Serendipity, art and study : A visit to see "Ghosts of the Restless Shore "

One of the laments that I used to hear in relation to the rise of the internet, which I did agree with for a while, was that it might interfere with our positive experiences of serendipity. Those of us who love to handle actual books and be amongst them, invest them with a tangible power to lead us to the knowledge we require. If this sounds slightly mystical, then that is my intention. I still tend to think of the book as an object and an object of power. Being in a good library has infinite potential. Without the physical presence of books, how could I be led in the right direction ?

However, as I use the internet and my Kindle more and more, I begin to see how creative serendipity can be extended by using technology and "real" resources in tandem. I set out on a tentative exploration of how a careful oscillation between the two can reproduce and perhaps enhance the way I used to uncover things.

A particular instance arose that started me thinking about this: Searching for art colleges who provide the traditional art foundation course as an integral part of the art degree; (I won't state the reason here to keep the tale concise), I came across the art department at Sunderland University where I read that one of the people heading their foundation course is Dr Mike Collier who describes his interests and concerns as being informed by phenomenology and focussed on walking. This caught my attention since I am interested in both walking and making art, so, I searched for his personal website which I discovered to be well set out, showing examples of his art and written work, along with the exhibitions he has curated and the projects he initiates. I was inspired by all aspects of his work, particularly the W.A.L.K. research centre that he has helped to establish with other artists at Sunderland University and aims to be :

" 'custodian' and critical friend for the practice of 'art walking' and the relationship of 'art walking' to the practice of painting, sculpture, photography, music and performance. "

Reading about this and all the interesting projects, exhibitions and collaborations that Mike Collier has been and is involved with, I was particularly struck by the fact he had instigated an art project which involved walking along the Sefton coast in Merseyside last summer (2014).

Now, serendipitous elements came into play. My Dad was born in Formby, which is situated along this part of the coast. My Mum and her family were evacuated there during WWII and, as a result, met my Dad. Growing up, like Mike Collier's family, my family would regularly visit various places along this coast at weekends, since we lived, just some twenty something miles away.

I noted that the resulting work from the walk was currently being exhibited at the Atkinson Art Centre in Southport and decided that I should visit. The journey to the exhibition would be, in itself, a personal odyssey. This might sound slightly morbid, but the last time I visited that area was probably more than a decade ago to lay flowers on my family's grave in Ainsdale cemetery. It's a journey I have wanted to take since, but hadn't to date. It now seemed that another compelling reason had appeared, serendipitously, to draw me to that area.

Arriving in Southport at one end of Lord Street, I was surprised by it's generous width and length. As a family, we had tended to stick to the beaches along the Sefton coast and Southport pleasure beach when visiting and rarely visited the town itself. On the Southport website, Lord Street is described as the major thoroughfare of the town; " a wide road running north-south mainly with shops on the west side and gardens and public buildings on the east side." It also points out the lovely ornate feature of the wrought iron and glass verandahs to the front of most of the shops, together with the astounding fact that Louis Napoleon III is said to have lived in exile here for a while and was inspired by Lord Street to re-design medieval Paris in its image !!!!!

The Atkinson Art Gallery and library is one of the listed public buildings along Lord Street and presents a very grand front with its late nineteenth century mixed architectural style, built in warm sandstone ashlar. I like the generosity of space inside this type of building; when you enter, you feel the interior opening out around and above you. It always provides a little shiver of anticipation when I go to an art exhibition in such a building and can look up to the ceiling above a wide, grand staircase.

Ghosts of the Restless Shore was exhibited on the second floor in a cosy cul-de-sac room, well lit and only slightly forbidding by virtue of the plaintive sound track emanating from the purpose built viewing cube situated in its middle. I knew there was a video playing in there and I thought I would save it until I had looked at the rest of the work . The soundscape was already adding another sensory dimension as I walked round.

I decided to read the exhibition like a book and start from the left. The first exhibit is beautiful and simple; a print comprising a navy blue square with white dots implying stars in a night sky (or it might be an actual photograph printed), overprinted in white with a circle formed of the repeated phrase : " errrrrrp ". Now I could see that there's an umlaut over the first e and I also know Mike Collier is interested in language, so it could be that this is to afford accuracy to the sound this word refers to, or it could be a little joke. The word describes the mating call of the "Birkdale Nightingale" which is, we learn from the information under its title, the local name for the Natterjack Toad that is so prolific in this area. The description reads :

" The Sefton coast is an important breeding ground for one of the UK's rarest and noisiest amphibians, the Natterjack Toad. It's ratcheting mating night-time call has brought it two local nicknames: the Birkdale Nightingale and the Bootle Organ. "

I love this. The nicknames are so typical of Scouse humour and facility with words.

