was rather

fauna. Nothing stays still; layers of time.

intuition and the free play of the unconscious until the artist had perfect focus on the substance of his

This layered framework of context and understanding underpins much

picture and on the actuality of the moment. “What

of my work in Ghosts of the Restless Shore but can seem to suggest that

is of greatest importance,” Stieglitz said, “is to hold

the taking of a photograph is always a purely rational encounter, with

a moment, to record something so completely that

little intuition or emotion and built solely upon a dependence beyond

all who see (the picture) will relive an equivalent of what has been expressed”.9

Figure 30, Avocets during the breeding season at RSPB Marshside, north of Southport.

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Figure 31, Warblers of the Sefton Coast From left to right: Sedge Warbler; Grasshopper Warbler; Whitethroat

It may be a grand aim, but one with which I’ve always felt a strong

further problem about how such images are received. There should be

affinity and this idea has been central to much of my work throughout

no need to explain; the work has, in this context, grown from within

my life and continues to be so. The extension of this natural sense of

you. Yet there is a call for words to justify and describe what you have

equivalence has been further explored by a shift in my work about ten

photographed. It must be understood, however, that photography is a

years ago from not only photographing the ‘natural landscape’ but by

language in its own right. This dilemma is succinctly put by Robert

moving more and more into imaging flora and fauna (figures 31 to 32).

Adams in his book, Why People Photograph:

It felt a natural process and working on Ghosts of the Restless Shore has brought much of the philosophy of my image-making together.

The main reason that artists don’t willingly describe or explain what they produce is, however, that the

Working intuitively and away from the intellect also highlights a

minute they do so they’ve admitted failure. Words

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Figure 32, Waders of the Sefton Coast From left to right: Black-tailed Godwit; Grey Plover; Redshank.

are proof that the vision they had is not, in the opinion of some at least, fully there in the picture.

the landscape (a soundscape) when listening through a good quality

Characterising in words what they thought they’d

set of headphones and a decent recording device. Walking through the

shown is an acknowledgement that the photograph

dunes with my Zoom H1 recorder and noise-cancelling headphones

is unclear - that it is not art.

was a revelation; micro and macro sounds, bird song and the hum of

10

low-lying insects—and always the sea, near and far. The camera does Lastly and central to why I use a camera is the fact that without it I

the same visually for me, amplifying and illuminating the moment.

see less clearly. There is an argument that runs along the lines that the camera actually gets in the way of experiencing any given moment. It

Without it, I simply feel lost.

is seen as a filter that stops primary engagement; just experience the Endnotes 1. Schama, S. (1996) Landscape and Memory. London: Fontana Press, p.6.

moment. For myself, I see the camera more like a filter that clarifies and intensifies. It’s a bit like experiencing heightened sound within

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2. Thoreau, H. D. (1854) Walden or Life in the Woods. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

3. Wilde, O. (1898) The Importance of Being Earnest. London: Leonard Smithers.

4. Berger, J. (2013) Understanding a Photograph. Edited by Geoff Dyer. New York: Aperture.

5. Ibid.

6. Smith, P. H. (2009) The Sands of Time: An Introduction to the Sand Dunes of the Sefton Coast.

Stroud: Amberley Publishing.

7. Sprackland, J. (2012) Strands—A year of discoveries on the beach. London: Jonathan Cape.

8. Bryant, D. (ed). (2008) In the Footsteps of Eric Hardy. Southport: Hobby Publications.

9. Hambourg, M. M., Phillips, C. (1989) The New Vision: Photography Between the World Wars, Ford Motor Company Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Yale University Press.

10. Adams, R. (1994) Why People Photograph. New York: Aperture.

Figure 33, Tim & Mike Collier and Jake Campbell Jellyfish, Bird Sound and Latin Names (Inspired by Diatoms), 2015 Archival digital print on 310 gsm HahnemĂźhle photo paper Two individual pieces; total size 200 x 130 cm Produced in collaboration with SleepVisual and EYELEVEL Creative This piece grew organically and was inspired by a visit in April 2015 to the Botany Department in the World Museum, Liverpool, taken by the Colliers, Campbell and Strachan. The repeated visual forms of the two pieces (acknowledging the presentation of the diatoms they saw there) bring together both micro and macro elements of natural history that are found on the Sefton Coast.

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In 2015, the artists in this exhibition visited Dr. Geraldine Reid in the Botany Department of the World Museum, Liverpool. It was an inspirational experience which sparked several conversations and collaborations, exploring the link between the micro and macro aspects of our world.

Strachan and Wiehl's immersive audiovisual installation draws specifically on this context (pages 59 to 69) as does a new collaborative work by the Colliers (Mike and Tim) and Campbell (figure 33).

Figure 34, Licmophora Figure 35, Achnanthes longpipes Opposite page: shells on tideline, Formby Point, 2015.

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DIATOM S: A M I CROSCOPI C WOR LD O F WO ND E R GERALDINE REID

We look around and see a world full of plants and animals, but our eyes are deceptive; is this really what our world is full of? Most of life on earth is microscopic. This immediately conjures up an image of bacteria and viruses but amongst the microorganisms is a striking group of single-celled organisms called diatoms, or Bacillariophyta if you want to give them their scientific name.

The special feature of diatoms is that each cell is enclosed in a complex, highly ornamented cell wall made not of organic compounds, as in most plants and algae, but of silica. Diatoms absorb dissolved silicate from the environment and transform it into elaborate solid structures forming many interesting shapes and patterns and it is on the basis of these patterns that we identify species.

Diatoms are a group of single-celled algae that photosynthesise—a process that converts sunlight into chemical energy which is then used by animals which feed on them. They are the unsung heroes of our planet, integral to life on earth. Their importance cannot be underestimated. Diatoms produce around the same amount of oxygen as all of the world’s tropical rainforests combined, with around a quarter Figure 36, diatom: Donkinia lipscombensis 56

of all our oxygen being attributed to diatoms. Try to imagine a world without diatoms; it would be very different as they are responsible for every fourth breath that we take.

Figure 37, Didymosphenia dentata Figure 38, Rhoicosigma

These tiny organisms are responsible for keeping the planet alive.

They occur everywhere there is water, from the tropics to the poles, in freshwater and the seas and everywhere in-between. Some diatoms live as free floating cells in the plankton, while others are attached to rocks or hard surfaces. Some of my favourites are those that live in the sediments and fine muds of estuaries, like those found along the Sefton Coast. They are able to move around and there is nothing more captivating than watching these tiny things whizzing around the microscope screen in what appears to be a haphazard way.

Among the immense diversity of single-celled life, the diatoms stand out for their amazing variety; there are about 200,000 species, around the same amount as flowering plants. This makes them among the most species-rich lineages of the eukaryotes (plants and animals whose cells contain a nucleus and are organised into membrane-bound compartments).

Almost anywhere that there is a drop of water, you will find diatoms and they are extremely important for many animals as they form the base of the food chain. We can’t see these ‘plants’ without a microscope, yet because of their huge abundance they are of enormous ecological importance. Being single cells they respond rapidly to changes in the

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environment and scientists use diatoms as tools to assess the quality of water. By looking for the presence of key species, they are able to tell if the water body has been polluted or infer things about the chemistry of the water.

As diatoms are made from silica; once dead, their remains preserve extremely well in the sediments and can be used to map changes in our climate and environment. They can be used to reconstruct past histories and investigate climate change. In the study of lake and seabed sediments they can be used to estimate the pH and nutrient status of the water body back in time when the sediments were laid down.

Following the death of a diatom, the empty cell wall may be deposited in the sediments of lakes and oceans where it can be preserved as a record of the past environments and climate changes; as such they are important fossils for the reconstruction of millions of years of the Earth’s history. They can also be used by archaeologists and forensic scientists to establish cause and place of death. Given that diatoms have a key role in monitoring the environment, it is vital that we identify them correctly as misidentification could completely undermine the Diatoms Figure 39, Triceratium campechianum Figure 40, Triceratium favus Figure 41, Frustulia rhomboides Figure 42, Biddulphia reticulata

results and conclusions from a study.

Many people have no idea of the wonders and diversity of the diatoms that live within our waters. These diatoms are a hidden, rarely seen form of life and yet they underpin the whole marine food chain; they

Opposite page: Figure 43, Still from Robert Strachan and Sam Wiehl, In-Between Spaces, 2015 including film and digital renders of diatom structures.

provide the world with oxygen and play a central role in the global carbon cycle.

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I N -B ET W EEN SPACES RO B E RT S T R AC H A N

I first became interested in the Sefton Coast as a site of possible artistic

family or your friends to just hang out and have an

response in 2008 during Liverpool’s tenure as European Capital of

ice cream … but it’s a place in transition … That

Culture. As part of an audiovisual arts organisation called the Hive

place in between the tides I think is one of the

Collective we commissioned Chris Watson and Matthew Herbert (two

most hostile environments on earth. It’s neither

of the U.K.’s most prominent sound artists) to respond to Antony

land nor sea.

Gormley’s installation Another Place, a sculptural installation made up of casts of the artist’s body which runs for a mile up the beach at

This incident stayed with me as I began to explore the area further in

Waterloo and Crosby. A key moment in formulating the two artists’

terms of my own artistic responses during the past couple of years.

responses was their experiences during a particularly inclement day

Indeed, it has informed the subsequent installation work Sam Wiehl

of field recording. Both Watson and Herbert were nearly stranded in

and I carried out for the exhibition Ghosts of the Restless Shore: Space,

the sinking sands just off Waterloo beach and had to hurriedly return

Place and Memory of the Sefton Coast at The Atkinson. As artists we

to the safety of the tide line. It struck both artists as powerful and

became increasingly interested in the coast as a liminal, or in-between

poignant that such a dangerous environment can be found just a few

space. It is a transitional point between the known and unknown, a

hundred yards from the safe and mundane environment of British

place between danger and safety, between every day settlement and

suburbia on the streets of Waterloo itself. As Watson told me:

wilderness, in which its natural cycles work as both an obscuring and revealing force; in terms of its tidal and seasonal cycles the coast is

We found out as we went out there it’s quite a

at once a changing and renewing space. At the same time, it erodes

dangerous place and I liked this idea of it [being] a

what was once there, often scarring it indelibly with the forces of

place where you can go with your partner or your

nature. Often this renders its objects and natural phenomena under

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erasure. We can see what once was, but it is now changed and obscured

terms of the way in which the landscape is experienced, but also the

according to its position in the natural world.

way in which it is interpreted and imagined.

