Anne – Anne Whitehead

31 July 20241 August 2024

July

This post forms part of a monthly series that documents the plants growing at The Angel of the North through a series of cyanotypes.

July sees two flowers in bloom at the Angel site that have commemorative significance relating to the two World Wars. The pink spires of the rosebay willowherb wave in the breeze, and this plant is closely associated with the bombed-out sites of World War Two, when it proliferated on the fire-scorched ground. Poppies are also in flower, and this plant has become synonymous with the national commemorations of the First World War.

Rosebay willowherb, otherwise known as fireweed, thrives on waste ground, and particularly on burned-over land, because fire and other disturbances cause its seeds to germinate. Considered a rare species in Britain in the eighteenth century, it took hold here during the Industrial Revolution, particularly along the railway lines, where the associated soil disturbance, combined with the wind dispersal of the seeds by passing trains, created the ideal conditions for it to flourish. Even today, the rosebay willowherb’s purplish-pink flowers are a ubiquitous sight from train windows, spreading along the route of the track.

The bombing campaigns of the Second World War, and especially the widespread fire damage, caused the rapid spread of rosebay willowherb across bomb-damaged sites, earning it the nickname of bombweed. The children’s novel Fireweed is set during the Blitz, and centres on the bomb sites where the plant grew profusely, while Cicely M. Barker’s 1948 book Flower Fairies of the Wayside includes the following verse for the Rosebay Willowherb Fairy:

When the earth is burnt and sad, I will come to make it glad. All forlorn and ruined places, all neglected empty spaces, I can cover – only think! – with a mass of rosy pink.

In 2002, the rosebay willowherb was chosen as the county flower of London, to mark its role in clothing in magnificent purple the bomb-scarred areas of the City, as it slowly recovered from the derelictions and deprivations of war.

The cyanotype of the rosebay willowherb above cannot capture its distinctive colour, but it does highlight the sculptural form of its tall spire. The site of the Angel of the North has not been fire damaged, but it is highly disturbed ground that has been landscaped from the waste land left behind by the former coal mine. The presence of the plant registers the industrial history of the site, and its reclamation from brownfield land.

This cyanotype of a poppy growing at the Angel enhances its ghostly fragility, as the thin outer petals allow the light to pass through, creating a semi-opaque halo effect. The image seems appropriate to the flower’s status as an icon of remembrance.

Poppies have long symbolised sleep and death: sleep because of the somnolent effects of the opium that can be extracted from them, and death because of the blood red of the flower. In ancient Greek and Roman culture, images of poppies inscribed on graves represented eternal sleep and poppies were commonly used as offerings to the dead. The common poppy became a symbol of remembrance for the First World War in Britain and the Commonwealth nations, because it thrived in the disturbed land of the European battlefields. The connection of the poppy with remembrance was reinforced by the famous poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by the Canadian soldier and surgeon John McCrae, and artificial poppies were adopted to commemorate those who had died in war in the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. The ritual of wearing the poppy centres on Remembrance Day on November 11, and in New Zealand and Australia, soldiers are also commemorated on ANZAC Day, which falls on April 25.

The poppy as a token of remembrance resonates with the memorial site at the Angel, as well as with the memorial aspect of the sculpture itself, which commemorates those who lost their lives in the mining industry. Like the rosebay willowherb, the poppy flourishes on disturbed ground and it is this feature of the plants that has made them so closely associated with the bomb sites and battlegrounds of the twentieth century. Looking at the soil in which these plants grow, as well as at the flowers themselves, their presence at the Angel site acts as a marker, not of the catastrophic events of war, but rather of the long industrial and post-industrial usage of this land. It is plants such as these, which are tolerant of disruption and low fertility, that are able to proliferate in the conditions created by such activity.

6 July 20246 July 2024

Summer

Sounding the Angel can now be accessed in full here. In a series of four blog posts, I introduce each of the four sections of the sound work. Today’s post discusses the final part of the work, ‘Summer’. You can listen to this section here. This section of the sound work invites the participants to reflect on the memorial site and the act of leaving memorial tributes there. It is more expansive in tone than previous sections, as the participants describe their changing responses.