The circle is a simple and true metaphor for the repetition of the toad's call. It's form portrays endless repetition. Sequences of sound and inference of direction, appropriate to the walking activity being described I think are evoked simply and effectively by the way words are laid out in other pieces of Mike Collier's work. But this is all supposition and personal interpretation.

I won't comment on every piece since that would probably make a book, so the next work I'll move on to is another by Mike Collier, which appeals to me because it is a large piece printed on panes of glass. Aware of the Sunderland connection, I imagine that it has been printed in the Sunderland Glass Museum, where first rate glass making and embellishing facilities are housed and where Sunderland University bases its excellent foundation course in its spacious basement, among other courses in glass-making, ceramics and printing. I have visited there several times and found its location over the River Wear and near to the ancient church of St Peter's extremely interesting and visually exciting.

Looking at this piece, entitled " 48 flowers of the Sefton Coast 2015 ", I note that there is a coherence to the framing of all the work in the exhibition that this piece draws its own internal coherence from. Let me explain ; a lot of the works, like this one, have been framed in same simple white frames which helps to harmonise the overall effect. This is appropriate since the exhibition is the result of a collaborative project undertaken by two visual artists, a poet and a sound artist and led by a natural historian. The effect of the predominance of the white frames, together with the serene, natural colours of the work, is one of calm. However, it would be bland if everything was framed in the same way. In fact, it wouldn't be appropriate for some of the works, and so, the occasional use of plain glass, thin black, or plain wood, punctuates the gentle colours effectively.

This lovely large work, reminiscent of a window or series of windows, is a delicious feast of mouthwatering colour, each pane depicting a plant encountered on the walk. The engravings on the glass I read are reproduced from a very beautiful book of woodblock prints by Walter Hood Fitch from the early twentieth century and each mounted in front of a colour which I imagine describes some aspect of that plant. " Illustrations of the British Flora" by W H Fitch and W G Smith, is open next to the work to display one of the wonderful prints created by Walter Fitch which has made this book such an invaluable guide in identifying the flowers along the coast. I am astounded and delighted both by the fact that 48 different flowers were found and also the quality of the illustrations in the book. I am also excited to have been given the opportunity to search for this book myself. I make a note of the book and the authors and feel my palms pricking with the old magpie magic.

I study each work in order as it is displayed and read the inscriptions carefully. There is a lot to take in. Each person taking part in this collaboration is an expert in their field. As I stand infront of "Jellyfish, Birdsong and Latin Names", a collaborative piece between Tim Collier, Mike Collier, visual artists, and Jake Campbell, poet, I feel drawn into the detail of the landscape that is being described. The piece is inspired by diatoms, which I have since been able to look up and marvel at. They are beautiful, delicate single cell algae, originating even before the Jurassic period, and forming a very important component of the food chain in our oceans. The work combines detailed photographs of their forms on the sand, printed within rectangular shapes reminiscent of microscope slides, set out in a neat row, and reflected underneath by an echoing row of the same shapes, on which are circles of varying sizes describing the birdsong heard in the area. Their different sizes I imagine are a visual indication of their varying volume. The two rows of printed"slides" are complemented at the side by Jake Campbell's own poetic reflections; four "meditations", inviting us to;

 " Make the world look small, finite, precious."    "Make the world look huge, infinite, endless."


  "Make yourself look huge, infinite, endless."      "Make yourself look small, finite, precious."

These four thoughts draw our attention to what is being shown and how it might affect our perceptions. And I think his words are accurate. Botany and the study of nature does affect our sense of ourselves and the world we live in in these particular ways.

When I come upon the work entitled " Ancient Sunken Forest 2015 .Pre Historic Red Deer Prints 2015" by Tim Collier, my fingers start to twitch. Over a decade ago I heard a programme on Radio 4 about pre-historic footprints which appear in the sands of Formby beach when the tide goes out. I didn't really understand the physical ramifications of this at all and so dragged my family over there to take a look. We were not successful sadly, largely due to a mishap with understanding the car-park opening/closing times which I won't go into, but this piece of work reminds me of that time of intense desire to go back and re-discover a landscape that my parents knew was special and which holds ancient secrets waiting to be found.

