In late 2018, Andrew Howe (Shropshire, UK) and Kim V. Goldsmith (NSW, Australia) began working together via the international art programme, (Arts) Territory Exchange. They each researched and made many visits to make field recordings in their respective wetlands at the Fenn’s, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses (UK) and Macquarie Marshes (Australia). Their individual and collaborative work reflects local differences and shared global challenges for these fragile environments on opposite sides of the planet.
This first Mosses and Marshes exhibition at Qube, Oswestry during October 2021, featured video, sound, prints, paintings and collage revealing hidden narratives that the artists explored in their research, in conversations with each other and with people from the communities local to the wetlands.
KIM V. GOLDSMITH
An Ancient Land: a history of the wetland in chapters, 2021
HD video with sound, duration 16’12”
Australia is an ancient land, formed over millions of years of rifting, drifting, and drying. Over time, the ancestral plates that smashed together came to form the basis of ancestral lands that shaped a human culture that is tens of thousands of years old. The landing of Captain James Cook on this ancient land 250 years ago in 1770 reshaped Australia forever, smashing together cultures like ancestral plates, buckling, and grinding with a friction still humming through the centuries — like the unheard vibration of fencing wire in the wind. Fencing wire when it became more widely used in the second half of the 19th century, symbolised the new Australia — an ‘untamed’ territory explored, surveyed, staked, mapped, named, carved up and farmed by those with the sense and sensibilities of strangers in a foreign land. The wetland’s voice lost in this history, her songs and stories became hidden behind locked gates, shared with few. The next chapter is ours to shape. What will it be?
KIM V. GOLDSMITH & ANDREW HOWE
The Tone of Things, 2021
HD video with sound, duration 03’03”
Tone tells the truth even when words don’t. It’s hard to define. As humans, we understand the influence tone can have on conversations, on trust, on decision-making. The more-than-human world of the wetlands generates their own tone. Too often though, when heard together our tones are discordant. This video was created by remote collaboration. It brings together underwater footage from the Macquarie Marshes (Australia) with handmade papers from the birch and reeds of Whixall Moss (UK), with a layered soundtrack of atmospheric and hydro-acoustic sounds and tones inspired by and generated from field recordings captured on both sites.
KIM V. GOLDSMITH & ANDREW HOWE
I am Walking, 2021
Spoken word & field recorded soundscape, duration 07’04”
The artists invite you to join them in sharing the experience of walking across their respective landscapes, from north to south.
Credits: Field recordings, music tracks and sound effects in this work have been designed, composed, and recorded by the artists, except in Andrew Howe’s Mosses walk with the use of a track by jaegrover on freesound.org licensed under CC1.0
KIM V. GOLDSMITH
Sonic Stories of the Wetlands
- Droughted Silence, 06’50
- Fire in the Marshes, 06’10
- The Water Returns, 06’29
- Before First Light, 03’40
- Gated Sunrise, 03’00
- Evening Symphony, 04’50
- Reimagined Futures, 04’05
ANDREW HOWE
Territory, 2021
Collage, papers handmade with silver birch, bracken, heather, reeds and purple moor grass
Materials gathered from the Mosses are used to create a representation of the map of the areas of land either side of the border between England and Wales which were enclosed and divided into grids for peat cutting
ANDREW HOWE
Moving the Earth I & II, 2021
Mixed media collage
Two assemblages of handmade papers, monoprints, linocut prints and paintings using botanical inks/pigments. These two pieces explore the textures and lines incised into the land by peat cutting and in the materials of the land.
ANDREW HOWE
Peat Cutting Tools, 2021
Drypoint print
ANDREW HOWE
Hawker, 2021
Sloe, alder and oak gall inks on canvas
ANDREW HOWE
Emperor, 2021
Ivy berry, bracken and oak gall inks on canvas
ANDREW HOWE
Bombers, 2021
Sloe ink and rust on canvas
ANDREW HOWE
Cutters, 2021
Silver birch and acorn inks and rust on canvas
ANDREW HOWE
Curlews calling, 2021
Alder and oak gall inks and rust on canvas
ANDREW HOWE
Water Rising, 2021
Ivy leaf and heather inks and rust on canvas
ANDREW HOWE
Artefacts
#006, #009, #011, #015, #023, #025, #033, #034
Collagraphs
8 prints from a series of over 30 small collagraphs inspired by objects, mostly smashed car fragments, found in the disused breakers’ yard at Whixall Moss, which has been restored by Shropshire Wildlife Trust.
Of the Mosses 