Our original piece that came out of the Walking Through the Sands of

The Sefton Coast’s geographical position just outside the urban and

Time project was a direct response to this. Developed during a series

suburban conurbations of Merseyside and West Lancashire provides

of art walks in 2014, Uncollected drew upon recurring themes within

a clear set of encounters in this respect. Both in terms of scale and

our work relating to affect, memory, loss and place. The piece was

sensory experience, the coast provides an in-between space of

composed of digitally reimagined film and audio field recordings from

immediate contrasts. Indeed, scale is incredibly important to the way

the rubble embankment at Hightown beach including gunshots from

in which we experience this landscape. The seascape offers visual and

the adjacent Altcar Rifle Range, vibrations from discarded steel stakes

aural perspectives which are vast and uninterrupted in comparison to

planted within concrete rubble, the local soundmark of the bell of

constant variances in sound and vision of the urban milieu to which it

Hightown Church and the bricks that make up the majority of beach in

is so close. And this is clearly part of our attraction to it. The seasonal

this area. Started in 1942 the rubble embankment was initially made up

flocking of humans to the shoreline since the advent of tourism has

of bricks from bomb-damaged buildings in Liverpool and subsequently

been essentially sensory in nature. We visit the coast to inhale the air, to

became a dumping ground for building demolitions in the region. For

smell the salt, to experience light in a manner that is extraordinary and

us as artists, these bricks seemed to represent cultural artefacts which

takes us out of our everyday existence. We visit to listen to the rolling

over time erode and change both in terms of form and identity. The

of the waves on the shoreline, to feel the wind in our hair. Each of these

constant wash of the sea had eroded their defined edges into more

responses to the sensory affects of the environment has become part

indistinct and organic shapes, their tops scarred with faded names of

of the socially constructed set of signifiers relating to how we interact

long-closed brickworks. It was as if the bricks were being gradually

with our surroundings. Through our interaction with the shoreline we

reclaimed by the natural environment while maintaining the traces of

deliberately place ourselves in an altered perspective with the world,

a recently lost culture. It is this intersection between the cultural and

into a different sense of scale, bathed in a different light, immersed in a

the natural world that has defined our responses to the coast and is

different sound world. In doing so we also move into a different sense

one of the central themes across all of the work included in Ghosts of the

of time, we tap into the rhythms of the rolling waves, we let the sounds

Restless Shore. A key theme for us is the way we (as culturally and socially

of nature slow us in a physical and mental entrainment.

1

informed people) interact with the natural environment, not just in

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Of course, scale is also a matter of perspective. The coastline provides a rich variation of experience depending on where we train our eyes and ears. The richness of the area’s natural and social history is to be found in the most minute detail as well as its imposing seascape and landscape. The dunes, meadows and woods are alive with an incredible richness of flora and fauna and the focus of the eye and ear upon its intricacies brings this diversity to life. The environment itself affords different levels of engagement, different modes of exploring the world around us. The suspension of everyday modes of time and attention lead us to look closely, to be engulfed in a constant sonic environment that suspends linearity or to exercise selective attention in the way we listen to the environment. The landscape invites us to look down at or into the minutiae of detail in plant life, as well as immersing ourselves in the open sky and engulfing seascape. We train our ears on the difference in soundscape of birds and insects, masking out the low frequency sound-bed of the waves and wind. We trace the subtle remnants of human habitation in the foundations of abandoned structures and shipwrecks; we scour the tide line for washed-up signs of life elsewhere.

Figure 44, series of stills from Robert Strachan and Sam Wiehl, In-Between Spaces, 2015, including film and digital renders of diatom structures.

Technology further enhances this sense of engagement by providing a different sense of focus, a more acute sense of attention. Through the very nature of the lens, the headphone, the deliberate framing of the natural world, we experience and understand the environment anew. This technological mediation gives a sense of hyper-reality and acute abstraction from the real-world environment. This was brought

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home to me during the walks that formed part of the Walking Through

scale elements of the shore. Each of these technologies provide a frame

the Sands of Time project. At various points, participants were invited

through which to view and hear the real world. Significantly, these

to listen to the soundscape using headphones and a stereo directional

audio and visual field recordings were subsequently processed through

microphone. It was clear to me from people’s responses that the audio

contemporary editing and post-production technologies towards the

framing provided by these relatively commonplace pieces of technology

realisation of the final piece.

profoundly altered their perception of the soundscape. The focused listening engendered by these technologies allowed participants not

In a sense, this recording of the landscape as engagement is part of

only to hear elements of the audio world that they would otherwise

the tradition of encounters with the coastline that has existed since

have missed, but also to interpret and experience the soundscape in

the heyday of amateur collection in the nineteenth century. The

new ways. People found themselves engaging with the experience of

meticulous recording of the area’s natural history, such as the specimens

listening in this manner in explicitly emotional or aesthetic terms.

collected by Chris Felton and George Russell which are included in this volume, are instructive here (figures 46 to 49). As well as fulfilling

In-Between Spaces, the audiovisual installation included in Ghosts of the

an altruistic service in recording the natural life of the area, they also

Restless Shore, acknowledges technology’s processes of attention by both

provide a way of engaging with the landscape for the protagonists.

focusing in on the minute aspects of the soundscape and exploring

Furthermore, nature here is aestheticised into highly stylised material

the vastness of the world through the self-conscious mediation of

culture: through pressed, dried and preserved collections of flowers,

the landscape. Here, we are not trying to represent a sense of the

seaweed and grasses, beautifully composed, meticulously framed and

real experience of being on the coastline in which the technology is

documented. As artists working with digital media, our ‘preservation’,

transparent. Rather, the technology and its subsequent effect upon the

representation and response to the landscape is, by its nature, formed

mediation of the work is an integral part of the process of response. It

from within a digital aesthetic. Indeed the piece begins with sonic and

forms the work within us and it is a key ‘actor’ in the creative process.

visual representations of diatoms that are entirely digitally generated

During our research and field recording for the installation we used

(figure 44). These single-cell organisms are a feature of the coast.

various technologies such as highly directional microphones which

They are of great biological interest but cannot be heard or seen by

provide a clear audio focus upon elements of the soundscape, contact

the naked eye. To the casual observer such as myself, the placing of

microphones which record audio directly from the surface of a given

them onto slides takes them into the realm of the imagination and

object, and macro film lenses which give extreme close-ups of the small-

almost fantastical; a living world which is significant but unknowable;

Opposite page: Figure 45, lifting Black-tailed Godwits at RSPB Marshside.

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Figures 46 to 49, herbarium sheets, from the Botany Collection of the World Museum, Liverpool.

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mapped physical properties of the coastal terrain are transformed into a digital landscape viewed from an imaginary and idealised perspective (figure 50).

Ultimately, of course, our response to the coast as artists is articulated clearly within the context of our own creative trajectories. As well as being necessarily grounded within our own technological practices and interests, the work is reflective of some of the major themes that have run through our work over the past decade through the creation of a number of audiovisual installations and live art events as members of the Hive Collective. The key areas that we have explored throughout this period have been to do with the effects of an ubiquitous digital

Figure 50, still from Robert Strachan and Sam Wiehl, In-Between Spaces, 2015: digital render of GPS coordinates of the Sefton Coast.

media upon human experience in terms of memory, emotion end our relationship to place. For us, the way in which our subjectivities are enmeshed within the virtual and digital is a central social fact that

existing, but out of the reach of our everyday perception (figures 34

permeates the way in which we live our lives in the twenty-first

to 42). A response was thus necessitated both by the minute scale of

century. Even within the immersion of the natural world that ‘spaces’

these organisms and through our inability to capture their sounds.

such as the Sefton Coast affords, we cannot escape our fundamentally

The morphing of these speculative image and sound worlds into real-

changed subjectivities. Our responses to landscape, the imaginative

world recordings and film and then back into computer-generated

end creative turns that we take from it, are always refracted through

landscapes within the piece was an attempt to blur the boundaries

the prism of contemporary culture.

between the natural and the digital. Even the ‘real-world’ and relatively untreated sounds and images that form the core of the piece are either Endnote 1. See Collier’s introduction in this catalogue for more information about the project ‘Walking Through the Sands of Time’.

abstracted or presented from a perspective that invites indeterminacy.

The installation uses a final collecting technology (GPS) to take the coordinates of the contours of the coast itself. In this section the

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Figure 51, installation shot Robert Strachan and Sam Wiehl Still from In-Between Spaces, 2015 Digital render of diatom structure.

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Re-emergence of possible Victorian fencing, on the beach near Freshfield, 2015.

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T HE W I LD COA ST OF SEFTO N JAKE CAMPBELL Viewing history as an entanglement of lived experience, we might see it as an arc, without discernible beginning or end, intersecting our horizon at both corners of our eyes. A great galaxy of lines of flight shooting across the night sky. Looking at our place within this arc we would see a coalescing of lines turning round on themselves, biting their own tail off to disappear in a firework of circles, large and small, marking the death of a friend, the ending of a language, a life form, a way of being.—Jeppe Grauggard

I

n his The Writing of History, Michel de Certeau says that ‘The past

For Adam Pugh, describing an even older set of human footprints,

is the fiction of the present’. In summer 2014, when I walked the

found at Happisburgh beach in Norfolk, they ‘illustrate the problem

Sefton Coastal Path, from Crosby to Southport, I came to realise that

of history, or more properly, the writing of history […] Not only does

he was right: our understanding of the present is preceded by layers

our knowledge of their existence alter them but, as objects, it destroys

of past meaning, where people and their histories meld and overlap;

them. Impossibly ancient, having endured invisibly for millennia, once

where social histories blend with environmental changes; and where

disinterred they are yet ephemeral beyond measure’.3

1

marine and coastal life and vegetation thrives both despite, and because of, human activity.

On the beach at Formby, you can literally step back several thousand

Figure 52, finely preserved deer footprints in silt bed from 7,000 years ago, Ainsdale Beach.

years into the lives of nomadic hunter-gatherers, whose footprints, when the tide cares to reveal them, can be seen hollowed into the sediment. As Alison Burns notes, in the introduction to The Prehistoric

Figure 53, Tim Collier and Jake Campbell Words and Image—The Sefton Coast 2015, produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

Footprints at Formby, ‘It is possible that during this century these glimpses of the past will be lost forever to the sea as it gradually eats into Formby Point’.2

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Nowhere is ephemeralness more apparent than in littoral zones, on

artefacts. New names and words, rolled on the tongue, tested out in

the beach. I came to this project as a ‘Sand-dancer’, from South Shields,

whispers, cross-referred to maps and articles. New words which find

whose shores are quite different to those of the Sefton Coast. One

shape and form, become real, on the beach.

of my intentions during Ghosts of the Restless Shore was to calibrate my understanding of my native coastline; to place it within the dual

Two months ago I travelled back to Ainsdale for the symposium which

contexts of something similar yet different. When I blogged, initially,

would kick-start the artists’ thinking on this project, stimulating

after having walked the Sefton Coastal path last summer, I noted that

discussions which would lead to collaborative work. This was the

Liverpool, which is to Sefton as Newcastle is to South Tyneside, is

run-up to the General Election which would see the first majority

a city whose similarities bear a startling resemblance to that of its

Conservative government in nearly twenty years. While walking last

north-eastern counterpart. In socio-historic, economic, geographic

summer, the news was filled with the Israel-Gaza conflict and with the

and sporting terms, the cities are nearly one and the same. But much

tragic crash of flight MH17, which came down in the strife-ridden area

like taking the twenty-minute Metro ride out to the coast in Newcastle,

of Eastern Ukraine. In my poem ‘Star of Hope’, which alludes to both

to reach the Sefton Coast you must also leave behind the city for

of these events, I announce that ‘These are things/I am not qualified/

something quite different.

to talk about//(but silence/is the natural ally/of war.)’ As I proof this essay ready for inclusion in the exhibition catalogue, I do so with •

thoughts of Grexit on my mind; with a vague hope that Jeremy Corbyn will be voted in as Labour leader later in the summer; and, somewhere

Ragwort; Sorrel; Seaforth Docks; Horsetail; Sea Holly; Gatekeeper

deep at the back of my mind, with a fear that climate change could

butterfly; Seaforth and Litherland; Sea Plantain; Dune Helleborine;

irrevocably alter the dynamics of life along this and many other coasts.