Our first participant asks what constitutes litter. In one sense, he suggests, what is at the memorial in the trees can be seen as litter – it is material that has been left behind – but at the same time it is clearly meaningful and precious to those who have placed it there. He sees an irresolvable contradiction between his work as a volunteer litter picker and his scattering of his wife’s ashes at The Angel – although one that is mitigated to some degree by the rapid dispersal of the tribute in the wind. Nevertheless, a tension remains for him between a memorial act that he can now ‘understand’ but of which he does not fully ‘approve’, commenting: ‘That’s the difficult part. I see it from all sides now. But I still don’t have a nice, neat answer from either side.’

For our second participant, too, there was a troubling aspect to leaving memorial tributes in the trees, and she turns to the ecological debates that have arisen around the clootie tree sites as her reference point. For a time, she explains, she was ‘a bit grumpy’ about the plastics and other non-biodegradable materials that people were leaving at the site. However, she reflected that it was not her place to judge others’ acts of commemoration, saying: ‘It’s so personal and whatever that little thing is, a little card or a plastic angel, or whatever they want to have there, it’s theirs to hang or leave. I used to mind terribly but now I don’t mind at all’. For both participants, leaving their own memorial tributes brings greater understanding of, and empathy for, what it means to others to do so.

The sound piece closes with the participants evoking the memorial site in sensory terms. Speaking of the positive effect of The Angel on the perception of public art, our first participant described a memorial that had been put up in his village to commemorate the mining industry. Designed in the shape of a miner’s lamp and illuminated by solar panels, the memorial signified that out of darkness came light. The theme of light is echoed by our second participant’s description of those trees that have lights strung around them, to shine out through the dark. She also evokes the sounds of the memorial – the wind chimes, the rustling of the cellophane that wraps the flowers. Her final description is of what she hears when she sits in the grass at The Angel, a combination of the noise of the traffic and the sounds of nature: ‘if you zone out a little bit you can hear the trees and then you hear the cars and it almost becomes one noise. So, it doesn’t become the mechanical noise from the car and then the natural noise from the trees, it’s just sort of a white noise in the end.’

Our conversations with the participants were reflective about the ecological questions that are posed by the site, while understanding the emotional weight that it holds for those who leave memorial tributes there, Feelings about the memorial were fluid and fluctuating. Both participants were attentive to the sensory qualities of the site, and there was an association for them both with a light shining out of the darkness as a beacon of hope.

This section of the sound work integrates the recordings from our last field recording session at The Angel. You can hear the rustling of leaves and grasses, a bird calling from the treetops in the memorial site, and the airier tone of the vibrations moving through The Angel that was recorded by the geophone.

5 July 20245 July 2024

Spring

Sounding the Angel can now be accessed in full here. In a series of four blog posts, I introduce each of the four sections of the sound work. Today’s post discusses the third part of the work, ‘Spring’. You can listen to this section here. In this instalment, I focus on the participants’ experience of returning to The Angel after they had placed the memorial tribute there. I ask: What is the ongoing relation to the place?

Our first participant returned to The Angel one or two weeks later, to see what – if anything – remained of the tribute. On this occasion, the weather was fine and the site was busy, with bus trips and a group of people in the memorial garden. He had chosen the same time of the week to go back, and the man who had been there on the first occasion was out walking his dog again. As our participant expected, there was no trace left of his memorial tribute, and he took a photograph of the place where it had been. He found comfort in the knowledge that his wife would have approved, as well as in the idea of The Angel becoming her guardian.

Our second participant returned to the site with her mother and brother, and they hung tributes in the tree together. Whenever she speaks to her mother of visiting the tree, her mother always asks what is left from when they visited last. After her friend died of cancer, our participant commemorated her alongside her brother, as they had shared the same birthday. Her more recent tributes were not ribbons but flowers, in the colours of football teams where appropriate, because they ‘just . . . go back into the earth’. She has also left a five-pointed willow star, and five little brass bells, because five is a number with particular familial significance. The participant’s ritual at The Angel has changed over time, so that she now takes a little picnic and the playlist that she compiled for her friend when she was sick. On each visit, she takes photographs of the tree and shares them with her family and friends, reflecting that it is particularly important to her that those who live so far away know that her loved ones are still important to her. She has pinned the tree in her maps, and she describes it as having many lines of connection that radiate out across the world.

