Talking Stone Taciturn Cave – An Excavation of Darkness
October 4, 2022Ilkley Arts Studio, Castle Yard, LS29 9DT
Opening and Private View Friday October 28th 6 pm – 8 pm
Open Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th October 10.30 am – 4pm 2022
Visitors and local communities are invited to continue an artist’s explorations above and below ground by interacting with a site-specific installation. Remembered in folklore and place names, High Pasture Cave and the Little Skirtful of Stones are hundreds of miles apart and separated by the sea.
In prehistory the burial sites were interrelated by sea routes, migration pathways and traditions associated with rock art. Cup marking, circular depressions incised on landfast boulders and portable stones, may be understood as a prehistoric “language” or signage system.
Cup marked monuments may not have been seen as entirely benevolent or safe to approach. The sounding of hammerstones on rock, and the creation of portable stones, may have offered some kind of protection.
Something of the sense of threat our ancestors encountered when approaching the underworld may be responded to by the musicality of cave water moving through stone. Can the musicality of a contemporary art practice evoke a Goddess (Brigid) and a Giant’s Wife (Rombald): What might belief systems and the presence of women mean in the context of the cave?
The installation will transfer to East Street Arts, St Mary’s Lane, Leeds LS9 7EH in November (11th to 18th tbc).
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