Kirkdale; Bootle New Strand; Ainsdale; Alt; Rest Harrow; Dove’s-foot Cranesbill; Dark Green Fritillary; Ravenmeols Dunes; Myxomatosis; Sea

So the writer faces the past as a fiction of the present, but the present—

Kale; Yellow Rattle; Ionic Star.

equally—can look fictional, or absurd. How do I/we, who feel these pulls between the beauty of natural landscapes such as those at Sefton

‘For us to live and die properly’, says John Berger, ‘things have to be

and the knowledge that the growth-fixated economic system of which

named properly. Let us reclaim our words’. It is July 2015. A year since

we are a part is damaging them—how do we reconcile, find meaning

the walk, which I now think of as a gathering—of names, of words, of

and transfer those meanings, positively, to others?

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The Coast Will Wait Behind You

“The tempered lyricism of Jake Campbell’s poems, and their forensic attention to detail, bring to life the visceral and psychological experience of coastal place,

Jake Campbell

with all its edge-of-the-world urgency and exhilaration.”

—Jean Sprackland £5.00

Figure 54, Jake Campbell, The Coast Will Wait Behind You, pamphlet published by Art Editions North, August 2015.

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For me, it is in the process of the poetics which I have attempted for Ghosts of the Restless Shore and for the accompanying pamphlet of poetry, The Coast Will Wait Behind You, which will collate all of my new, Sefton poems alongside their north-east-based cousins (figure 54). I call this ‘palimpsest poetics’, in recognition that we sit, precariously and temporally, at the top layer of history, but to understand our place in it, and to move forward with both purpose and wonderment (because what is poise without a sense of its mirror image; without a sense of not knowing quite how or why we fit into the bigger picture?), we must look to the visible traces of what has gone before.

That is why former Manchester City goalkeeper, Bert Trautmann, who was interned as a prisoner of war at Fort Crosby, sits alongside the ‘Bootle Organs’ of the dunes. It is why the Natterjack Toads (figure

Figure 55, Natterjack Toad, Ainsdale, on the Sefton Coast, 2015.

55) that I describe in that poem are as much a part of the story of this coast as 'Operation Starfish' was: the lighting of dummy fires north of Liverpool to divert German bombs away from the important docks and

been put in the world’s oldest lifeboat station, even though we cannot be

factories on the Mersey. It is why the ‘Star of Hope’ is both a literal

certain he ever visited the north-west. And returning to those footprints,

shipwreck reminding us of the dangers of this coastline and a metaphor

it is why, when we see those ancient marks, we simultaneously realise

for looking to something bigger than ourselves to offer guidance, as

our insignificance in it all yet recognise the importance we play in the

sailors would have once done, before GPS. It is why I describe the

interconnectedness that is this gift called life.

Georgian poet, Siegfried Sassoon, scrambling the waves at Formby; because the sight of the Irish Sea beyond those waves must have been

•

some solace for a broken soldier returning from the front line. It is why I have displaced William Wouldhave: the North Shields-born designer,

For many readers, certainly those of a certain ilk, much of that last

thought to have dreamt up the original concept for the lifeboat, has

paragraph will have come across as ‘mushy’ or, worse, sentimental—

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that much decried quality which the whole project of modernism sought to banish. Okay, I half-agree: sentimentality—easily-reachedfor or strangulated, stock phrases which offer the reader little to no new insights—yes, that kind of automatic writing is to be avoided, but is sentiment? In his long essay, Folk Opposition, Alex Niven is similarlyminded when it comes to the baggage of sentiment: ‘The reclamation of folk sentiment and folk opposition from the right-wing margins and from the ironic, belittling forces of bourgeois consumerism is every bit as serious as this. Re-emphasising the legitimacy of a common culture founded in ordinary, elemental solidarity will not be an easy task. But we have to at least try’.5 So, sentiment can elucidate our poetry, make it reach out to new audiences, and educate them, but not in a holier-thanthou, condescending way.

I recognise that I am not from this part of the world. In researching elements of my poetry, particularly the strong social histories found in the ‘Bootle Organ’ (figure 57) and ‘Elegy for Bert Trautmann’ (figure 56) poems, I encountered moments of severe anxiety founded in geographical guilt: here I was, a man in his late twenties, from the northeast, asking people twice, sometimes thrice, his age whether they’d heard the aphoristic term ‘Bootle Organ’ (or, alternatively, ‘Birkdale

Figure 56, Mike Collier (artwork); Jake Campbell (words) Elegy for Bert Trautmann, 2014/5 Digital print on paper 112 x 35 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative

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Figure 57, Mike Collier (artwork); Jake Campbell (words) Bootle Organ, 2014/5 Digital print on paper 35 x 112 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative 78

Nightingale’) to describe the cacophonous mating call of the male Natterjacks. Here I was telling people that Bert Trautmann, a footballer I’d never heard of a year ago, had been interned along the Sefton Coast,

Figure 58, Another Place, 1997

by Antony Gormley Crosby Beach, Sefton Coast (installed in 2005).

and did they know, and it then turned out that he might not have been kept prisoner here after all—that might have been hearsay—but did they want to hear my poem about it anyway because there’s nothing stranger than fiction, nowt so queer as folk.

boats slumber into marshes as the breeze strums their riggings in But the sentiment allows the universality: whether or not Bert

cowbell clatter; and a few dog walkers litter the coast, along with the

Trautmann ever played a game of football with the home guard is as

rubble of blitz-bombed Liverpool and cooking oil drums chucked

irrelevant as my vastly unlikely imaginings of William Wouldhave

overboard from some distant tanker in the Atlantic; and the skyline

corralling the first lifeboat crews to take to those jagged waves off

of Liverpool, its cathedrals and Radio City Tower, are silhouetted to

Formby Point. It is the sentiment behind the poems—that ordinary

the South as the wind makes a marathon dash for the Mersey and you

people can do extraordinary things—which is important. And that’s

think of the opening scenes of Atwood’s dystopia, Oryx and Crake, all

what this administration seems intent on destroying: the notion that

howling winds, jetsam and distant, empty skyscrapers; and the clouds

normal people can shape the future. At risk of this essay falling into

lift, the sun opening them like blinds, to show you Hoylake, Flintshire,

full-blown political diatribe (that was not my point at the outset), I

Snowdonia. And you stand, with your face to the sea, arms at your side

wish to conclude with a paragraph which I first wrote this time last

like the Gormleys, asking yourself what it is you’re shoring up against,

year, after walking away from Another Place, those iron men, their backs

or for, out here, on the wild coast of Sefton.

to the coast, the city behind them, the waves, static yet indeterminate, Endnotes

spread before their weather-worn faces (figure 58).

1 de Certeau, M. (1988) The Writing of History. New York: Columbia University Press, p.10.

•

2. Burns, A. (2014) The Prehistoric Footprints at Formby. Ainsdale: Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership Scheme, p.7.

You stand and watch the tide roll out, which it does quickly, the

3. Pugh, A. (2014) Invisible Fabrick. Norwich: Promontories, p.9.

markers growing by the inch every minute, erect like giant fly swatters

4. Berger, J. quoted in Le Monde diplomatique (http://mondediplo.com/2003/02/15pain), February 2003.

or cocktail sticks; and on the wind you hear the crack and whizz of

5. Niven, A. (2012) Folk Opposition. Alresford: Zero Books, p.76.

bullets from the rifle range at Hightown; and at Altmouth the lazy 79

Slack Tide: Siegfried Sassoon at Formby

Slack Tide: William Wouldhave at Formby Lifeboat Station

There you go bursting

Look what you gave them, Woody:

from the dunes at Formby

galloping onto the beach tugging at your cross

a vessel, yes; keel and beams, a cross-cut

the wind wicked against you

the sunlit picture of hell

dream of how to survive at sea;

wicked within you

and you’re tearing now

but to all the others, so much more—

as you scramble the waves

the cross crammed

hope. That men would be gunning down

in your pocket because you knew

didn’t you

ramparts, lifejackets fastened to chins,

that it wasn’t destruction you wanted enough of that

eyes logged to the Sefton surf

so up its ribbon went

twisting into the spit into silence

you’d seen

as down went the Chrysopolis,

and pull of the Mersey

down went the Ionic Star.

as your heart clobbered

And what does hope look like?

your chest and all you could do was

clench

your fists at your side

and

and breathe

Like the bright beacons of the volunteer breathe

life brigade’s eyes in this photo, Woody— burning as lighthouses in storms, as their first footprints back on the beach.

Figures 59 and 60, Jake Campbell Slack Tide: Siegfried Sassoon at Formby 2014/5 and Slack Tide: William Wouldhave at Formby Lifeboat Station, 2014/5

9

80

16

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Figure 61. Mike Collier, The Song of the Curlew, 2013 Digital print on paper 230 x 20 cm Sound is as important as sight when birdwatching, and the haunting cries and calls of birds form a rich backdrop to many of Collier’s walks.

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P ICT UR I N G LA N GUAGE BACK I N TO TH E L A N D MIKE COLLIER

Background

the ‘territory’ I want to explore in this chapter. What, for instance, is

I was born in Sefton and lived there for eighteen years. It is the place,

the relationship between our pre-cognitive, intuitive experience (our

undoubtedly, that shaped many of my ideas about how we experience and

immediate response to things experienced and felt) and our cognitive

perceive the world. I have talked at some length about the importance

experience (the accumulated knowledge of that place)—the relationship,

of walking, space, place and memory in my introduction to this book,

indeed, between art and science—and what language can we use to

so I want, here, to look more closely at some other aspects of my own

best communicate this complex experience? Although I talk here about

work. I will do so by referring to the pictures in this exhibition, work

the importance of foregrounding our intuitive, direct and sensuous

that relates directly to both my memory, and my recent experiences, of

response to the world, my work often uses words—sometimes many

the Sefton Coast. For me, the importance of place is paramount; I can’t

words; words which could be seen as getting in the way of a direct,

operate as a creative tourist. I need to get to grips with a place: to get

unmediated experience of nature. Whilst I want my work to get us

to know it; to experience it and to understand it; to dig into its history,

closer to the earth, to a more grounded experience of nature, I often

learn about its ecology and to grasp what it is that gives a place its

use technology to communicate this experience (computer graphics,

sense of identity; to experience its visceral and emotional character—

Photoshop, photography and print); is there a contradiction here? And

the earth, the light, the weather; the very essence of a place.

what of the colours I use in my work? Many people think of landscape colours as being green, blue and brown (or ‘sandy’ in the case of the

My aim when making work is pretty straightforward. I want to

coast)—and yet I use many different bright colours (pinks, purples,

communicate something of what I experience when walking through

yellows and oranges etc) in my work. Why is this? And in a short

the world. This sounds simple, but as soon as you start to unpick exactly

conclusion, I suggest that my use here of the word nature is inclusive.

how we really do experience things, and then how we might creatively

I don’t see a split between town and country, nature and culture. We

interpret or translate this experience, then complications arise. This is

are nature—culture is nature—and my work (like that of all the other

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artists in this exhibition) explores the way we, as socially and culturally

Over this period, I have become increasingly aware that whilst intuition

informed people, interact with the natural environment.

