Author: Olivia Milne

Penny for your thoughts?

 

 

After a week of going into multiple banks and receiving a varied range of reactions, when asking to change our collected pounds into one penny coins, we thought about the use of the money outside our art piece. I became increasingly aware of the mass of money we had gathered, mainly because I had carried it! The weight of the endless plastic counting bags other than giving me backache, made me fully appreciate how much money we had collected and needed to complete out piece. Each member of the class had donated a sum of 3 pounds or above to our cause when we realized that our cause was just for a performance, what would you the money do once returned to its previous owner. Would each coin end up taken unexpected journeys like each of us had over the last few weeks, would it be used for good? Would it be put towards some form of regeneration? Or would it be dead money? Lost, stagnant, wasted like The Grandstand current use or like the soldiers, they stood for, majority of who were younger than 25. We felt we wanted to make sure the money wed carried, placed, scoured the banks of Lincoln high street to gather were put back into a project as positive as ours. It was this notion that inspired our question posed to the class, for them to part with their 3 pounds for the contribution of 90 pounds, 9 thousand one pennies, back into the community. We wanted the moneys use to carry on its good will after our piece so we began to research relevant, local charities that we felt were on the themes of women, equestrian, military based, the themes of the whole classes work as it was everyone’s money. We decided to present the charities to the class and see which they were most receptive too.

 

The first charity is; ‘Recycle a Race horse’ which is a Lancaster based rehabilitation center for ex race horses.(( http://www.thoroughbredrehabilitationcentre.co.uk/contact.php))

The second charity is; ‘Bransby Horse, rescue and welfare’ this local, which has two, bases one in Lincoln, that is concerned with providing a sanctuary for abused equine based animals and rehoming them.

((http://www.bransbyhorses.co.uk/home/home%20about%20us%20NEW.html))

The third charity is; ‘Addaction’ a charity that helps transform the lives of people affected by drug and alcohol abuse. Several member of the class has had personal interaction with the charity and some staff that work in center in Lincoln.

((http://www.addaction.org.uk/landing.asp?section=93&sectionTitle=What+we+do))

The Fourth Charity is; ‘Scotty’s Little Soldiers’ after asking a serving pilot for the RAF base Waddington, he felt this was the most worthwhile charity he knew of related to the military in the UK. The charity supports the children of the serving/fallen soldiers. ((http://www.scottyslittlesoldiers.co.uk/aboutus.html))

The fifth Charity is; ‘Be Attitude’ a charity used by the homeless people of Lincoln, which offers them shelter, food, companionship and support. Again member of the class have been and interacted with the staff and users of the site. In close relation with the Local charity ‘Nomad’ The charity itself is almost site specific, based in St. Mary’s church, it was formed through a homeless person knocking on the parish’s door where the idea of the shelter was first formed. ((http://nomadtrust.org.uk/about/st-mary-le-wigford-partnership/))

The sixth charity is; ‘Women For Women’ An international charity, who supports emotionally and financially over 351,00 female survivors of war and conflict. ((http://www.womenforwomen.org/))

The final charity is; ’Raffa’ The infamous charity offering support for the RAF family (ex soldiers and their families.) The national charity helps all generations with a relation to the RAF. ((http://www.rafa.org.uk/Who-we-are))

All of the charities listed have ties to the themes listed above, but more prominantly without realizing all involve and are based or restoration and transformation, whether it of a life, an animal or a worn torn family/village. The theme of change and restoration is so evident in all these charities and the aims of all our pieces, changing attitude towards the heritage surrounding all components The Grandstands past.

Upon a visit to the ‘Lincolnshire Life Museum’ the underlying theme of our piece appeared to be edited. We were struck by one fact displayed on a board, which sparked the theme of our piece not to be changed, but updated. The fact stated was that ‘Nine thousand Lincolnshire men died in the Great War.’ This statistic resonated with us as a group, although we had been attached and moved by the tale of the Beechey Brothers, we wanted to represent that moving story, but not detract from the sheer amount of lives lost of local men, which we were unaware of. We found ourselves at a cross roads where it appeared we could either pick the personal, infamous story of a mothers loss of 5 sons or focus on the 9 thousand lives lost, we decided not to dismiss either ideas and show both. We wanted to do this in a simplicity way of physically showing nine thousand lives and then also telling the story of the Beechey Brothers. We found an area of The Grandstand, which we felt we could hold an instillation piece in which we could represent the 9 thousand local lives lost. We chose an outside patch which was boarded by a white fence, which we knew to be the ‘ parade ring’ we felt this prominent as we were showing the lives like the horses would have been shown in previous times. By physically having the piece on the earth outside The Grandstand; which was uneven due to the trenches that had been built at a time when the grandstand had been used for military purposes, we felt it created a more honest and authentic piece. The idea of placing something on the ground in which the said men would have walked and trained made the link between the site and our work ever more prominent and reflective.

