Walbrook Walk: Flowers for Venus Fire for Vesta

On Sunday 27 February (a day short of March1) five of us walked ‘Flowers for Venus Fire for Vesta’; the last Walbrook Walk. The series of walks started in November 2006 and traced the route of the Walbrook - one of London’s lost rivers.

The Walbrook appears to have been sacred to both the Brits and Romans and has been well excavated in recent years. Along its course an amazing array of objects have been found including hundreds of male sculls with missing jaw-bones (a sign of then being ritually deposited), many clay figurines of Venus, tons of Roman ironwork including knife blades, nails, pins and keys; iron being strongest magic.

Some of the clay figurines of Venus

found in the Walbrook now in the Museum of London

The walks have taken place on auspicious dates two or three times a year – dates linked to the Roman rites at the Temple of Vesta – the virgin goddess of the hearth (L. focus), home and family. According to Ovid, Vesta was the Earth itself and her presence was symbolised by the fire that burned in the central hearth of the home (the woman’s realm) and in her circular temples. 

And why Vesta?

The Bank of England sits at the centre of the old Roman city and the Walbrook flows under the middle of it. The architect John Soane incorporated into its curved western façade part of the circular Temple of Vesta at Tivoli – his favorite building. Its dome and curved colonnade of flower-decked columns stands on the corner of Princes Street and Lothbury – complete with a central ‘oculus’ to let the smoke escape!

Tivoli Corner at the Bank of England

showing the oculus in the roof

The temples of Vesta were always round - the shape of a Neolithic hut and were tended by the Vestales (vestal virgins were highly privileged women). Their tasks included making salted sacrificial bread ‘Mola Salsa’ tending the sacred fire; the flame was renewed on 1 March each year.

And Venus?

Well she’s there because she has to be! The goddess of love, beauty and fertility- saluted as the supreme generative force in the universe. Many clay figurines of her have been found on the stream bed.

On Sunday we walked from a conjectured tributary source in the grounds of a Saxon convent in Shoreditch, via Tivoli Corner where we rested and ate ‘Salsa Mola’ and then walked down Walbrook and the remains of the Roman Temple of Mithras that once stood on the western bank of the stream.



The remains of the mid 3rd centruyTemple of Mithras

which once stood on the bank of the River Walbrook



Cannon Street

is still the home of the Guilds of Tallow Candle-Makers and Skinners – stinky medieval trades necessarily situated on the shores of the River Thames.



Map showing the site of the Saxon convent grounds.

Curtain Road runs along its western boundary.

And so down onto the beach at Walbrook Wharf; a beach full of shards of pottery and clay-tiles, oyster shells and water-washed animal bones – hundreds of them. The waves and wakes of boats crashed onto the beach as we wandered and wondered.

The ‘Fire Pot’– filled with dried roses, herbs, twigs, and last year’s flowers was lit; it did not burst into flames but rather a strong wind blew from up-river and fanned a wonderful draft of white smoke that billowed silently down- stream. Time seemed to stand still or rather I felt timeless.

We left the beach after a long while, walking up the flight of slime-green- stone and metal-gridded steps, over the flood-defence wall and back into the Sunday city. I left the empty Fire-Pot on the Walbrook beach to be claimed by the fast incoming Thames tide; the Walbrook had reached home and we went to the pub to celebrate with strong spirit.



'The Fire-Pot' on Walbrook Beach


'Essentially, all form is a pattern or network of energy, including that of our natural world and human body….I have called the landscapes that manifest these archetypal patterns ‘landscape temples’. They are all sacred, as indeed is the whole world….. Pilgrimage is one way in which these relationships can be enhanced and the network of energy kept healthy and alive.’

Peter Dawkins

'Dark Earth' in archaeology is a layer often as much as 2 – 3 ft thick which covers Roman remains, notably in London and in Roman ruins in the rest of England, particularly urban ones. The stratum underlying the dark earth is often of a date varying from the 2nd to the 5th Century AD, and the stratum overlying is often, in the City of London, 9th century.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_earth

  Once, a twenty foot wide gravel-bottomed stream, it is now an underground seepage trickling 20-30 feet underground amongst the 'dark-earth' depths of historic London. Tunnelling subversively under the foundations of the Roman Wall, modern offices and the Bank of England, to discharge into the Thames amongst the rusting refuse-barge hulks at Walbrook Wharf.

crooked @ House Gallery

Glimpsed: an exhibition of 3d and video works at House Gallery, Camberwell, London, by members of South London Women Artists in February 2011.

My installation was entitled crooked....

'golden' melt-water - day 1

“…history books have claimed that “camber”’ meant crooked and that water from the Camber Well could cure “crippled or crooked people”.

 The Telegraph May 200

Lepers and cripples, expelled from the City of London, were sent to Camberwell and treated by the church of St Giles and the healing waters from its wells.

crooked was a process of related events that took place over the two weeks of the exhibition:

Ice, steel bowl, linen - day1

crooked: a block of ice made from water from the roof of St Giles Parish Church was suspended by a linen cloth. St Giles is the patron saint of cripples and a church dedicated to him has stood in Camberwell since Anglo-Saxon times.

