Some of my work will be shown at the Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury until 17th December as part of an exhibition entitled: ‘Remembering, We Forget; Poets, Artists and the First World War.’
Exhibition: Remembering We Forget
The Place That’s Always There (Trees)
A new piece for the exhibition in June.
Mine the Mountain 3
New poster for my forthcoming exhibition in June.
Review of Mine the Mountain: Nottingham, UK
By Amanda Mitchell, Nottingham Visual Arts
www.nottinghamvisualarts.net/review/apr-10/mine-mountain-nicholas-hedges
A journey into memory, an acknowledgement of lives that have long since passed, but through their words and images these lives are still very much present in Nicholas Hedges’ Mine the Mountain. There is a sense of passed time and historical presence, a constant reminder that the people you are viewing in the photographs have now gone, leaving me with an eerie sense of voyeurism. Hedges’ collections of photographs represent a lost time and a lost generation. The photographs work together to create a new piece of work, viewed as a whole, not as individual.
The work is in response to the artist’s visits to historical sites, including Auschwitz and Ypres. Hedges draws upon his feelings and thoughts whilst visiting these places to create pieces such as Mine and Correspondence. He is influenced by the impact of sites that have memories of historical trauma as he starts to relate his ideas with his own ancestors in the Welsh mines. With this work he is finding a way to remember people who can be traced back and shown to have existed, if anonymously, as many of the workers at this time were illiterate and would sign their name with a simple ‘X’. This becomes a recurring theme throughout the work; a divider in the postcard piece, a marker for the grave of an unknown soldier.
As an exhibition spectator I feel methodically steered through the work, by the detailed descriptions of the development and history of the pieces, each clearly titled. Although an important contextualisation, I feel almost dictated to, with no room for personal interpretation.
There is much tenderness and sadness inherent in the works as Hedges approaches and deals with this challenging history sensitively; in one piece he uses extracts from the diary of a soldier in the trenches during World War I. The soldier has not been identified, the words are poetic and melancholic, he is a man resigned to his fate. This piece is an acknowledgment of the sacrifice he made, and the sacrifice made by millions of others like him.
This exhibition is a commemoration of the past, a perhaps forgotten story told through provocative photographs and text, it moves and informs you and you cannot leave feeling the same as you did when you entered the exhibition.
Art Must-Sees this Month
Mine the Mountain is listed on Culture24.org‘s list of Must-See Art shows this month. I’m at No.3, just below Richard Hamilton… can’t be bad!
Mine the Mountain 2
This weekend I set up my latest exhibition at Surface Gallery in Southwell Road, Nottingham. It’s a lovely space run by a great group of people (all volunteers) who helped install the show – to them I am very grateful indeed! Below are some photographs of the exhibition. More information on the exhibition can be found on the Mine the Mountain website.
The exhibition runs until 19th March 2010.
Mine the Mountain 2 – Poster
For more information, please visit www.nicholashedges.co.uk/minethemountain
Re-count
I have been reminded by Monika that I really liked an Australian piece shown elsewhere in the city. By Healy and Cordeiro, it comprised thousands of used video cassettes (195,774 according to documentation) arranged in a large block like a kind of tomb on the outside of which a number of the labels (some printed, some handwritten) were visible.
The vast block, displayed in an ecclesiastic setting became a kind of sepulchre in which the recent past was buried. The titles on the outside became like names revealing only a little of what was hidden inside, information which would take – again according to documentation – over 66 years to view. So, Australia was in this respect, excellent.
Mine the Mountain – Installation
On Thursday and Friday this week I installed my two pieces at the Botanic Gardens and Deadman’s Walk as part of my forthcoming exhibition, Mine the Mountain. What was interesting for me was how, even though I’d planned the work and visualised it in my mind, it appeared so different when actually installed – how new connections between the works were made due to the effects of things one wouldn’t have accounted for, such as, for example, the sun. It was also gratifying for me how members of the public, particularly in Deadman’s Walk were interested to know what I was doing, and more importantly, interested in the work and how it fits with the rest of the exhibition. Being able to speak about things directly is one thing of course, having the work do it for you is another.
Quite a few people knew the name ‘Deadman’s Walk’ but few people knew the history behind it, and it was nice to be able to share my knowledge with people directly. Some clearly knew the name and its origins and assumed before I’d even said anything that the names on the plaques were names of Jews; interesting when one considers that the origins of my research were in Auschwitz.
Having completed the work at Deadman’s Walk I walked to the Botanic Gardens to check on the installation there, and on seeing it again, I was struck by how it worked ‘alongside’ the work in the walk, how the two pieces echoed one another. The sun too gave the piece an added dimension, with the veiled mirrors every now and then catching the sun and for a split second flaring up before dying back down again.
It was as if these ‘glares’ were voices, calling out from the past, albeit briefly, asking to be remembered. They were also in my mind metaphors for our own brief lives in contrast the to the unimaginable span of time we call History. And here there is a connection between this piece and that which I will install in the Town Hall Gallery this week, ‘Stars and Very Lights’ which features 150 faces taken from crowd scenes photographed by Henry Taunt in Oxford. Very Lights are flares fired from a pistol, a term I used to reflect the quickness of life set against the backdrop of ‘non-existence’. In this sense, the sun catching the mirrors echoes that completely – something I hadn’t considered before installing the work.