ANTONY LYONS - installations, deep mapping investigations     +      RALPH HOYTE - poetry

"CAPABLE MEN SENT ANY DISTANCE FOR MEASUREMENTS. ETC.

IN LONDON STYLE AT COUNTRY PRICES'

WEST OF ENGLAND SADDLERY STORES, BRIDGWATER"

(advert in 1904 guide 'The Quantock Hills. Their Combes and Villages') 

“Nineteenth-century poetry, we realize, was characteristically preoccupied with the creation of a dream world.”

R. LEAVIS

“There was in Coleridge a sort of dreaminess which would not let him see things as they were.”
WORDSWORTH

Quantock Dreaming

Secret mappings and mapping secrets in the QUANTOCK HILLS, Somerset

With the "combes & villages" and the Romantic Poets (in particular Coleridge and Wordsworth) as guides on a year of seasonal Quantock explorations, there has emerged a body of work derived from journeys, dialogues and observations. The immersion in the place ranges from the microscopic to the scale of the whole landscape of this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Aerial and satellite images are encountered and manipulated. Boundaries are blurred - in time and space, between real and virtual; scribbles and doodles are elevated in significance; the true terrain is the interface between research and creative imaginings. There is a celebration of serendipitous threads through histories, zig-zagging between contemporary concerns and some - surprisingly relevant - topics of two centuries ago.

Following the year-long slow residency involvements, a mixed-media installation was created at Fyne Court in September 2008, combining sound, video, maps, found objects and texts, alongside a reading of a new poetic work. In a second phase of the project (2014 onwards), one of the areas of focus will be the immediate environs of Fyne Court, becoming a deeper exploration of a this place and its echoes. Forming part of the mix will be Fyne Court's strong association with early scientific investigations. The Quantock coast is also a window into some pressing environmental issues. This new 'gathering-in' phase will involve further fossickings, and deep-mapping, placing specific archival materials and local ecologies at the centre of the place-based 'tapestry'.

QD

"If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character, the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, & stand still unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again." 

WILLIAM BLAKE

"They forgot that science arose from poetry, and did not see that when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends."

GOETHE