(which I had always associated with art) plays a key role in the way that we translate our experience of the world into actions, the collection of scientific knowledge (in my case usually relating to natural history) is

I. The relationship between art and science; intuition and

itself not only fascinating, but also very instructive in interpreting my

cognition

intuitive feelings in relation to a more complex understanding of my place in the world.

‘Modern science is trying too hard to be rational. Scientists have been at their best when they allowed themselves to

Lived experience is essentially intuitive—but our intuition is also

behave as sleepwalkers’.—Stephen Toulmin

layered, based on previous experiences. And it is immersed; a sum of

1

more than the parts we experience. We are in the world and our bodies ‘The basic building blocks of nature are few and profoundly

‘touch’ the world, we use all our senses—sight, of course, but also smell,

simple … the world of objects is vast, infinitely various, and

touch, and hearing—and we ‘navigate’ our way through this world as a

inexhaustible. Understanding the basics more deeply cannot

part of it, not separate from it.

undo the richness of experience. It can, and does, illuminate experience, and empower us to enrich it further’.

However, from the Enlightenment onwards, we have come to see

—Frank Wilczek

science as the most important tool for understanding the world and

2

our Cartesian place in it. One of the issues raised by the philosopher I wasn’t able to study art in the sixth form at Waterloo Grammar

Martin Heidegger was that, in our centralising of the role of science and

School (it wasn’t deemed an academic subject), but my interest in

technology over and above that of a pre-reflective intuitive engagement

art was, paradoxically, stimulated by an inspirational physics teacher,

with the world, we have lost touch with a set of knowledge systems and

Alan Thompson. He taught me to appreciate the beauty inherent in

values that are crucial to our developing experience. We isolate the

the equations of great scientists like Albert Einstein. He fired my

senses and place too great a value on a decontextualised, discrete form

imagination and stimulated my latent curiosity in the relationship

of enquiry. Heidegger himself pointed out that ta mathematika originally

between the arts and the sciences, an interest that has developed and

meant in Greek ‘that which man knows in advance of observation’. The

grown over the last forty years.

lesson here, I think, is that we need to embrace both a poetic response to

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Figure 62, detail, Mike Collier 48 Flowers of the Sefton Coast, 2015

Figure 63, Sheila Collier’s original copy of Illustrations of the British Flora by W. H. Fitch and W. G. Smith.

Figure 64, detail, Mike Collier 48 Flowers of the Sefton Coast, 2015 86

Figure 65, Mike Collier 48 Flowers of the Sefton Coast, 2015 Unison pastel and screenprint on glass 48 individual pieces; total size 305 x 305 cm Produced in collaboration with Tina Webb and Erin Dickson

87

individual plants; rather, they are a sensory reminder of the total experience of walking along the coastal footpath; the space, the heat, the dunes, the physical materiality of the land and the intense colours of flowers, butterflies and insects. The book in the display case next to this work is the actual book used by my mum on these forays along the coast over fifty years ago (figure 63).

A second work, Indicative Flora of the Sefton Coast, 2015 (figure 67 to 69), also references closely this link between art and natural history.

‘The Sefton Coast supports a bewildering variety of plants’, writes Phil Smith in The Sands of Time: An Introduction to the Sand Dunes of the Sefton Figure 66, Sheila Collier, Ainsdale, 1964.

Coast and ‘this outstanding diversity is the result of many factors, including the great variety of habitat types found on the coast, ranging

the world as well as a scientific understanding of it. If we want to ‘save

from derelict land to dune-slacks and woodland. Also relevant is the

the earth’ we need both art and science.

position of the Sefton Coast halfway up the west coast of Britain. This means [there is] a mix of plants with both northern (the rare Isle of Man

And so, in 48 Flowers of the Sefton Coast (2015), I aim to link art and

Cabbage) and southern (Yellow Barstsia) distributions in the country as

science (natural history). In my childhood, I spent many early summer

a whole.’3 For instance, Sand Couch dominates the embryo dunes and

afternoons with my family walking along the Sefton Coast. My mum

Prickly Saltwort can be found along the strand line. Marram Grass is the

would use her copy of Illustrations of the British Flora by W. H. Fitch and

dominant plant of the mobile dunes in which can also be found Sea

W. G. Smith in tandem with the Handbook of the British Flora by George

Holly. The fixed dune system is the most extensive habitat and typical

Bentham and Sir J. D. Hooker to identify the many wildflowers we

plants here include Yellow Wort and the grass Sand Cat’s-tail whilst the

found and she would hand-colour the illustrations and date them in

scarce Dune Helleborine can be found in the dune grasslands. During my

the book. This work (figure 66) uses 48 of Fitch’s scientific illustrations

walk along the Sefton Coastal Footpath in 2014, I recorded many plants

to represent some of the key flowers of the Sefton Coast. However,

in my notebook (see page 113). For this work, I have selected a group

the pastel colours I use are not representative of the colours of the

that, I hope, could be considered key indicator species of the Sefton

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Figures 67 to 69, from left to right Mike Collier Indicative Flora of the Sefton Coast, 2015 Digital print on paper 20 individual pieces; total size 360 x 94 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative and Emma Tominey

89

Coast. It is a list that anyone with a little knowledge of plant-life might

from common usage. As more people are brought up to

identify with the Sefton Coast. Again, the colours I use do not relate

live in towns and cities, the land beyond the city fringe

specifically to the colour of the individual plants named; rather, they

has increasingly become understood as consisting of large

reflect my total experience of walking through the area.

generic units (‘field’, ‘hill’, ‘valley’, ‘wood’). It has become a blandscape … As the vocabulary of nature and landscape falls into desuetude, so does the knowledge that such vocabulary

II. Images, Pictures and Words

holds and enables, and so, too, does the ethos that such a vocabulary might embody or encourage. As we further

‘The names of butterflies draw us into a world where art

deplete our ability to name, describe and figure particular

meets science, often producing names which scintillate in

aspects of our landscape, our competence for understanding

the mind and engage our feelings’.—Peter Marren

and imagining possible relationships with non-human

4

nature is correspondingly depleted.6 ‘Our task is that of taking up the written word, with all of it’s potency, and patiently, carefully, writing language back

And so, in the piece Everything Seen and Heard in a Walk over Two Weekends

into the land’.—David Abram

Along the Sefton Coastal Footpath in 2014 (no 1), 2015 (figures 70 to 73) I

5

make reference to some of the plant folklore, the colloquial names for Abram’s book, The Spell of the Sensuous, poetically suggests that language

the birds and flowers (and how those names came into being) as well

came from our engaged relationship to the environment. We once

as interrogating the derivation of many of the area’s geographical and

had a wonderfully rich and expressive range of words for our local

place names. For instance, the common place name of Formby, ending

landscapes/soundscapes and the flora and fauna within it. However,

-by, is from the Scandinavian byr meaning ‘homestead’, ‘settlement’

increasingly, we now

or ‘village’. The village of Formby was originally spelt fornebei and means ‘the old settlement’ or ‘village belonging to Forni’. At that time

make do with an impoverished vocabulary for nature and

Fornibiyum was also a well-known Norse family name. He could have

landscape. The nuances that are observed by specialised

been the leader of the invading expedition which took possession

languages, whether scientific or vernacular, are evaporating

of this coast. Until its closure in 1998, Oslo airport in Norway was situated in a town called Fornebu.

90

monosyllables are usually of Anglo Saxon origin …

As D.K. Harrison, in When Languages Die, says (2007, inside cover):

only very rarely does he interest himself in a long word or a Latinate one. When Hopkins speaks of

We do not even know exactly what we stand to

current language he means the spoken language as

lose when languages die … An immense edifice of

opposed to a literary one; but he goes further than

human knowledge, painstakingly assembled over

most of us would. The essential spoken language is

millennia by countless minds is eroding, vanishing

not the educated language of university graduates

into oblivion … languages are the accretion of

and the middle classes of large urban centres; it is

thousands of years of people’s science and art.

at its most perfect in the mouths of country people,

7

and, since it is ephemeral, and not committed to The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins understood this. Hopkins ‘invented’

paper, its interesting features must be jotted down

the term ‘inscape’ to suggest that our direct experience of the world

in the diaries just as the inscapes of nature are.

was, somehow, also embodied in a sense of the ‘essence’ of life. He saw

Clearly this current language will be Anglo Saxon

that words have their own, very particular, ‘inscape’, and he created

in vocabulary; and this brings a bonus to the poet,

new words based on listening to the sounds of the world around him.

since Anglo Saxon words are on the whole richer in emotional suggestiveness than is the French or

In The Language of Gerard Hopkins Manley, James Milroy (1977) suggests

Classical vocabulary of English.8

that ‘Hopkins is clearly concerned with the full semantic suggestiveness of the word, its association with shapes and textures, curves and spirals,

Hopkins was aware of the theories of a number of important

and the sensory impressions of touch and sound as well as sight’

etymologists of the period (the middle of the nineteenth century)— for instance Hensleigh Wedgwood, who espoused the ‘onomatopoetic theory’. Language, he suggests, was invented by imitating the sounds

Furthermore, he notes that:

of nature. He looks at bird names as examples—cuckoo, ulula (owl) the words he discusses in the diaries tend to be

and peewit ‘whose melancholy cry gives rise to names in different

monosyllables used in everyday speech, and these

European dialects’.9

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92

Figures 70 to 74, Mike Collier Everything Seen and Heard in a Walk over Two Weekends Along the Sefton Coastal Footpath in 2014 (no 1), 2015, digital print on paper, four separate pieces; each 126 x 92.5 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative and Emma Tominey

94

However, it is what Hopkins does with words that is also of particular

He breaks down the structure of language so that it mirrors more

interest to me. Hopkins realises not only that words are, of themselves,

correctly our pre-linguistic sense of the world—a sense not overlaid

representative of social orders; he sees that sentence structure itself

with hierarchies of meaning. This is how I hope my use of text operates.