We noted this meant we would be subject on the day of performance to the elements, we had rehearsals in the snow and severe worry of windy conditions which mean the positioning of the pennies were crucial to hold down the string that would mark our piece.  The environment might oblige you to respond in a certain ways, prefiguring the performance.’(( Pearson Mike, 2010, Site Specific Performance, London: Palgrave Macmillian.))

The idea of using an item or fact to represent the lives lost we found as a medium to link our previous work and our new inspiration, we felt the stories, letters and art work which we had discovered in our research still needed to be staged in some form; so we developed the idea of an installation piece. We decided to use nine thousand ‘something’s’ to create a piece of artwork we had found in our research. A Lincolnshire Solider had created the artwork in the trenches. We wanted an item that was small enough for us to replicate this piece of art by filling it or outlining using all nine thousand of the ‘something’s’. After research we found an instillation piece by the practioneer John Newling. His most recent work focused on the growing of plants and fruit in urban and religious locations. He states on his blog when commenting on his 2013 piece Ecologies of value ‘The first section of the exhibition plays with ideas relating to money and religion.’ ((http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/john-newling-0)) In his exhibition he displayed 50,000 two-piece pennies in a church. This lead us to the notion of look at the value of 1 pennies, the idea of money in an environment which took thousands of bets each race, seemed to link directly to The Grandstand on that level. We also found placing the pennies on the earth caused them to be uneven due to the marks left by tracks of previous tanks and trenches making the reality of the situation and lives lost come to the fore front of our and the audiences mind when replicating the art piece. The coins not only link to the betting side of the Grandstand, but also the constant theme of worth, the worth of the almost retired building, the worth of a life, the self explainary worth of currency, which in todays economical climate regularly fluxgates. We want the process of creating the piece to be interactive and for the audience to place a penny on the art work fully aware it represents one life, it makes the connection personal as well as expressing the magnitude of life’s lost.

 

‘Familiarity may not breed contempt, but it takes the edge of admiration.’  William Hazlitt

Three cards, wandering lincoln finding places that we felt the words on the card reflected or told us to place them. I found upon reading them, that infact they were not undiscovered places the cards needed to be hidden, securely stowed. But places I walk past every day, places the words on the car reflected and I subconciously had kept account of. My own street became the new homes to two of my cards as it wasn’t until I stopped and thought, that I realised, my seemingly humble,e quite road possesed such mysterious, subtle activity. A cat roaming its pavements, lit up windows easily accessible to the curious eyes of pedestrians, voices heard through thin brick, and over gates. Again my drifting opened my narrow gaze to the enchantment of a road I walk up and down in and out of countless times a day. If it was not for the drifting opening my mindset and eyeline I would not daily be rejecting Hazlitts quote

 

Card One: ‘From here I can hear the sound of people talking and music I don’t recognise.’

Placed in Vodka Revolution booths, behind a speaker and stranger, both echoing unfamiliar words, conversations and rhythms.

 

Card Two: ‘There are ruins and buildings that will eventually become ruins and people that will eventually become bodies.’

Placed on a broken wall next to my house, littered with smashed bricks and fragmented concrete blocks. Been in ruins since I have moved in, curiously nobody has ever touched it.

Card Three: ‘ A shot from distance of other peoples houses, perhaps where a cat picking its way along the wall.’

Placed on the corner of my house, unfortunately cats were not present, but it is the exact spot where a robin sits everyday. Opposite the other side of the street lined with houses.

 

The second card began to resonate with me and I felt a sense of sorrow when leaving it on such a discarded and disheveled wall. In a way I began to feel like that about our performance being left on the Grandstand. The building once so glorious is left stood alone broken and unfixed. The card reminded me of the process and hours we will have departed with when at the grandstand and eventually the remains of our performance, the odd penny it came to light later on. I had mixed feelings about finishing our piece, but hoped the messaged we left would be powerful, it began evident to me after or performance that we did not leave the message at the site. It was shared with the people that visited it as we educated them in the lives lost and they carried that away back into society hopefully sharing and questioning the message back into moving life.