I have worked with ice, linen and ‘gold’ for a several years.The palette of materials hints at an alchemy – materials transformed and states altered. 

In the early hours of Saturday morning 22 January 2011 a serious car crash took place outside the Gallery. We arrived to set up the exhibition with the crumpled wrecks of two cars, one with its roof ripped off, being towed away.

debris of the car crash was frozen into bowls of ice

The 'bowls' of ice contained the remains of the wall demolished by the impact of one of the vehicles: shattered car headlamps, bricks and mortar rubble. As the ice thawed they were released into the golden melt-water, which gold splashed onto the surrounding floor.  Afer about 30 hours the linen also was released: swaddling, bandage, shroud perhaps?

The steel bowl transformed by melt water  day 1

Bodies Transformed @ The Crypt Gallery, London

22- 29 April 2010

After Thoughts:
The performance of ‘The Descent’ at the PV was spell binding with spectacular performances from Divya as Inanna and Hazel as narrator and ‘Neti the Gatekeeper’. Divya entered the space down the flight of stone entrance steps in full gold and red bejeweled regalia – which was a fitting way to enter the Under World and made a powerful impression on many people. The sound of her ankle bells and stamping feet and Hazels’ powerful narration had a hypnotic and meditative effect.

There were between 150 -200 people at the PV which filled the labyrinthine venue, but the main Crypt corridor is a difficult linear space for the audience, so there were some issues of visibility. BUT overall the feedback was great and I feel that Inanna the ‘Performance’ and ‘Piece’ made the sometimes fraught journey from ‘ideal’ to ‘real’.

The Crypt has such a powerful atmosphere that time spend invigilating had a strange surreal quality, with occasional sorties above ground for coffee and sun. ‘The Descent’ is a chilling tale and I feel that I would like to make a sunny ascent; perhaps there is another piece there?

The contrast between ‘Ice and Fire’ and ‘Inanna’ is striking in the photographs and it was good to see the linen fall out this time. The seven bowls worked on several levels:

• the seven gates to the Under World
• Inanna’s seven ‘holy powers’ which were stripped from her during her descent
• one bowl for each day of the show- placed under the ice daily

‘Intimate Makings’, the new series of prints based on the making of the ‘Crucible’ looked well in the Crypt, but I think will look better in a less loaded space, and I’m looking forward to seeing them on white walls in ‘Open Studio’ June 19-20 2010.

Please make a note in your diaries!

Ice and Fire revisited

Helen Gilbert, the project coordinator for Ice and Fire at St Ethelburga's has written a review for the monthly newsletter - thank you Helen.

http://stethelburgas.org/art-reconciliation

Helen mentions the fact that the ice, unexpectedly did not melt completely which got me thinking about the endings:
The event had two endings; parallel narratives - an internal and external:

• The un-finished business of melting and release 'in the interior space' of the building - the ongoing  process of transformation.
• The water returned to its source 'out in the city' - with flashes of gold glinting in the long drop down to the Thames, and then out into the darkness downstream. An unexpectedly beautiful farewell;  release and re-union with the stream flowing into forgetting and unknowing. I felt this ending was a resolution; a trusting to the tide to carry it home.

Bodies…

‘Marx’s designation of the single artifact as a “body” is at some moments based on the concept of use value (the woven cloth refers to the human body because it has “use to” the living body…) and is at other moments based on its being the materialized objectification of bodily labor (the woven clothe a material memorialization of the embodied work of spinning, for it endures long after the physical activity has itself ceased: “the worker has spun and the product is a spinning”) …Thus the activity of “making” comes to be the activity of “animating the external world”, either described as a willed projection of aliveness (“Yarn with which we neither weave nor knit is cotton wasted. Living labor must seize on these things, awake them from the dead”)…’

from ‘The Body in Pain – The Making and Unmaking of the World’ by Elaine Scarry

I have never read Marx so I was bowled over by this; my work as the “making of bodies” or in the case of my new print series “the memorialization of the making of bodies”. I disagree with the concept that the World (raw material) exists purely to be animated by the labour of mankind; since the Earth is continually re-making itself without our interference! But, my work – which relies on the natural, innate processes inherent in materials, is  a ‘making’ by me with the Earth, as a farmer ‘produces’ crops with/from the soil? My work is specifically a "rusting", an "oxidisation" or a "splattering"...
That feels good!

The Descent of Inanna - the oldest myth in the world.

‘The Descent’ dates from 4000 BCE and survives on clay tablets written in cuneiform text found in the ancient Sumerian city of Ur. It relates the story of Inanna, the goddess of Heaven and Earth, and her descent through seven gates to the Underworld, and the subsequent stripping of her seven holy powers. The myth forms the basis of my latest ice-melt which incorporates seven bowls, and will be interpretated by dance on the opening night.

The symbolism of number seems to have always been important. According to J.E. Cirlot seven symbolises perfect order, and corresponds to the seven Direction of Space, the seven pointed star, the seven chakras, the planetary spheres and the moon (since 7 x 4 = the 28 days of the month).

Invitation

A group show of sculpture, video, painting, drawing and prints

Victoria Ahrens
Dina Christy
Jane Dalton
Sara Mark
Bruno Mazzotta
Lisa Payne
Glen Snow
Kim Thornton