reflects social and political hierarchies, losing contact with the real

In Six Birds of the Sefton Coast, 2015 (figure 75), for instance, I have

world of direct experience at the same time. So Hopkins deliberately

deliberately sought out colloquial and Anglo Saxon derivations of the

subverts the accepted norms of language. In The Search for Synthesis in

bird names, and the order in which these names are presented is based

Literature and Art, Ann C. Colley explains that:

on a sense of the formal, poetic, structure of the words irrespective of any scientifically accepted structure of bird classification or any other

flung from their usual arrangement, words lose

hierarchical knowledge system. So:

their habitual sequence … in his attempt to conquer grammar Hopkins lards his poems with clumps of

WASHTAIL

words—new units of meaning … this new order of

DEVELING

meaning brings the reader closer to the subject’s

YARWHELP

psychological reality. And, more significantly, it

GELVINAK

allows Hopkins to recover the natural function of

SPARLING

the mind for which the linear model of grammar

LAVEROCK

is not sufficient. The new order restores for the reader a pre-linguistic unity of experience in which

The colloquial names for flora and fauna are often a poetic reminder

the world is not divided into verbs and nouns.

of a closer understanding and feeling for the natural environment we

10

once had, and they frequently refer to the look, behaviour or sound Hopkins subverts the structure of language and experiments with the

of the bird. For instance one of the many colloquial names for a swift

form of words in a way that is expressive of what he calls ‘inscape’.

is DEVILING—perhaps because of its inaccessibility—its speed in flight. The name WASHTAIL (Pied Wagtail) arises from the similarity

Opposite page: figure 74, detail Mike Collier Everything Seen and Heard in a Walk Over Two Weekends Along the Sefton Coastal Footpath in 2014 (no 1), 2015

between the constant up-and-down movement of the bird’s tail and the action of dipping and lifting made by a person washing or scrubbing clothes (or dishes) by the waterside. Avocets utter loud yelping cries

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Figure 75, Mike Collier Six Birds of the Sefton Coast, 2015 Digital print on paper, 98 x 98 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative

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when disturbed, hence YARWHELP. SPARLING makes reference to

the result of movement—an active engagement of my body across

the harsh call of the Common Tern and LAVEROCK (Skylark) is from Middle English laverok and Old English l awerce.

the surface of the paper and within the environment of the studio.

They are, I would suggest, an equivalent to the way I move through an environment and interpret this movement.

III. Colour and the process of making

But, of course, as discussed previously, my experience of a place is so much more than visual. We experience the world through all our senses,

‘Colour is alive, it alone can convey living things’

not just sight. So how can I express this sensuous experience visually?

—Paul Cézanne

Indeed, can it be done? Cézanne, for instance, ‘solved’ the problem of

11

mediating this multi-sensual experience of landscape through paint ‘Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet’

and visually managed to convey a sense of smell, of light, of warmth,

—Paul Cézanne

etc. He suggested that we must open ourselves up to other sensual

12

responses. ‘Tell me, what scent emanates from [this canvas]? What Working with pastel is like laying pure pigment onto (indeed into) the

odour does it give off?’ He says to the author, poet and critic Joachim

surface of the paper. When I make a picture, I work intuitively, laying

Gasquet, who replies ‘The smell of pines’. Ah, says Cezanne, that is

colours alongside each other quickly and without prior thought (in the

because there are pine trees in the picture: ‘that’s a visual sensation’.

same way that I feel, move through and respond to my environment,

It is a connection Gasquet makes because he can see the pine trees in

making intuitive decisions about what to do).

the painting and because he was asked, what can he smell. Cézanne, however, is interested in capturing not just the particularity of that

I build up an image that has areas of individuality and uniqueness, and

smell of pine—what he describes as ‘the strong scent of the pines,

yet the picture only works when the effect of the marks and images

which is sharp in the sunlight’; he wants, too, to convey other smells

becomes more than the sum of its constituent parts (just as in the

and sensations. The smell of pine, he says, ‘must combine with the

real world, I experience a strong sense of the ecological diversity of a

green scent of the meadows that, every morning, freshens the fragrance

place whilst at the same time intuiting a feeling that adds up to more

of the stones and of the marble of the distant St. Victoire’. In the light

than just the sum of the parts of my experience; this is, in fact, what

of Gasquet’s response to his questioning, he concludes that he hasn’t

gives meaning to my experience). The gestural marks I make are clearly

yet succeeded in conveying these smells and sensations. How can he do this, he asks himself? ‘It must be conveyed’, he says, ‘through colours’.13

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So, Cézanne believed that colour had the capacity to express our multi-

temperature. On three of the four days we walked the coastal footpath,

sensory perception of the world in painting. He said (in the same

the weather was warm and sunny, while the other day was warm with

conversation with Gasquet), ‘There is only one way that everything can

leaden skies and dark, brooding clouds that presaged impending rain.

be conveyed, expressed: colour. Colour is organic, if I may put it that way.

How can I express these sensations with colour? And sand isn’t just

Colour is alive, it alone can convey living things’. This ‘synaesthesia’, the

yellow—it is in fact many different colours—but just as importantly,

working together of different senses, ‘is of the essence of perception as

sand is hard to walk ‘through’—your feet sink inexorably into it: it’s

we actual live it, although it is very hard to explain in the objectivist

like walking through treacle. Colour has the capacity to express all of

terms of science, in which lived experience is set aside in favour of a

these different sensations … if you let it. So, my use of colour isn’t,

physical explanation of the causal relations between organised bodies

generally, illustrative; it is, rather, experiential.

and objects’.

14

And colour can also express space. I have always admired the quality So how do I use colour? Like many people, I am, of course, aware of the

of space in Cézanne’s work—the way the work seems to breathe, to

‘signifier’ landscape colours—blue for the sky, brown and green for

come alive, and, as such, to draw us into it. Cézanne arrives at this

the land, etc. But, crucially, for me, my memory of a walk is made up of

experience (I won’t say effect, because it is so much more than that)

far more than just this superficial visual experience. So, for instance,

through the concerted use of colour contrasts and the harmony that

the memories I might take away with me include the shiny blue (often

results from the successful use of such colour contrasts, establishing

with a touch of lavender) of the Common Blue butterfly, the frosted

colour ‘relations’ which are analogous to the experience found in

leaves and powder-blue flowers of the Sea Holly , the startling and

nature. This is not a mimetic copy; another term for this effect of

beautiful pink of Common or Seaside Centaury; the ‘egg-yolk orange

colour contrasts is ‘atmospheric’. Cézanne says that: ‘Atmosphere forms

and yellow’ of Bird’s-foot Trefoil; the pale blue spots and yellow flecks

the immutable ground upon whose screen all the oppositions of colour

of the Migrant Hawker, the orange-brown of the Dark Green Fritillary

and all the accidents of light are decomposed’.18 Furthermore, the use

butterfly, with its beautiful green hindwings inset with sliver ‘pearls’.17

of blue in Cézanne’s work is crucial—as are the areas of the canvas

All of these flora and fauna were seen on the walks along the coast in

which have been left white and unpainted. It is this combination of

2014. It is these colours as much as, indeed more than, the greens and

colour contrast and breathing space (the unpainted, white areas) that

browns that stick in my mind. They acquired a significance for me

gives Cézanne’s painting its spatial and atmospheric quality, I believe,

that I felt should be acknowledged in the work. And then there is the

and so I too use the spaces between colours, the edges of the marks I

15

16

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Figures 76 to 79, clockwise from top left: Dark Green Fritillary; Common Blue; Bird’s-foot Trefoil; Sea Holly.

100

make and the white of the paper, to activate space, and I ‘populate’ my images with different qualities of blue. Writing to Émile Bernard in 1905, the year before his death, Cézanne observed that, in his old age, ‘the sensations of colour, which give light’ prevented him from filling his canvas and from continuing the delimitation of objects when their points of contact are fine and delicate, ‘thus leaving his paintings in irremediable incompletion’. 19

IV. Using technology ‘The idea of an essential contrast between the character of modern and pre-modern science is, it seems to me, just a myth’.—Julian Young 20 Until quite recently, I separated out text and image in my work (figure 84). Perhaps I was worried about what a proper integration of text and image might say about my seriousness as painter—after all, I still do consider myself a painter; I love colour and the sensuality of the various mediums I use. However, the more I thought about the ideas developing behind my work—the importance of using embodied language expressively—the clearer it became that I should somehow try to properly integrate the image with the text. But how to do this?

By this I mean literally (and not just intellectually), how to do this, since it is technically quite a difficult thing to do, and there are a number of different ways to go about it.

Figures 80 to 83, clockwise from top left: Common Blue; Migrant Hawker; Seaside Centuary; Isle of Man Cabbage.

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Figure 84, Mike Collier, Upper Coquetdale/Border Ridge, 2004 Digital print and Unison pastel on paper, 70 x 70 cm

It appeared that the best way, for me, would be to use new technology—

resistance on my part to using technology. It seemed incongruous to,

Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. For most of my career as an

on the one hand, be looking at how to get the work closer to the Earth,

artist I had always been against using technology in my work; part of

deliberately using Old English, colloquial language and raw colour to

the point of using the pastels in the first place was that the materiality

suggest this, and yet at the same time using the newest technology to

of the medium, and the purity of the pigment, would have a visceral

achieve my aim.

impact on the viewer. There was also, I guess, a kind of inherent Luddite

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However, as Kuhn points out, the idea that there ever existed some Eden in the distant past when science and art, thought and interpretation, action and reflection were as one is: ‘a myth … no more in the natural than in the human sciences, is there some neutral, culture-independent, set of categories within which the population—whether of objects or of actions—can be described’.21 Indeed, in Heidegger’s Later Philosophy, Julian Young writes that earliest humanity ‘possessed science’ in the sense that it ‘postulated in advance of observation’ a world of gods and divine laws based on sensed rather than observed phenomena. ‘The idea of an essential contrast between the character of modern and pre-modern science is, it seems to me, just a myth’,22 says Young, who suggests that modern science is just more effective than pre-modern science.

I realised, of course, that a pencil, a stick of charcoal or a brush is only a tool, just as a computer programme is a tool. It is what you do with these tools—perhaps how you combine them; not dispensing with one (the stick of pastel for instance) in favour of another, more modern tool (like a computer programme such as Photoshop), but using one in tandem with the other. And using technology has also enabled me to reach a wider audience, as I have taken some of these images out of the gallery and onto the street (on billboards—figure 85). This is important too.

Figure 85, Mike Collier, Six Birds of Upper Coquetdale Billboard, Harker’s Building, Byker, 2008 103

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Opposite page: Fenced off dune slack and pond, Ainsdale. These pools in the dunes are shallow and warm, providing the perfect breeding habitat for the Natterjack Toad.