While our first participant saw the tribute as a singular event and our second participant described it as an evolving ritual, for both of them the act of returning to – and photographing – the site was both important and meaningful. The act was seen to be significant in terms of the approval of others – whether of the deceased, or of family members far away. The timing of the return to the memorial was also carefully considered, whether this was in terms of the time of the week or for the commemoration of a birthday.

This section of the sound piece incorporates birdsong from the trees at the memorial site. The field recordings are more lively and vibrant than in the winter months, with the chatter of visitors and the sounds of children playing audible alongside the traffic and the vibrations resonating through The Angel.

4 July 20244 July 2024

Winter

Sounding the Angel can now be accessed in full here. In a series of four blog posts, I introduce each of the four sections of the sound work. Today’s post discusses the second part of the work, ‘Winter’. You can listen to this section here.

This is the second of four posts that share the sound work, ‘Sounding the Angel’. My last post, ‘Autumn‘, focused on the participants’ relation to the Angel of the North, asking why they had come to leave a memorial tribute at the site. This post reflects on the second part of the sound piece, ‘Winter’, which focuses on the act of leaving the memorial tribute.

Our first participant explained that he was scattering ash in memory of his wife at different locations that had been of significance to her. One of the intended sites had been Sycamore Gap, on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, but the famous sycamore tree that was growing there had recently been chopped down. He was on his way to the National Arboretum of Scotland, to commemorate her amid the giant redwoods that she loved, when a rainstorm came on, so he stopped at The Angel instead. Even in the pouring rain, there was a man out walking his dog , and our participant reflected on the companionship offered by The Angel site – not only from the sculpture itself, but also from the visitors who are always there, and other memorial tributes that have been left in the trees. No other people were involved in the ritual, which was described as ‘a strictly intimate affair’ .

Our second participant also spoke of going to The Angel alone, to leave the tribute to her brother. Having come across clootie wells in Scotland, and the pieces of coloured cloth tied to the trees, she took the Christmas present ribbons and tied them to a tree in the copse, with the intention of adding to them on every visit, so that the tree would eventually look as if it was blossoming with new flowers. When she returned to the site, she found that some of the ribbons had gone, and also that the site was more crowded with tributes from other people. She found a different tree, on the perimeter of the memorial site, so that she could leave her tributes there, but this too was soon also in the middle of the expanding memorial. Where our first participant found comfort in the presence of the other tributes, our second participant preferred to be a little bit away from the main memorial garden. This inclination can also be seen in others when walking around the site, with some memorial tributes placed in trees that are a little distance away from the copse.

A resonance emerged between the two conversations as our participants reflected on what they had left. Speaking of the ash that formed the memorial tribute to his wife, our first participant reflected that ‘it would easily be blown away, or swept away, to be with the ghosts of the mineworkers that toiled below’. Likewise, our second participant found an unexpected comfort in her ribbons blowing away, observing: ‘wherever those ribbons are, [my brother] is there as well, and the love that we have for him and how we miss him and everything, those new places now know about [him]. I like the way mine has worked out, with the ribbons flying all over the country’. Both participants found solace in the wind’s dispersal of their tributes, seeing this as offering a connection to something larger – whether the mining community of the past, or different, unknown places, that had now become points of connection to the loss.

The impetus that led both participants to leave a tribute at The Angel was practical in nature. The first participant addressed the question of where to scatter his wife’s ashes, while the second participant faced the problem of how to grieve for her brother when there was no obvious place for her to go. The memorial site at The Angel is thereby connected to contemporary shifts in memorial practice, with a move away from the traditional cemetery plot, and with many mourners now located far away from the places that are associated with their dead. Following the coverage of this project in The Guardian, a number of people contacted me to suggest a connection between the memorial site and the tradition of rag or clootie trees. Here, one of our participants speaks of being inspired by Scottish clootie wells, and of consciously trying to recreate them at The Angel site. In my previous post, I reflected on whether the adaptation of the clootie tradition to the act of mourning might tend towards the use of more lasting or permanent fibres in the ribbon or cloth, but our participant finds comfort in the ephemerality of her tribute, as well as in the act of tying the ribbons itself.

