Deep Time stories at Hastings Museum

Who knew that it was 200 years since the naming of a dinosaur known as Iguanodon? It was the second dinosaur ever to be named; the first being a Megalosaurus, yet the term dinosaur was not coined until 1842. Who knew? Certainly not HOT’s Lauris Morgan-Griffiths.

It sparked my interest, as it has the SoCo Artists’, a local voluntary, artist led organisation that supports artists in their practice and holds regular exhibitions. When the group settled on the idea for a show about the Iguanodon and the local geology, Hastings Museum generously gave them access to respond to its geological collection; the result being a challenging, innovative exhibition, Stories from Deep Time. 

I have to admit that I didn’t even known what an Iguanodon was until I heard about this exhibition – you learn something every day. It is the 200th anniversary of the naming of the dinosaur known as Iguanodon. Stories from Deep Time is a response by SoCo Artists to this anniversary and the museum’s geological collection.

Eighteen selected artists invite you to explore themes ranging from an investigation into the collectors of fossils, the places where fossils are found and the fossils themselves. Artists were given access to the museum’s archive of fossils, some went on fossil walks organised by Michael Hambridge for the paleontologically curious to discover dinosaur footprints. This exhibition is curated by SoCo’s chair, Fiona Denning, in collaboration with Philip Hadland, the museum’s Curator of Natural Sciences.

Having so many artists in one space makes it difficult to describe each and everyone’s work, but let me say it’s an exhilarating show, the work ranging from painting, textiles, sculpture, glass and ceramics to mixed media. Each artist has done their research and contributed really surprising, creative answers, responding to the coast line, the fossils and the museum collection.

Fiona Denning is a painter normally producing evocative still lives. However, on this occasion she has taken to looking at the “colours and textures of the collapsing cliffs, scarred rocks and oddly coloured pools along Pett Level where many fossils are found,” and made some lovely sand dimple sculptures resonant with traces left behind, as well as a few of her beautiful paintings of the vertiginous cliffs.

But ones that I found intriguing were “little parcels bound in twine reminiscent of packages discovered in the museum’s archive, small and precious things bundled in tissue paper housed in small cardboard boxes held together with string.”

When hunting for fossils on Pett Level Emily Mackie explained: “One has to search for visual patterns and anomalies to lead the way. To find a fossil is like finding a spark of magic and a connection to the past.” In her art work she has woven a delicate magic sculpture (main picture) “using both traditional and innovative methods that relate to laying fragility, hiding space, ordered patterns, connection and chaos.”

Using locally sourced materials – washed-up remnants of plastic fishing line and charcoal and reeds, beeswax, tomato stalks and quaking grass, purported to grow on enchanted ground – she has produced a beautiful, delicate hanging sculpture that throws shadows on the wall, one imagines as a throwback to the past. 

Emily Johns “has used fossils as routes into the past and future, exposing time through the images that arise from the fusion of geological understanding and folklore.”

She has created evocative installations of hag stones, stones with holes in them, fondly collected by people who think it will lead them back to the place they were found; or more folklorically, it was supposed to help evade Aleister Crowley’s curse. She has installed a parade, holes lined up so you can see back into the realms of time, along with an installation of flint stones poignantly arrayed like ancestors in a show case.

As I was walking around the exhibition I thought I would have seen some paintings or 3-D work of footprints, yet I found none, until I came across Lynne Bingham and Susan Watts’ installation Traces. As they say, “We are all just passing through, and when we have gone, we leave traces behind in memories, genetics, artefacts and our remains.”

They have cast different sized shoes in various materials, looking both solid in plastics, reminding us of our carbon footprint, others more ghost-like as they fade in time, illustrating forcefully our human behaviour and impact on our planet.

There are paintings, drawings, ceramics, sculptures and installations; there is evidence of humanity in the shoe footprints; Sally Cox’s beach clay created Pot women; Sinéid Codd has worked a lot with found plastic washed up on the beach, islands made with found objects, creating a world of future fossils; and Cheryl Bell has created an intriguing Cabinet of Curiosities depicting the life and work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a geologist, palaeontologist, philosopher and theologian who was one of the most important collectors to donate fossils found in Fairlight Cove and Pett Level  to Hastings Museum.

Stories from Deep Time is at the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, John’s Place, Bohemia Road, TN34 ET from  Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 11am-4.30pm, until 27 April. Various events related to the exhibition are scheduled in February, go to website to discover more.

 

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