Update on SAW  - March & April 2012

Marking Time in Bedford River Valley Park
In March SAW strode out into Bedford River Valley Park, through the mist and into sunshine, from Willington Dovecote to Priory Country Park along the cycle path (Route 55). Jeremy Oetgen of Albion Archaeology was our guide, helping us to examine the landscape for clues as to its ancient past.


Bedford River Valley Park



This recently-designated 2000 acre site to the east of Bedford, traversed by the course of the Victorian, Bedford to Cambridge railway and created largely by gravel quarrying hides a wealth of history. Excavations have revealed Bronze and Iron Age burial mounds, medieval remains and evidence for a Roman road.






Re-Making the Dead?
SAW have been busy in the last year, helping staff at The Higgins Art Gallery & Museum, Bedford to think about how they might re-create a display of an excavated Saxon burial. 


This exhibit will form part of the archaeology section of a gallery, currently known as 'The Collectors' Gallery'. The 'Collector's Gallery' is designed to highlight the breadth and diversity of The Higgins' collections and pose questions about collecting and collections.

We hope the burial display will help to explain and compare, how antiquarians used to discover about people who lived in the past and how archaeologists now help us to learn about the past through archaeology, through the things we find and the contexts in which artefacts occur. 

Prize - Surprise!
The Bronze Arts Award candidates have received their certificates - and they were a bit shocked, because they didn't know it was going to happen - sorry folks!  


Well done again!
















That's the Ticket!

Roman Bath-house wall - Jewry Wall Museum

Last weekend, SAW travelled to (chilly), Leicester to visit the Roman remains and Jewry Wall Museum and had an fact-filled tour of historic Leicester by Peter Liddell, Community Archaeologist. Peter explained how successive excavations have revealed and continue to reveal, Leicester's settlement since the Bronze Age. 

The Guildhall - Leicester

   We saw how the centre of the city had 
   moved from the river towards the east but 
    that throughout history, Leicester or in Latin
   - "Ratae Coritanorum", had retained its 
   importance as a regional seat of power.


   Peter took us to the Guildhall where it is 
   thought Shakespeare might have played and
   he showed us Leicester Castle's Great Hall, 
   a hidden Norman building, - sadly we were
   not able to go inside this time, but I'm sure 
   we'll return to Leicester, as there's much, 
   much, more to see.




   Many thanks to Helen for arranging the visit, 
   and to Peter for showing us around.

Artefacts, Arts & Craft 

Grayson Perry - The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman - Review

I wanted to see this exhibition by artist Grayson Perry at the British Museum, as I had heard good things about it from several sources, including a recommendation from our Arts Award moderator. As an artist who has undertaken an arts residency in a museum myself, I was interested to see how an artist who had won the Turner Prize (2003), had responded to the British Museum’s collections.

Perry was given access to the stores of the British Museum, where he selected a number of artefacts that attracted his attention and piqued his interest. The resulting exhibition comprises a selection of these artefacts paired with artworks in a variety of media, that he has produced in response. The sculptures, ceramics, works on paper and textiles that he created, are all very well made and incorporate text and images that make pointed commentary on the world in which we now live. 

The exhibition is organised into four areas coming under the lose grouping of, our dealings with death and remembrance, mapping and pilgrimage, fertility and, life as a journey.

Perry seems to be interested in how much our world is overwhelmed with ‘products’, the amount of things we seem to need for our daily existence in comparison with the times of our ancestors and predecessors. He dramatically shows this in his creation of ‘father’ and ‘mother’ pilgrim figures, made of cast iron and shown carrying an inordinate amount of ‘clobber’ - not usual for those travelling long distances on foot.

I admire his wit and re-working of the craft and tradition of pot-making, using his ceramics to mark events, make comments and made as ‘souvenirs’, but in a contemporary context, though I don’t actually like his aesthetic, I think I feel ‘less is more’... It’s something about the works being over rich, it’s just my opinion, but to me they are over elaborate and lacking balance and beauty, - probably exactly how our image-overwhelmed world should be represented.

Texts with the exhibits come in the form of very personal comments explaining why he chose the artefact and what it means to him. Written as spoken, Grayson Perry has a distinctive voice and it was like having him standing alongside you as you looked at the exhibit, as if he was like a friend accompanying you to the exhibition, sharing an aside. 

What’s important I think, is that by putting the British Museum’s items in a art exhibition context, their prime presentation is re-defined (at least temporarily), as cultural objects created by people, rather than artefacts forming part of a national collection. Interestingly, the artefacts don’t loose anything for being exhibited in this way, if anything their inherent power was strengthened next to Perry’s works, by the very simplicity of their forms.

I was looking forward to buying a copy of the exhibition catalogue, my usual souvenir of a ‘pilgrimage’ to an engaging exhibition, but I was disappointed. My impression of the catalogue was of a large book of poorly ‘cut out’ images with bad colour reproduction - it didn’t tempt me at all! If there was another version of the catalogue, I didn’t see it and all the merchandise felt rather ‘thin’; I would have preferred to have seen a well-produced, large image reproduction booklet, showing each of the artefacts paired with their artworks, rather than this over-blown orange-tinged tome.

I enjoyed seeing this personal evocation of meaning, but it didn’t change my life, (I’ve been to exhibitions that have), but it did make me think what artefacts I would choose and it did bring the hidden maker to mind. More importantly, the exhibition that shows art and artefact side by side in a museum, made me think again about our definitions of ‘art’ and ‘craft’, how the meanings are different in museum and in gallery contexts. It also made me question how we see artefacts away from their place of origin, as well as where in fact, contemporary ‘art’ as we know it, has come from.