In this section of the sound piece, you can hear recordings that David made with his contact microphones during Storm Babet. The heavy rain dropping onto the metal resonates through the structure, accompanying our first participant’s story of leaving the tribute for his wife at The Angel in the pouring rain, and suggestive both of the season and of tears.

3 July 20244 July 2024

Autumn

Sounding the Angel can now be accessed in full here. In a series of four blog posts, I introduce each of the four sections of the sound work. Today’s post discusses the first part of the work, ‘Autumn’. You can listen to this section here.

Today’s post introduces the first section of our sound piece, ‘Sounding the Angel’. The work has been divided into four sections, reflecting the project’s movement through the year from autumn 2023 through to summer 2024. For each of the seasons, you can hear samples from the field recordings that David made on site at that time of the year. In this section, you can hear passing traffic, recordings of the vibrations passing through The Angel, and samples from an autumn dawn chorus from the trees. ‘Autumn’ captures the participants’ previous associations with the site, and what The Angel means to them.

The two participants have very different relationships with The Angel of the North. Our first participant, who commemorated his wife by scattering some of her ashes at The Angel, described how the sculpture had threaded through their lives together. He describes his wife as ‘a Gateshead lass born and bred’, and speaks of her as an ardent defender of the sculpture when it was first proposed. The couple met and courted when they worked at a factory in the Team Valley – a site which now lies in the shadow of The Angel. After their marriage, he and his wife were both active in supporting the mineworkers during the strikes in the 1980s, he as a trade union organiser and she as a treasurer. At his wife’s funeral, the colliery band made a special recorded performance of her favourite tune, and her extensive collection of signature scarves was given away to people attending the funeral, with two of them then being tied to the top of local banner at the next Miners’ Gala Day procession.

Our second participant is South African, and she recalls vividly her first sight of The Angel, travelling north with her husband from Reading, where they were then living, to visit his family. Looking up from the road map, it seemed to her that The Angel filled the whole front screen of the car, and she describes the event as a ‘special moment’. Such was the impact of The Angel on her that our participant took her parents to see it when they visited from South Africa, and the sculpture had the same effect on them – especially her father, who was energised as he went up the hill towards it. It was on a separate occasion that the participant first registered the memorial site in the trees. Her friend was visiting and she spotted the memorials in the trees. When the participant’s brother died later that same year, she had no grave to visit and no places nearby that they had visited together. Her thoughts then returned to the memorial site. Her friend was later diagnosed with cancer, and The Angel became associated with her, too, because they had visited together. The memorial site helped the participant to feel connected to her friend and her brother after their deaths.

Even though the stories are very different in terms of the participants’ connection to The Angel, notable similarities emerged. For both participants, The Angel is comforting because it is constantly visible – on the news, on postcards, on stickers, and even on the inside pages of a passport. The second participant remarks that, even in South Africa, her parents see The Angel sometimes on TV or on a picture. The participants both also speak of their fondness for The Angel, which is associated with particular parts of the sculpture. The first participant remembers his wife always commenting on the shapeliness of The Angel’s bum and calves whenever she passed. The second participant speaks of the family nickname for The Angel – the ‘rusty bird’ – and of her love for The Angel’s wings.

The most striking resonance across the stories lies in the participants ‘ connection with the mining history of the site. I have already outlined the deep personal history that links the first participant, and his wife, to mineworking in the local area. Accounting for why her father was so energised by the site, the second participant explains that he used to work in the gold mines in South Africa. The sculpture was meaningful to him because it was built over a mine, and he spoke about the foundations of the sculpture extending deep underground. He observed to his daughter that ‘there must be people who died in the mines’, and that ‘The Angel is a memorial over them too’.

