The
Canary Keeper
(A worker’s monument in a plastic place)
Huntington is an ex-mining village in Staffordshire. The remnants of the colliery, which defined the identity of the village for one hundred years, have been demolished and visually eradicated. A significant mound of black slag residue was purchased from the colliery by the parish for the token sum of ten pounds. The mound was then landscaped and transformed into an area for recreation.For The Canary Keeper, key elements of this place are faithfully recreated in a virtual model village, the community centre, the church, a row of old miner’s cottages and the mound. For the interiors of the virtual buildings, the community participated in the act of visually sampling material from the village. Objects like hand embroidered kneelers from the church and ceramic commemorative plates, collected in one household, from mines all over Britain.
The
artist recorded hymns, worker’s songs and aural history of the mining
village. She talked mainly to Harry Shaw who had worked in the mines of
Cannock since he was a child.
In response to the replica village, the local community requested a virtual
monument to the miners to be situated on top of the mound.The Canary Keeper
is a male figure hypothetically constructed in sheets of galvanised steel.
The sculpture formally commemorates the dangers miners faced from gas
underground.Canaries were used to detect the gas and there was a tradition
amongst miners of breeding birds to compete in racing and singing. The
work provides a reconfigured visual identity for Huntington which is derived
from a local vocabulary of objects. It creates a new form of community
diorama and borrows from the aesthetic principles of a former superpower
to decorate the village.
A Virtual Reality work avaliable in a limited edition of 100 cd roms for PC.Contact Ham and Enos if you would like to view the work.
Commissioned in 2001 for Making History, Stafforshire University and Staffordshire County Council.
For the interiors of the virtual buildings, the community participated
in the act of visually sampling material from the village. Objects like
hand embroidered kneelers from the church and ceramic commemorative plates,
collected in one household, from mines all over Britain.
The
artist recorded hymns, worker’s songs and aural history of the mining
village. She talked mainly to Harry Shaw who had worked in the mines of
Cannock since he was a child.
In response to the replica village, the local community requested a virtual
monument to the miners to be situated on top of the mound.The Canary Keeper
is a male figure hypothetically constructed in sheets of galvanised steel.
The sculpture formally commemorates the dangers miners faced from gas
underground.Canaries were used to detect the gas and there was a tradition
amongst miners of breeding birds to compete in racing and singing. The
work provides a reconfigured visual identity for Huntington which is derived
from a local vocabulary of objects. It creates a new form of community
diorama and borrows from the aesthetic principles of a former superpower
to decorate the village.
A Virtual Reality work avaliable in a limited edition of 100 cd roms for PC.Contact Ham and Enos if you would like to view the work.
Commissioned in 2001 for Making History, Stafforshire University and Staffordshire County Council.