Susannah

http://bri.mu/r0v6jH

http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/grayson_perry.aspx

Exhibition closes 26th February, 2012.

SAW 5 Achieve Their Arts Award


It gives me great pleasure to announce that all 5 SAW Arts Award candidates, achieved their Bronze Arts Award on Saturday 11th February. Very well down to Aidan, Charlie, Jack, John and Oliver for completing the challenge and producing such unusual, exciting and individual portfolios!

Wednesday 25th October 2011 My trip to Aylesbury, and the Samurai exhibition.

I went to Aylesbury on the 25th of October 2011, we went because of the Samurai exhibition, as I thought it would be useful, as for my project, I am studying medieval Japan and Leather working, and as the Samurai incorporated both into their armour it was a win-win.
I found the Samurai exhibition very interesting, as although we could not take photographs, II drew many of the exhibits. They had a great deal of Japanese artefacts, Including full sets of Samurai armour, Katanas (swords), Kabutos (Helmets), and many more.
The displays were very well laid out, allowing almost unrestricted vision to the cases and their artefacts, and this was good as it allowed me to see all of the artefacts and exhibits.

I liked all of the exhibits, but my favourite was the Katanas, as they had quite a lot of these, and some of them were in pieces, which allowed us to see how they were made up, which I found fascinating. I also learnt a lot about leather armour, and how samurai armour was the first ever example of bullet-proof armour, as it contained a “sandwich” effect of leather-steel-leather.
I also purchased a book, which told me all about the exhibits as well as giving me lots of information on Ancient Japan. This also proved useful, as it had some good information of how the Japanese tanned their leather, as well as how they made it into armour.

Veni, vidi, Pompeii!

Oliver's review of his visit to the historic Bay of Naples, in October.

 

Frozen in time.

Last half-term I had a holiday to the Amalfi coast, or the bay of Naples where Pompeii and Herculaneum is. On the first day I visited the very famous Pompeii and was amazed at the quality and quantity of what remained. I thought that, compared to British archaeology was very impressive. The highlight of Pompeii was the incredible bathhouse which was brilliant to see how a bathhouse really looked.

Pompeiian street with Mt. Vesuvius in the background.

On the second day we went to the National Museum of Archaeology in Naples. Naples was not a very nice place to say the least ! When we finnaly got to the museum I was a little disappointed. Many of the things I wanted to see, I could not because the Italian way of keeping a museum is very different to a British way. If they want to they just close off a gallery which is really annoying when you have gone there to see specific things.



Naples Museum



But on the third day was the highlight, when we went to Herculaneum. I thought that Herculaneum was alot better than Pompeii because the level of preservation was so much better. The wood was still all there. A olive press, rope and a pair of partition doors still remained from 2000 years ago. It was not as big as Pompeii because they have only excavated less than a quarter of the town.

I really enjoyed my holiday to Pompeii and would suggest it to anyone who wanted to go, but I would not suggest the National Museum of Naples because of the city and the Italian atitude to keeping a museum.

Oliver

Now Yule Be Ready For Christmas

...If you came to SAW last Saturday!

We did some practical cultural and historical background research - in other words we did lots of Christmassy things!
Wiebke explained what Advent really means and how it's celebrated in some European countries. We made and decorated stockings, pomanders, straw stars and woven paper sweetie bags and then eveyone had a hot Chrismas drink and celebratory food.

Thanks to all Santa's little helpers and a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

See you in 2012 - new season dates to follow soon. In the meantime, you might like to look at a few pictures from 2011.

Gallery

All best wishes,
Susannah

Knots and Pongs!

Dyeing and Weaving session at Priory Coutry Park Visitor Centre, led by Chris Dobson.

It's no wonder dyers and tanners used to live on the outskirts of the town! At SAW in November we took a whiff of some of the pongs created by natural dyestuffs and the 'mordants' - natural salts, such as alum, that were used to make the colour permanent - to me, wool soaking in a weld solution smelt a bit like drains and old socks combined!

Chris showed us all the colours you can make from a small number of plants: Weld, a plant with little yellow flowers produces striking yellows through to mild greens; the root of the Madder plant makes deep reds to red-browns; onion skins create a range of warm browns and tans; but what is most magical, is watching as wool which has been soaking in woad solution, is lifted out of the water and turns from a murky green into strong blue.

We all helped Chris to prepare the woad plants by ripping up the leaves by hand

 which left us all 'green-fingered'!

Everyone got the chance to create their own dye pot to take home - the longer it's left the stronger the colour - we wait to see who leaves their pot the longest!

Then we got weaving!

Chris showed us examples of different hand looms and 'heads' which twist the threads to make more complicated patterns - some heads are made of wood and some of leather and they come in different shapes with varying numbers of holes.

Most people got themselves in a bit of a tangle trying to understand the deceptively simple craft of 'stick-weaving' - that is using a stick to hold the ends of two colours of wool, in order to hand-weave a braid. It's not as easy as Chris made it look!

On top of all this activity Aidan was filming the session , finding out how everyone was getting on - so we can't wait to see his results.

Despite the knots and pongs, everyone seemed to have a good time, so we say a big 'Thank You' to Chris for all her superb information and for passing on her skills and 'thank you' to Jane and everyone at Priory Country Park for letting us use your facilities and to all the helpers, including 'Jim-the-Camera'.

Next session Saturday, see you there!