It is clear from our two conversations that The Angel has multiple layers of personal significance for both project participants, and that its associations also extend to the people memorialised. The iconic nature of The Angel means that there are constant reminders of the site in everyday life. The Angel’s presence as a memorial to mining and mineworkers is significant for both participants, both of whom have family connections to the mining industry.

28 June 202428 June 2024

Arches

Next week sees the installation of our sound piece in the Arches that mark the entrance to the main quadrangle of Newcastle University. Built in 1911 from a donation by north-east mining magnate John Bell Simpson, the brick structure now houses the Arches Sound Project, which projects four-track audio pieces through the microphones that have been installed in each of its corners. Passers-by can sit on the benches under the Arches to listen to the sound works in full, or they might encounter fragments of them as they walk through, whether to visit the campus or to cut through it to the Royal Victoria Infirmary beyond.

In the area just in front of the Arches, Antony Gormley’s Clasp has been installed, a semi- abstract sculpture that depicts two people embracing. The sculpture was installed on this site to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of The Angel in Gateshead, and our project both recognises and reinforces the line of connection between the two. Those listening to Sounding the Angel can also see the Clasp sculpture, so that the two works are brought into a new conversation with each other.

Turning to look in the opposite direction, one of the trees that has been planted immediately behind the Arches is a handkerchief or ghost tree, named after its beautiful, white flower-like bracts that flutter in the breeze, resembling innumerable pocket handkerchiefs. The bracts have now mostly fallen from the tree and been dispersed by the wind, which resonates with how the memorial tributes are described by participants in the sound work.

The installation, which lasts 30 minutes, is played on the hour every hour from 6am – 10pm, from 1-7 July. It comprises four parts, organized according to the seasons, and you can hear two counterpointed conversations with participants who have left memorial tributes at The Angel. These are combined with field recordings from the site across the seasons, documenting the sounds of nature and the vibrations resonating through The Angel itself. The piece is punctuated by a loud boom that was made by the metal of the Angel contracting after the heat of a summer’s day.

25 June 202428 June 2024

Recording Studio

I spent this morning in the recording studio with David, editing the draft version of the sound piece. It was wonderful to hear the different layers of sound that David had built into the work, and the creative ways in which he was using the recordings we had made on site.

The photograph of David’s computer screen below gives a visual score for the layering of sound in the piece. The top layers represent the three voices in the project – mine and the two participants – ; the layers beneath represent the resonances of the Angel, which run throughout the piece, and the sounds of the traffic and the wind; and the lower levels are the sounds of birdsong, leaves in the trees, and grass whispering in the wind.

The addition of the field recordings to the recorded voices gives the words of the participants additional resonance, as David marked the moments in the conversations when they had made reference to weather or particular sounds, and enhanced them through recorded sound. The work is divided into four sections, corresponding to the seasons, and David used the contact microphone recording of the interior of The Angel for the relevant season. Listening to them in sequence, it was remarkable how much the vibrations from The Angel differed in tone across the year, with the winter recordings shaped by the violent wind and rain of the storms, and the summer recordings more vibrant and lively, capturing the muffled sounds of children playing and visitors chatting nearby.

The sound piece also captures a few memorable moments of the field recordings. From our summer visit to The Angel, David built in the song of the blackbird that I recorded singing from the top of a tree in the copse, as well as my recording of my own footsteps. The geophone captured the boom of The Angel contracting, and David used the sound to punctuate the sections of the work, like the regular tolling of a bell. David’s visit to The Angel to record during Storm Babet produced the echoing of the raindrops from the surface of the sculpture that can be heard in the Winter section of the piece.

The continual drone of The Angel (shown in pink above) reminded me of David’s recordings of the pithead at Easington Colliery, in its haunting evocation of the former mining communities. In our sound piece, it accompanies (and expands) the participants’ associations of The Angel sculpture with the mineworkers who had toiled beneath.

The sound piece will be installed in The Arches on the main campus at Newcastle University on Monday 1 July and will play from 1-7 July.