Figure 86, Mike Collier The Birkdale Nightingale, 2015 Digital print on paper 104 x 104 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative

105

V. Coda

in this ‘liminal space’, adjacent to suburban Sefton, reminds us of the

I hope that my piece The Birkdale Nightingale, 2015 (figure 86) manages

‘intersection between the cultural and the natural world’ a theme that

to combine much of what I have discussed above. It presents a ‘more-

has defined my work, and that of my colleagues, in Ghosts of the Restless

than-human’ sound that is ‘of the earth’, but that reaches to the stars;

Shore. All the work in this exhibition and publication examines, in

it is a piece that mixes art and science. It works as a piece of art, I

one form or another, ‘the way we (as culturally and socially informed

think (I hope), only if you understand both the science and the poetry

people) interact with the natural environment, not just in terms of the

of the ‘event’ (the mating call of the Natterjack Toad) being described.

way in which the landscape is experienced, but also the way in which it

The Sefton Coast is an internationally protected habitat and one of the

is interpreted and imagined.’25

most important breeding grounds in the UK for its rarest amphibian, the Natterjack Toad. The Natterjack is smaller than the Common Toad,

Endnotes

but what it lacks in size, it more than makes up for with a loud rasping

1. Toulmin, S. (1962) Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 59, No. 18, p.502.

croak that echoes around the dunes on spring nights as the males go in search of a mate. It is the noisiest amphibian in Europe and its ratcheting

2. Wilczek, F. (2015) A Beautiful Question. London: Penguin Random House, p.325.

call has brought it two local nicknames: the Birkdale Nightingale and

3. Smith, P. H. (2009) The Sands of Time: An Introduction to the Sand Dunes of the Sefton Coast.

Stroud: Amberley Publishing.

the Bootle Organ. The poet Jean Sprackland (in the Foreword to this

4. Marren, P. (2015) Rainbow Dust: Three Centuries of Delight in British Butterflies. London: Square Peg, p.130.

book) talks of ‘the cosmic sound of [the toads] clamouring all around me. I knew it was the males calling the females to the mating pools,

5. Abram, D. (1996) The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. New York: Pantheon Books.

but it seemed, as I stood alone in that vertiginous darkness, that they were throwing their voices into the sky, a sound as timeless as the stars themselves’.23

6. Macfarlane, R. (2010) ‘A Counter-Desecration Phrasebook’, in: G. Evans and D. Robson (eds), Towards Re-Enchantment. London: Art Events, p.115.

As Strachan (2015) says elsewhere in this publication, this coast is ‘a

7. Harrison, D.K. (2007) ‘The Atlas of the Mind’, in: When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press, p.125.

liminal, or in-between space. It is a transitional point between the known and unknown, a place between danger and safety, between

8. Milroy, J. (1977) ‘The Weeds and the Wilderness’, in: The Language of Gerard Manley Hopkins. London: André Deutsch, p.74.

everyday settlement and wilderness, in which its natural cycles work

9. Ibid.

as both an obscuring and revealing force.’ The mating call of the toads

10. Colley, A.C. (1990) ‘Hopkins and the Idea of Mapping’, in: The Search for Synthesis in Literature and Art. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press, pp.95–6.

24

106

Birds of the Sefton Coast is based on the memory of a series of four walks made along the Sefton Coast in

11. Kendall, R. (1998) Cézanne by Himself. London: Little Brown, p.305.

2014. The act of walking through the environment is

12. Baldwin, T. ed. (2004) Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings. London: Routledge, p.312.

central to Collier’s work. This work uses twenty-first

13. Gaquet, J. (reprint 1991) Joachim Gasquet’s Cézanne: A Memoir with Conversation. London: Thames and Hudson.

century technology to explore our understanding

14. Matthews, E. (2002) The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. Chesham: Acumen, p.134.

colloquial names for the birds seen; a relationship based

15. Mabey, R. (1996) Flora Britannica. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, p.283.

more on our direct experience of the environment than

of the natural world—reflected in Collier’s use of

on hierarchies of class and ownership. These names are

16. Ibid, p.221.

a poetic reminder that an understanding and feeling

17. Marren, P. (2015) Rainbow Dust: Three Centuries of Delight in British Butterflies. London: Square Peg, p.251.

for the natural environment was not just the preserve of the wealthy and landed gentry. They are what local

18. Riley, C. A. II (1995) Color Codes: Modern Theories of Color in Philosophy, Painting and Architecture, Literature, Music and Psychology. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England.

people called the birds—and they often reflect more

19. Johnson, G. A. ‘Eye and Mind’, in: The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, pp.126 and 143.

behaviour of the bird in its environment.

20. Young, J. (2002) ‘The Turning’, in: Heidegger’s Later Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.79.

Daup (Carrion Crow); Sparling (Common Tern);

21. Kuhn, T. (2000) 'The Natural and the Human Sciences' in: J. Conant and J. Haugeland (eds), The Road Since Structure. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp.216-23.

Gull); Corbie (Raven); Lerruck (Skylark); Smeu

closely than current nomenclature the look, sound or

Pynot (Oystercatcher); Tumbler (Black-headed (Willow Warbler); Calloo (Curlew); Bergander (Shelduck); Keelie (Kestrel); Screamer (Swift); Maalin

22. Young, J. (2002) ‘The Turning’, in: Heidegger’s Later Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 78–9.

(Sparrowhawk); Skirlock (Mistle Thrush); Eeckle (Tree Creeper); Cheeser (Yellowhammer); Wittol

23. Strackland, J. (2015) in Collier (ed.) Ghosts of the Restless Shore Sunderland, Art Editions North, p.5.

(Wheatear); Yarwhelp (Avocet); Tullet (Ringed Plover); Chickstone (Stonechat); Boatswain (Sandwich Tern);

24. Ibid, p.60.

Reeler (Grasshopper Warbler); Cutty (Wren); Hazeck

25. Ibid, p.61.

(Whitethroat); Teuk (Redshank).

Figure 87, Mike Collier 24 Birds of the Sefton Coast, 2015 Digital print on paper 197 x 44.5 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative and Emma Tominey 107

Common Tern at Se afor th N atu re Re s e r ve .

CATA LOGUE OF WOR K

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1. Tim Collier, From Cabin Hill—Ghosts of the Restless Shore, 2015 Archival digital print on 310 gsm Hahnemßhle photo paper, 140 x 93 cm Produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

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110

2. Mike Collier (see figure 86, p.105) The Birkdale Nightingale, 2015 Digital print on paper 104 x 104 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative

3. Tim Collier Four Walks along the Sefton Coast* (2014), 2015 Four separate pieces each one 51 x 57.5 cm Produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

4 & 5. Two herbarium sheets Cladophora glomerata collected by Chris Felton Cryptopleura ramose collected by George Russell, from the Botany Collection of the World Museum, Liverpool Each 58.5 x 43.5 cm

*Satellite image courtesy of Dundee Satellite Receiving Station

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6. Mike Collier (see figure 65, p.87) 48 Flowers of the Sefton Coast, 2015 Unison pastel and screenprint on glass 48 individual pieces; total size 305 x 305 cm Produced in collaboration with Tina Webb and Erin Dickson

Catalogue numbers 9, 10 and 11 are part of an on-going series of images Collier has been working on (for instance, the letters and journals by poets and natural historians such as William and Dorothy Wordsworth and George Temperley) which explore the idea developed by writers such as Coleridge who believed that ‘words can embody and not just stand for thoughts and things’ … and he ‘puts his faith in words as ‘living things—as plants, as live bodies’.

7 & 8. Two herbarium sheets Polyides rotundus collected by Chris Felton Gracilaria gracilis collected by Chris Felton, from the Botany Collection of the World Museum, Liverpool Each 58.5 x 43.5 cm

‘I wonder’ says Collier ‘if the hand-written texts in these notebooks can, in some way, be an expressive and embodied “response” to the things they describe—having a special quality that is, to a greater or lesser extent, related to the environments in which they are written’. In these pictures he has worked directly, intuitively and spontaneously with pastels over a digital copy of pages from the notebooks of local natural historian John Dempsey with whom he walked along the Sefton Coastal Footpath in 2014.

112

9. Mike Collier, From John Dempsey’s notebook entry dated 9/6/96; Marshside (warm; cloudy sky) (right hand and left hand entries), 2015 Unison pastel and digital print on paper, 37 x 49 cm

113

10. Mike Collier, From John Dempsey’s notebook entry dated 28/7/94; Marshside (warm evening; sunny) and 30/7/94; Marshside (hot; sunny), 2015 Unison pastel and digital print on paper, 37 x 49 cm

114

11. Mike Collier, From John Dempsey’s notebook entry dated 13/9/03; Ainsdale Beach (sunny; warm) and 14/9/03; Marshside, (sunny; light sky), 2015 Unison pastel and digital print on paper, 37 x 49 cm

115

Above: 13. Mike Collier Everything Seen and Heard in a Walk over Two Weekends Along the Sefton Coastal Footpath in 2014 (no 2), 2015 Digital print on paper Four separate pieces; each 30 x 30 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative

Left: 12. Mike Collier (see figures 67 to 69, p.86) Indicative Flora of the Sefton Coast, 2015 Digital print on paper 20 individual pieces; total size 360 x 94 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative and Emma Tominey

116

Mike Collier Everything Seen and Heard in a Walk over Two Weekends Along the Sefton Coastal Footpath in 2014 (no 2) 2015, (Detail)

117

14. Tim Collier Ten Species of the Sefton Coast with Quotes, 2015 Archival digital print on 310 gsm Marrutt fine art textured paper 21 individual pieces; total size 275 x 160 cm Produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

118

The Sefton Coast, says Phil Smith in The Sands of Time, is ‘an area with a particularly rich wildlife heritage. A classic example of a west-coast, hindshore dune system, with a relatively high lime content (mainly from shell fragments) in the sand, the Sefton Coast supports a dazzling variety of wild plants and animals, including species with both northern and southern distributions in the British Isles. There are many rarities, some of which are rated as internationally important. This gives the dune bellman extremely high conservation value, both in national terms and in the wider European context.’ The species Collier has chosen to show here are ones he relates to as being quintessentially a part of ‘his coast’. Some like the Petalwort and Dune Helleborine are new to him, whilst others such as the Pink-footed Geese, Skylark and Red Squirrel will forever be a memory of this part of the English coast; his home. The quotes are from various sources, ancient and modern, and demonstrate the many ways we respond to and interpret the natural world, from the poetic and scientific to the anthropological and curious. Many, though not all, are taken from writers and observers who have or had a special relationship to the Sefton Coast.

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120

121

122

15. & 16 Two herbarium sheets Ulva linza collected by Chris Felton Ulva prolifera collected by Chris Felton, from the Botany Collection of the World Museum, Liverpool Each 58.5 x 43.5 cm

17. Mike Collier (see figure 87, p.107) 24 Birds of the Sefton Coast, 2015 Digital print on paper 197 x 44.5 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative and Emma Tominey

123

18. Mike and Tim Collier, Five Birds of the Sefton Coast, 2015, 170 x 47.5 cm Produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

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125

Developed during a series of night walks during 2015, In-Between Spaces explores the coast as a liminal (in-between) space: a constantly shifting and often indeterminate space that changes over seasonal, tidal and historical cycles. The installation uses digital technologies to manipulate and reimagine the coast through a series of mapping and collection strategies (audio field recordings, 19. Robert Strachan and Sam Wiehl In-Between Spaces, 2015 Film and audio field recording loop

video, digital rendering of sea organisms, GPS mapping of the dunes and beach) to create an imaginary landscape based upon the enormous breadth of scale encountered on the Sefton Coast. Blurring the boundaries between the natural and the digital, sea, wind and bird sounds become harmonic drones; the coast’s natural phenomena are rendered into highly stylised or abstract geometric forms. The piece deliberately plays with ideas of scale where digital renders of diatoms (single cell algae which are important in the coast’s ecosystem) morph into the minutiae of the area’s plant life through to the macro geography of its coastal contours.