In this piece of work, Tim Collier has taken two photographs, one of the blackened remains of 4000 year old trees and the other of red deer prints from approximately 6000 years ago which reveal themselves at low tide along the sands of this coast. Each image is framed in glass, and to depict the age of each fossil, Tim Collier has used coloured dots and squares which have been etched on the glass. These are two of the works that have not been framed, but simply make use of the glass to define their edge. Each line of dots or small squares represent 100 years and once you understand this, the extreme age of each fossil becomes apparent. The dots and squares are a simple and effective way of representing number, and maybe I wouldn't be stretching the metaphor too thinly if I said it brings to mind the use of stones for representing things as an ancient way of counting. Although the aesthetics of this work are perhaps not immediately appealing in terms of materials and colour, once the meaning behind the composition is understood, its logic forms its particular aesthetic and it's simplicity seems correct. It sets me thinking about ways in which the passage of time could be implied visually and also about the enigma of not understanding the life history of things we come across in the landscape. One of the important effects of such an exhibition is to illustrate the complexity which is intrinsic to the landscape and how our appreciation of it and the pleasure we derive from it can be enhanced by research and study.

The poem entitled "Bootle Organ" written by Jake Campbell and set out in three parts by Mike Collier, making use of colour to portray the themes of the poem; fire in the night, is similar to a sea shanty in its form and I think, if I interpret it correctly, tells the moving tale of fires being lit along the beaches of this coast at night during the second World War air raids in an attempt to draw the bombers away from Liverpool. Jake Campbell draws several themes together delicately here; the history of sailing and wrecks in these parts, the sound of the Natterjack Toad's mating call in the night and the fires lit by the home guard who might have lay hiding in the sands alongside the toads . I found the physical and written imagery in this piece of work very evocative and moving. The closing lines show the nub of it ;

" Stay low lads, stay starfished:
  stay silent and wait. They'll be gone

 When the Natterjack's mating call
 goes up like a siren. "


As I find myself at the door to the viewing cube, I peep in through the darkness and see some images of sand dunes so familiar to me. I make to go in, but hesitate when I notice that there is a couple with their arms around each other occupying the small sofa in front of the screen, so I retreat, thinking I will return when they leave.

I turn my attention to a lovely, funny composition by Tim Collier entitled " Football and Pink Footed Geese 2015" which features a photograph of pink footed geese congregating in the mouth of the goal on a football pitch, the back and front of a football programme for a match between Liverpool FC and Middlesborough, together with his birdwatching journal from when he was a lad. It seems to me that here he had summed himself up as a native of the area he has been depicting; the nature loving footy fan. Very apt and most probably a common combination of interests for people born and bred along this part of the coast. The touch of humour and obvious pride in his team are also typical I know and I suddenly feel really at home in this exhibition. It describes things I like, it draws attention to things I think are important; the environment, social history, the power of language, the potential of art to portray the nature of them.

The exhibition continued round the corner, comprising other works of great interest such as Tim Collier's wide sepia views of the coast with descriptions of shipwrecks that have been part of the history of this part of the coast. By this time, if you didn't know the area so intimately as the creators in this exhibition, you would probably be truly shocked by the richness to be found there. When you walk without knowledge, I remember it can feel quite a bleak and empty place.

If you haven't guessed by now, I found this exhibition a very stimulating experience. I would say that it is an equivalent experience to the activity of "art walking" in that it commands of the viewer to be aware of and open to a range of different types of information and to make connections between them, such as the creatures or plants observed, their colour and shape, the sounds they make, their natural history, the local history and the language used and which can be used to describe them. The works are complex and detailed which is a true reflection of the landscape and the wildlife. You gather information from the works in the exhibition in the same way as you would on such a walk I think.

I have encountered many new ideas, information and themes which resonate with my own interests and which I can pursue in my own time and this has satisfied my desire to come across knowledge serendipitously. I have since downloaded a copy of "Illustrations of the British Flora" by WH Fitch and WG Smith as I am interested in plants and also in printing. This is just a start. I'm searching for a good, appropriate book on phenomenology which I hope will help direct and focus my thinking and I will be returning to the area in the summer to see if I can see the ancient sunken forest and the footprints in the sand. I may even attempt to document it in my own particular way, with words and images. A vista of possibilities have opened before me.

Before I go, I pop my head into the "cube" again. The couple are still canoodling and so I decide to give it a miss. At least I was able to listen to the soundscape as I looked at the works outside the cube. Maybe another time, it's a long journey home ...........



Many, many  thanks to all those involved.


This description has been derived from my own personal reflections and will no doubt contain many errors of fact about the work involved. I will correct these if they come to my attention and apologise in advance to the creators of the exhibition. If anyone should want to study the works and read about the ideas behind the ideas behind them, then you will find the following website informative and lovely to look at:

                                www.ghosts-of-the-restless-shore.co.uk