What we remember, what we forget.....

It has now been ten days since the exhibition started.  I've had the private view and visited inbetween.  Looking back it seems like such a long time ago now and most of the pieces are still intact after so long.  Just like when I first visited Tyneham, the mist clung to the valley, but the weather was much worse.  Cold and windy, with drizzly rain blowing across from the hills.

When the time came to take everything down it was like saying goodbye to an old friend.  I know that I'll be back one day, but I will look on Tyneham through different eyes, as a visitor once again.

The damp penetrates and changes, ink runs like tears and life goes on...

'For Him'

I like that things have been moved, that the wind folds and changes what I set out to do.

'No Welcome Home'

Edges folded as once more shoes walk the floor

Memories never fade if a story is retold....

'Yesterday's Paper'

Propped against the wall but not yesterday's news.

Clay pieces from Toil that turned back to dust.

Missing or broken pieces; a peg, a key, the Surrender flag pole snapped and some very wet paper, although the wax did a good job.

The best part was reading all the comments in the visitor book. Knowing that people enjoyed the exhibition and quietly understood what I was trying to achieve made all the late nights worth it..........

.....and Emma, thank you for the stories that took me down Dorset's narrow roads, to a place I can't forget and memories I'll treasure always.....keep planting the seeds that make people grow.

Fragments

Today I returned to Tyneham for the first time since the private view.  I didn't know what to expect or what I'd find.  When I approached the village I could still see George's Smock hanging in Gardeners Cottage so that came as a relief.  But the piece In Flowerless Hours is no more.  I suppose it is quite poignant that these fragile flowers, coated in porcelain, wouldn't last forever.  They were wet and trodden on, their petals crushed into the ground, with one lone flower holding it's shape, I picked it and put in my bag.  I decided to take this display down, the ink on the sign had bled so no longer described the work.  Somehow this added to the significance of change and decay.  So, far from being sad I knew that displaying my work in an outdoor isolated place, some would not survive.

The Epistle is another piece that has changed since Saturday.  The envelope that was once part of the work lies in the mud on the floor of the Post Office.  This change is not bad.  It had a significant affect on my feelings seeing it lying there.  I picked it up and put it back in the letterbox along with the wax and fabric letter which had also deteriorated.  The wording of the letter can no longer be read, ink combining with the dye.  The wax has worn away where countless visitors have touched it and again the notion of this doesn't fill me with sadness.  It looks as though at some point the letter had become detached completely and someone has tied it back up, taking care over it, understanding what it means.

Toil

Touched and crumbling, the pieces will now go back to the Earth from where they first came.

The remaining pieces were intact just a little wet, by Monday things may have changed further.  It's out of my hands and I'll just have to wait and see.  This poem I think is quite fitting.....

Informational Decay

I heard an echo in a hollow place.

No sound of blowing wind or drifting sand,

some ancient voice was this, a captive trace

of gone-by speech, of argument, demand,

of plea or question, comfort or command.

Long years this message had remained unheard

in empty halls, in untenanted lands,

a letter lost, a homeless, wandering word.

I could not judge it solemn or absurd,

the language, one I'd never learned to speak.

Was it then call of beast or cry of bird

from whiskered mouth, or brightly colored beak?

No. No, this was human speech, now lost.

A warning wasted, at an unknown cost.

Tiel Aisha Ansari