14 June 202414 June 2024

Angels

Unsurprisingly, angels represent a common motif connecting many of the tributes left at the memorial site. The host of miniature angels hanging from the trees are scaled-down versions of Antony Gormley’s sculpture, and some are even direct representations of The Angel of the North.

The angels come in a range of different materials. Some have been knitted or crocheted.

Some are made from wood.

Others are made from plastic.

Many of these angel tributes are repurposed Christmas decorations, which have been chosen as memorial tributes because of their significance to the site.

Looking more closely at what is written on or about angels on the tributes can bring us closer to what they might mean for those who have commemorated loved ones here. Many notes left in the trees refer to The Angel as a guardian presence, watching over loved ones. The idea of a guardian angel watching over the dead can also be seen on some of the tributes.

In the photograph below, the Angels referred to as watching over the dead are both heavenly and material in form, given that The Angel of the North stands directly above the tree from which the tribute has been hung.

The figure of the angel baby is often used in baby loss memorials, and the angel here represents or stands in for the deceased.

Wooden heart with inscription tied to branch — Photo credit: Anne Whitehead

This idea is echoed in other tributes. Angels might be inscribed with the name of the person who is being commemorated.

Or the person might be described as an ongoing guardian presence for the living.

In the photograph above, wings stand as a shorthand for the angel figure. Feathers also serve this function, and both images are prevalent in the tributes left at the site.

Angels clearly represent a source of comfort for those who leave tributes in the memorial garden, and we can presume that the solace offered by The Angel of the North initially drew them to commemorate their loved ones there. Looking closer at the tributes, we can find some variation in the ways in which angels offer meaning in the face of death. For some mourners, it is the idea – made concrete in The Angel – that their loved ones are not alone and have a guardian presence nearby. For others, angels are expressive of a continued bond with a friend or relative, who is seen as a guardian angel watching over the living. The angel figure has a particular cultural resonance in the context of baby loss, offering grieving families a recognizable way to express their grief.

6 June 20246 June 2024

June

Grass against blue ground — Image Credit: Anne Whitehead

This post forms part of a monthly series that documents the plants growing at The Angel of the North through a series of cyanotypes.

The month of June has brought into flower the different grasses that grow in the field on which The Angel of the North stands. Attending to these plants requires a different scale of vision from looking at The Angel, as well as adjusting the gaze downward. Cyanotypes of the grasses bring out the sculptural beauty of their forms, which are easily overlooked.

I wrote in my post on the month of May about the significance for the memorial site of dwelling with the ordinariness of things, and this month’s homage to the grasses that grow there continues in this vein. These plants are not exceptional or extraordinary, but looking at them closely reveals their distinctive beauty. I have often used the term grassroots memorial to describe the memorial in the trees at The Angel. This phrase, which registers that the memorial site is rooted in the spontaneous, collective activities of ordinary people, has its origin in the roots of grasses as a fundamental layer from which growth takes place.

The Sounding the Angel project documents the memorial site through sound. I have written in this blog of the rustling of the leaves in the trees as one of the defining sounds of the memorial site in the summer months. Although less audible, the whispering of the grasses can also be heard alongside them, as they variously bend or shake in the wind.

The images of the grasses above have all been made using the dry cyanotype method, which involves placing the plant onto paper when the chemicals that develop the image have dried. The grace and elegance of these cyanotypes prompted me also to develop images of the grasses using the wet cyanotype method, which I have described in a previous post.

This technique enables a greater range of effects, even if it is less predictable in outcome.

This image captures the feel of the grasses swaying in the wind, and turmeric sprinkled onto the wet paper enhances its sense of life and movement.

Here, the textured background has been created by placing a layer of cling film onto the glass during the exposure of the image.

Here’s another variation, which combines the two techniques. The pooling of vinegar spray on the cling film has caused a rich variety of blues to emerge.

The cyanotype methods differ in their effects, but they both capture the structural beauty of the grasses. These plants define the site of The Angel in June, and this post both captures and celebrates the range of different species that grow there.

3 June 20243 June 2024

Birth Rites Collection

Marie Brett, ‘Anamnesis’, Cork: Crawford Art Gallery, 2013.