126

20. Tim Collier (see figure 29, p.47) Football and Pink-footed Geese, 2015 Archival digital print on 310 gsm Marrutt fine art textured paper 150 x 40 cm Produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

21. Mike Collier (see figure 70 to 74, pp.92 to 94) Everything Seen and Heard in a Walk over Two Weekends Along the Sefton Coastal Footpath in 2014 (no 1), 2015 Digital print on paper Four separate pieces; each 126 x 92.5 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative and Emma Tominey

127

22. Tim Collier, Black-tailed Godwits; Ice Reflection, 2015 Archival digital print on 310 gsm HahnemĂźhle photo paper, 90 x 77 cm Produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

128

Names and lists have always fascinated Collier and the three pieces here combine

23, 24 & 25. Tim Collier Wrecks, Sand Banks and Plant Succession, 2015 Archival digital print on 310 gsm Hahnemßhle photo paper

these two elements, along with the photographic image, which is often mute without further context. The sandbanks on this coast have some beautifully evocative names

Three individual pieces total size 130 x 195 cm Produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

and were taken from nautical charts.

129

The plant succession list was taken from Phil Smith’s The Sands of Time: An Introduction to the Sand Dunes of the Sefton Coast.

130

The list of wrecks here are those lost between the years 1863 and 1960 during the age of the steamship.

131

26. Tim Collier, Return of The Avocet, 2015, Archival digital print on 310 Marrutt gsm fine art textured paper Fifteen individual pieces; total size 185 x 111 cm Produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

132

The Avocet (opposite page, no. 26), emblem

German goalkeeper Bert Trautmann was

of the RSPB, is a bird that symbolises,

interned as a Prisoner of War for a short

perhaps more than any other, the successes

time at Fort Crosby during the Second

of conservation over the last seventy or so

World War. Collier and Campbell ‘discovered’

years. Until the early nineteenth century,

the remnants of this site on their walk

although not common, it was a regular

along the Sefton Coast in 2014. Following

breeder on the east coast. The hundred

his brief spell in Sefton, Trautmann was

years between 1840 and 1940 saw only one

transferred to PoW Camp 50 in Ashton-in-

or two breeding records for the whole of

Makerfield, in Lancashire, where in 1948 he

England. Since 1940 however, when public

began playing for St Helens Town, before

access to beaches was heavily restricted,

eventually signing for Manchester City.

they began to breed again, with four pairs at

Trautmann entered footballing folklore with

Minsmere in 1947 and similar numbers at

his performance in the 1956 FA Cup final,

Havergate Island. A slow recovery, in which

when he played the last seventeen minutes of

the RSPB were very instrumental, occurred

the match with a broken neck. At Campbell’s

during the next half century. They first bred

request, the green in this image represents

at RSPB Marshside, here on the northern

the green of the football pitch!

edge of the Sefton Coast, in 2001 and whilst breeding numbers have fluctuated over the years there remains a healthy breeding population with around seventeen pairs having bred this year. A new electric fence will be in place next year to keep foxes out which will hopefully see their fortunes improve again next year. Collier’s treatment of the Avocet prints here clearly locate them in ‘the past’ as a bird that was once only a memory of something lost. The text pieces emphasise the rarity of the bird with quotes being taken from, A Familiar History of Birds by Edward Stanley (1865) and The Birds

27. Mike Collier (artwork) Jake Campbell (words) (see figure 56, p.77) Elegy for Bert Trautmann, 2014/5 Digital print on paper 112 x 35 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative

of the Liverpool Area by Eric Hardy (1941).

133

There are three images here. The first two are drafts of the poem scanned from Campbell’s own notebook. The third is the final version of the finished poem, typeset. The reference here to ‘Starfished’ relates to the so-called Starfish towns, named after initials that stood for ‘Special Fire’ sites. They were commissioned to avoid the kind of disaster that destroyed Coventry during the Blitz.

These dummy towns were sited miles away from communities and cities likely to come under attack. Along their walk in 2014, Collier and Campbell stumbled across the remnants of Operation Starfish at a Second 28. Mike Collier (see figure 75, p.96) Six Birds of the Sefton Coast, 2015 Digital print on paper 98 x 98 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative

World War bombing decoy site at Formby.

29. Mike Collier (artwork) (see figure 57, p.78) Jake Campbell (words) Bootle Organ, 2014/5 Digital print on paper 35 x 112 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative

The Bootle Organ of the title of this poem is a colloquial name for one of the coast’s rarest creatures—the Natterjack Toad.

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Overleaf: Collier has always had a fascination with the visual markers of time within the landscape. Represented in Ancient Sunken Forest and Pre-historic Red Deer Prints (no. 30 & 31), are two remarkable phenomena that can be found along the Sefton Coast; the remains of a sunken forest and preserved footprints held in beds of silt. They are not fossils, but baked-hard prints that have been covered and preserved by shifting sand over millennia. Both are transitory but the red deer footprints more so as, once they are uncovered, they are at the vagaries of the tide and weather in addition to those who use the shore for all manner of activities. The dots and squares in these pieces each represent one year; 7,000 for the red deer prints and 4,000 for the sunken forest, making a visual illustration of the age of both these markers of time. The separation of the black and red graphics represents the division of time into periods and ages. The five bands in the red deer print represent the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages and the modern age from year zero. The three bands in the sunken forest print representing the Bronze, Iron and modern age from year zero.

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30 & 31. Tim Collier Ancient Sunken Forest and Pre-historic Red Deer Prints, 2015 Printed acrylic sheet and archival digital print on 310 gsm Marrutt fine art textured paper Two individual pieces; total size 115 x 145 cm, produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

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137

William Wouldhave was born in South Shields—where Campbell himself hails from.

He is reputed to have ‘invented’ the first lifeboat in 1789 (a claim also made by Henry Slack Tide: William Wouldhave at Formby Lifeboat Station

Greathead), whilst the first Lifeboat Station in the UK was at Formby Point. The coastal

Look what you gave them, Woody: a vessel, yes; keel and beams, a cross-cut dream of how to survive at sea;

dangerous, and the names Chrysopolis and

but to all the others, so much more—

Ionic Star, mentioned in this poem, reference

hope. That men would be gunning down

just two of over 300 ships that have been

ramparts, lifejackets fastened to chins,

wrecked here since 1500.

eyes logged to the Sefton surf as down went the Chrysopolis, down went the Ionic Star.

And what does hope look like?

Like the bright beacons of the volunteer life brigade’s eyes in this photo, Woody— burning as lighthouses in storms, as their first footprints back on the beach.

32. Tim Collier and Jake Campbell (see figure 53, p.73) Words and Image 1—The Sefton Coast, 2015 Two individual pieces; total size 62 x 41 cm Produced in collaboration with SleepVisual

waters off the Sefton Coast are notoriously

33. Jake Campbell Slack Tide: William Wouldhave at Formby Lifeboat Station, 2014/5 Digital print on paper 65 x 50 cm Produced in collaboration with EYELEVEL Creative 16

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34. Tim & Mike Collier and Jake Campbell (See figure 33, p.53) Jellyfish, Bird Sound and Latin Names (Inspired by Diatoms), 2015 Archival digital print on 310 gsm HahnemĂźhle photo paper Two individual pieces; total size 200 x 130 cm Produced in collaboration with SleepVisual and EYELEVEL Creative

139

This piece grew organically and was

On showing the piece to his brother Mike,

inspired by a visit the Colliers, Campbell and

there was an immediate response to mimic

Strachan made to the Botany Department

the form of the photographs and produce

in the World Museum in Liverpool. They

a mirrored piece that would carry bird

hadn’t been aware of diatoms before

sound within the circular forms. Together,

but were struck by both their form and

the repeated visual form of the two pieces

function and the way they were held and

(acknowledging the diatoms) begins to

presented as specimens, and catalogued

bring elements of natural history together

using their Latin nomenclature. While on

that are found on the Sefton Coast. Campbell

the coast after this visit, Tim found himself

further suggested that the following text

walking through a mass of sun dried Moon

be lifted from one of his poems and set

Jellyfish and began to photograph them,

alongside the artwork. It nicely references

seeing them immediately as the specimen

the repetition of form and scale from the

diatom slides he had seen in the museum.

macro to the micro in the work.

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141

B I OGR A PHI ES JAKE CAMPBELL

MIKE COLLIER

Jake Campbell was born in South Shields in 1988. His debut pamphlet of poetry, Definitions of Distance, was published by Red Squirrel Press in 2012; his second, The Coast Will Wait Behind You, will follow from Art Editions North alongside the launch of Ghosts of the Restless Shore. A recipient of New Writing North’s Andrew Waterhouse Award, Campbell has worked with a range of artists on multidisciplinary projects, from devising and curating TEDxYouth@TyneBridge, the North-East’s first youth-led TEDx event, to collaborating with theatre directors, actors, dancers and photographers on projects from South Africa to Wallsend.

His poems, short stories and reviews have appeared in a number of national and international print and online journals and periodicals, and he has taught as a visiting lecturer in the University of Chester’s English Department as well as being a workshop leader for Cuckoo Young Writers. He co-founded the poetry magazine, Butcher’s Dog, and in September 2015 will begin an AHRC-funded PhD in Creative Writing at Newcastle University.

Dr. Mike Collier is a lecturer, writer, curator and artist. He studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College before being appointed Gallery Manager at the ICA in London. He subsequently became a freelance curator and arts organiser, working extensively in the UK and abroad and initiated many major exhibitions whilst working at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (from 1985 to 1993), including the Tyne International. Throughout his career, Collier has maintained his artistic practice. Much of his work is based around walking—through the city, the countryside and urban Edgelands. He integrates image and text, often drawing on the poetic qualities of colloquial names for places, plants and birds.

In 2010 he co-founded WALK (Walking, Art, Landskip and Knowledge), a research centre at the University of Sunderland which looks at the way we creatively engage with the world as we walk through it. He has been responsible for a number of high-profile exhibitions under the auspices of WALK including co-curating Walk On: From Richard Long to Janet Cardiff—40 Years of Art Walking, an exhibition which toured - Walking Poets (an exhibition the UK in 2013/4; Wordsworth and Basho: of manuscripts by William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Matsuo Basho and Yosa Buson shown alongside newly commissioned work by twenty leading contemporary artists from the UK and Japan, Dove Cottage 2014 and touring to Japan in 2016). He is also a Co-Director of the publisher Art Editions North. Collier is currently Reader in Fine Art at the University of Sunderland.