Last week the Newcastle University Medical Humanities Network hosted Helen Knowles to speak about the Birth Rites Collection. An artist and curator, Knowles built up the Collection, which is the only collection of contemporary artwork dedicated to the subject of childbirth. Founded in 2009 and currently housed at the University of Kent, the Collection was formerly held at King’s College, London.

Knowles spoke about the history of the Collection, which seeks to encourage debate and increase awareness of practices of childbirth. She addressed questions of curation, and of the display of artworks that represent sensitive subject matter. She then presented a virtual tour of the Collection, highlighting and discussing a number of its key works.

The first artwork on the tour concerned the subject of baby loss. Bella Milroy’s Sharing the Gift From Elanor addressed the artist’s relationship with her older sister, who died shortly after birth. The work comprises a photograph taken on the hospital ward just after Elanor’s birth. Beneath this photograph is a reproduction of the same image, made by Milroy nearly thirty years later. The two images ask us to register the differences between them. The photograph captures those who were present to witness Elanor’s brief life, and provokes remembrance for those who were there. The reproduction emphasizes that Milroy’s access to the scene is secondary, and that she can only imagine rather than remember her sister.

Helen Knowles and Francesca Granato, ‘Conception’, 2008. Photo credit: Anne Whitehead

Other pieces in the Collection that address baby loss acted as key reference points for our own project. Knowles’ work is represented in the Collection through the printed wallpaper, Conception. From a distance, the pattern looks like an art-nouveau design, but close up it becomes apparent that it depicts scientific details of the reproductive organs. The wallpaper was on display at the Whitworth Art Gallery’s exhibition Still Parents: Life After Baby Loss, which was showing when we worked on the project, and which both Kate and I visited. Every aspect of the exhibition, from curation to interpretation, had been informed by the project participants; namely, parents who had experienced the loss of a baby during pregnancy or just after birth.

Working with professional artists, the Still Parents project encouraged participants to explore their experiences through creativity. Memory boxes displayed around the walls contained intimate objects that were associated with the loss.

It was moving to see how these objects were transformed across different media. This pair of shoes was worked into clay and fired as decoration on a pot.

The shoes were etched onto paper.

They were embroidered onto cloth.

And they became part of a wallpaper pattern, combined with a little woolly hat from a different memory box.

Although our project worked with materials that were more indirectly associated with the loss, the transformation of those materials into ink, drawings, and the digital medium of film was based in the same process of enabling parents to explore their grief through creativity.

Marie Brett’s Anamnesis: The Amulet also forms part of the Birth Rites Collection. Developed in partnership with three Irish maternity hospitals, Brett’s project explored the amulet as an object that holds particular resonance in the context of pregnancy and infant loss. The exhibition displayed ten photographs of mementoes connected to lost infants, which were matched with audio clips of the parents speaking. The Collection holds the tables on which the photographs were displayed, the framed prints, and the CDs and headphone sets.

The words of the parents were very personal (see the pages from the exhibition catalogue, at the head of this post), yet Brett’s decision to place them in conversation with one another was suggestive of the power of objects in the context of grief. Many of the mementoes were kept in a safe space at home and brought out for private rituals of remembrance. In the Irish context, the public display of images of these objects challenged long-standing cultural taboos about infant death. I have written in previous posts about the cillini, clandestine burial sites across Ireland where babies’ bodies were buried in secrecy, often at night. The project’s sharing of stories offers parents the opportunities to talk about their children, and opens up a public conversation around their denied memories.

As I type these words, I have on the desk in front of me the publicity flyer and catalogue for Brett’s exhibition, which were given to me by Judith Rankin when we first discussed collaborating on our project. Although we were not working in the cultural context of Ireland, the experience of losing a twin at birth still remains largely silent in the broader conversation around pregnancy and infant loss.

It was wonderful to learn from Helen about the Birth Rites Collection, as well as to encounter both new and familiar artworks that chimed with our project on baby loss.

Many thanks to Olivia Turner for organizing the workshop, and to the Newcastle University Institutes of Humanities and Arts Practice for supporting the event.