142

TIM COLLIER

JOHN DEMPSEY

Tim Collier studied photography at both West Surrey College of Art and Design and Harrow Institute. Initially he worked within the documentary tradition on projects that ranged from living with and recording rural communities to documenting the ‘tramp’ coaster trade in the British shipping industry. More recently he has turned his attention to photographing the landscape and natural history of both Scotland and Wales.

John Dempsey works on the Sefton coast with the local authority’s Coast and Countryside Team. He is currently seconded to the Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership, which promotes the culture and natural history of the area. He has recorded and enjoyed the flora, fauna and history of the Sefton coast for more than four decades (as his longsuffering wife Sarah will attest) and regularly leads walks and events with the Partnership, which are aimed at getting more people to enjoy, value and respect this remarkable landscape. Before he escaped to the dunes, he worked as a journalist for twenty three years, publishing Wild Merseyside, a guide to the region’s natural history, in 2009. Dempsey also wrote the Liverpool Daily Post’s Country Matters column, taking it on after the death of its legendary creator and natural historian extraordinaire, Eric Hardy. Publications for the Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership include Sefton’s Wild Flowers and Beachcombing for the Weird and Wonderful.

Dempsey also produces a popular blog detailing encounters with wildlife locally and further afield (johndempseybirdblog.wordpress. com), and is currently working on a guide to the coast for the Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership, due for publication in 2016. https://www.facebook.com/seftoncoast https://twitter.com/theseftoncoast

His large collection of images, primarily from Wales (where he now lives and works), explores the unique qualities of light that are continually changing both the character and formal relationships of the landscape.

He has also worked on a series of images that documents the power and mystery behind prehistoric sites in and beyond Wales.

He is currently developing two major pieces of work; Birds Eloquent, which explores the relationship of bird behaviour to both habitat and place, and Rhiwlas 35 years on which involves taking his archive of images shot in 1980 back to the community for comprehensive documentation.

Collier ran a photographic tour company for a number of years taking groups to the islands of Scotland and Wales, in addition to working with the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust providing one-day photographic courses, and this complemented his time in part-time photographic education at the University of South Wales. He has published three books to date and continues to play a role in contemporary photographic practice in Wales.

He now works as a freelance photographer on various projects and commissions, all related to his respect of the land.

143

GERALDINE REID

ROBERT STRACHAN

Geraldine grew up in Lydiate and spent her childhood exploring the Sefton and North Wales coastlines and their diverse wildlife. These formative experiences with marine life led her to study Marine Biology and Botany at Bangor University. She went on to work at Sherkin Island Marine Station monitoring marine plankton. Inspired by the intricacies and importance of aquatic ’plant’ life, she specialised in diatoms, taking up a post at the Natural History Museum in London to work on the British Marine Diatom Flora and undertaking a PhD in diatom taxonomy. Geraldine spent eighteen years at the Natural History Museum in various roles researching and curating the diatom collections. She has named and described many new species which she discovered on her field-trips collecting diatoms from around the world.

She has recently returned to Liverpool to take up the post of Head of Botany at the World Museum.

Dr. Robert Strachan is a lecturer based in the School of Music at the University of Liverpool. He has published numerous articles on a variety of aspects of popular music culture including DIY music cultures, electronic music and creativity, the history of British black music and music and audiovisual media. He is co-editor of The Beat Goes On: Liverpool, Popular Music and the Changing City (Liverpool University Press, 2010) and his monograph on music technology and creativity ‘Sonic Affordance’ will be published by Bloomsbury in 2016. Strachan is also an active musician and sound artist. His interests currently lie at the intersection of electronica, drone and sound art.

Recent collaborative work includes audiovisual installations exhibited at the Wordsworth Trust, Liverpool Biennial, the Bluecoat and FACT. He also has a track record in exploring the use of digital audio technologies in one-off hybrid performances including work at METAL, FutureEverything, AND Festival and Tate Liverpool. His two collaborative performances of Blue Remix with the Swiss performance artist Yann Marussich (including the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow) formed part of a project which would receive the award of Distinction: Hybrid Art at the 2008 Prix Ars Electronica. Strachan’s collaborative album with the pianist Anni Hogan ‘Mountain’ was released by Cold Spring records in 2011. His music and commentary have been heard on a variety of radio stations including a broadcast live set and interview for BBC Radio 3 and a central role in documentaries on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 4.

144

STEPHEN WHITTLE

SAM WIEHL

Stephen Whittle is a museum and gallery curator who has worked in the sector for over twenty years. After studying Fine Art at Stirling University and at the Courtauld Institute, Whittle has worked at several art galleries around the north-west of England, notably the Harris Museum & Art Gallery in Preston, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Gallery Oldham and the University of Salford. He is currently Principal Manager, Museum, Galleries & Operations at The Atkinson in Southport. Whittle has published extensively on British art and has a particular interest in regional artists, ranging from the 18th century Devis family of painters to Northern School artists such as Harry Rutherford and Theodore Major. Recent projects include Elemental, an exhibition of drawings by Antony Gormley; Footprints, a series of artist's commissions along the Sefton Coast; and The Atkinson’s new Heritage Lottery-funded museum development, Between Land and Sea.

Sam Wiehl is an artist predominantly working in the visualisation of sound. His work exists at the intersection of image and tone and takes in many forms, often focusing on live performance and installation, with a view to creating immersive experiences for an audience. Recent commissions include Tate Britain, Unsound Multimedia Festival in Krakow, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial, FutureEverything, AND Festival, Supersonic Festival, FACT, The Reader Organisation, Metal and The Bluecoat. He has collaborated with a number of experimental musicians including Plaid, Matthew Herbert, Chris Watson, Forest Swords, Vessel and the Immix Ensemble, Hookworms and Bill Ryder Jones, producing live installations and visual sets. Sam is one of the Directors of the annual Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia which showcases experimental music and visual art, bringing artists and audiences from all over the world.

Alongside these projects, he is also part of Static Gallery in Liverpool and part of Product—a ‘highly commercial’ art/music collective, which he runs with Paul Sullivan, Ade Blackburn and Hartley, of the band Clinic. Product has carried out a number of live installations across Europe and released a number of recordings.

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ACK N OW LEDGEM EN TS A project such as this involves many people in its realisation.

This project has received considerable public support from a number of organisations and individuals which I gratefully acknowledge,

From The Atkinson I would like to thank the Curators, Jane Brown and

including Arts Council England, Sefton Council, the University of

Stephen Whittle, for their support, professional help and enthusiasm;

Sunderland, Liverpool University, the Heritage Lottery Fund (for

and from the University of Sunderland, I would like to thank Graeme

Walking Through the Sands of Time) and Sheila Collier.

Thompson (Dean), Professor Kevin Petrie, Professor Arabella Plouviez, Charlotte Emmerson and Fiona Belsay who have supported the project

I and my fellow artists have gained considerable insight and knowledge

in all its various stages.

from reading The Sands of Time: An Introduction to the Sand Dunes of the Sefton Coast by Phil Smith and I am grateful to Phil for allowing us to

I have especially appreciated the invaluable and generous help of John

use the title of his book to publicise the walk along the Sefton Coast

Dempsey from the Sefton Coast Landscape Partnership. John has

in 2104 (Walking Through the Sands of Time) which sparked this project

supported this project from the start and has engaged with its aims and

off. I would also like to thank the various landowners who manage

objectives wholeheartedly. It would be fair to say that none of us (the

the fabulous coastline we walked through—Sefton Council, Natural

artists) could have achieved what we have without John’s tremendous

England, the National Trust, the RSPB and Lancashire Wildlife Trust

enthusiasm and willingness to share his passion for the Sefton Coast.

as well as, specifically, Alex Pigott and Nick Godden of the RSPB Marshside. Thanks are also due to Dave Hardaker for his help and

Similarly, I would like to thank Dr. Geraldine Reid and Wendy

support leading up to and during the filming of the project for the BBC

Atkinson in the Botany Department at the World Museum in

programme ‘Countryfile’, and to Fiona Sunners (Sefton Coast Landscape

Liverpool, who so generously ‘opened up’ their wonderful collection

Partnership) for her support behind the scenes on the walk along the

to the artists. The visits we made to the Museum sparked lively and

coast in 2014.

enthusiastic discussions and resulted in the learning and sharing of new knowledge as well as the creation of new work. I am thrilled that

I am particularly grateful to the poet, Jean Sprackland, who has

we have been able to borrow and show a number of herbarium sheets

written the foreword to this catalogue. Jean’s book (Strands—A Year of

from their collection.

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Arnaud Moinet and Tim Collier celebrate completing the installation of the exhibition

Discoveries on the Beach) proved to be a touchstone and source

Finally, and most importantly, my thanks to the artists (Jake

of continued inspiration for the artists as this project

Campbell, Tim Collier and Robert Strachan) in the exhibition

developed and grew.

who initially bought into the idea behind this project; who walked with me along the Sefton Coast in July 2014 and

I would also like to thank my colleague Manny Ling for the

who took part in the Symposium in April 2015 that led

design of this catalogue and to our copyeditor and proofreader, Frances

to some of the collaborative projects on display in the exhibition and

Arnold, who accepted the challenge of working with me on another

here in the catalogue. Thanks also to Sam Wiehl whose collaboration

catalogue. A special thank-you, too, to Arnuad Moinet, whose technical

with Robert Strachan resulted in the powerful and immersive audio-

assistance has been so professional, thorough and comprehensive, and

visual installation, In-Between Spaces. All the work in this exhibition

without whose unstinting and good-humoured support the exhibition

has been newly commissioned especially for the show Ghosts of the

would not have happened. Thanks also to Esen Kaya, Curator, Visual

Restless Shore. I would also like to thank the artists who wrote essays

Arts at the Customs House in South Shields for her work on Jake

for this catalogue (Jake Campbell, Tim Collier and Robert Strachan) as

Campbell’s new pamphlet which has been published to coincide with

well as Stephen Whittle, for his erudite and fascinating essay about

this exhibition and catalogue. It is a pamphlet of ‘two halves’; the first

the social and natural history of the Sefton Coast and John Dempsey

half about the Sefton Coast, the second half about South Shields where

for his wonderfully evocative and lyrical essay about his experiences

Campbell was born and grew up.

as a naturalist on the coast. And, finally, thanks to my colleagues in WALK, Janet Ross and natural historian Keith Bowey whose continued

I am especially grateful to SleepVisual for the design work of a number

and unselfish support at various stages of this project was greatly

of the artworks as well as our website; and Emma Tominey, EYELEVEL

appreciated. Their work in the background on projects such as this is

Creative, Erin Dickson and Tina Webb for their collaborative design

invaluable and I couldn’t manage without it!

work and screen printing with me.

Mike Collier, August 2015

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Wheatear on bombed rubble, Hightown.