core marks by Kate Sweeney
We are delighted to share new artwork by Kate Sweeney as part of her research residency with D6. During the residency Kate visited the decommissioned Souter Lighthouse in South Tyneside, now under the care of the National Trust. Kate remembers the term ‘core mark’ coming up in a conversation with a member of staff at the lighthouse in relation to the infrastructure and objects that are indigenous to the site. She has taken the definition to include marks and materials from the periphery - the insubstantial and changeable.
‘The weight of four Indian Elephants rotating on a bath of mercury’ is a time-lapse video sketch that captures the trace of sunlight that has carouselled through the interior body of Souter Lighthouse since its erection in 1870.
Kate says: ‘A British Imperial-period lighthouse like Souter is modelled on an oak tree. Secular aesthetics to minimise resistance to the elements of progress and modernity. They were planted all around the wet edges of the empire. Acorns. Beacons to ‘wage wars against the foreign seas.’ The huge light rotates on a bath of mercury. Push, go on, it weighs the same as four Indian elephants, apparently.
‘This lighthouse now stays dark in the storm. It is hard to know what we're looking for. The battle to take the coal and the lime up the Wear and the Tyne is over. Where the keeper’s cottages were, there are now long dark rectangles mowed into the grass. There are landscapes across the world bearing these core marks.’
View the ‘The weight of four Indian Elephants rotating on a bath of mercury’ here.
The research is the foundation for further work seeking ways to articulate ways queer and adoptive heritages occupy and explore marginal and shifting space in order to traverse traditional, patriarchal notions of inheritance and legacy. Kate’s work insists upon the multiple histories that institutional monuments attest to.
‘Soft Core’ is a series of drawings made using an ink and charcoal Kate made from storm-felled elderberries and branches gathered in the carpark at Souter Lighthouse. The drawings are responses to sound recordings of a series of conversations she had with her research group (QMAP: Queer Mothers and Adoptive Parents) at the lighthouse. The discussions explored the ways we manifest our family’s identities. The drawings speak of the ways memory and history is held, transformed and circulated within and out from a body beyond the language of blood and DNA.
View 'Soft Core' here.
‘The weight of four Indian Elephants rotating on a bath of mercury’ is a time-lapse video sketch that captures the trace of sunlight that has carouselled through the interior body of Souter Lighthouse since its erection in 1870.
Kate says: ‘A British Imperial-period lighthouse like Souter is modelled on an oak tree. Secular aesthetics to minimise resistance to the elements of progress and modernity. They were planted all around the wet edges of the empire. Acorns. Beacons to ‘wage wars against the foreign seas.’ The huge light rotates on a bath of mercury. Push, go on, it weighs the same as four Indian elephants, apparently.
‘This lighthouse now stays dark in the storm. It is hard to know what we're looking for. The battle to take the coal and the lime up the Wear and the Tyne is over. Where the keeper’s cottages were, there are now long dark rectangles mowed into the grass. There are landscapes across the world bearing these core marks.’
View the ‘The weight of four Indian Elephants rotating on a bath of mercury’ here.
The research is the foundation for further work seeking ways to articulate ways queer and adoptive heritages occupy and explore marginal and shifting space in order to traverse traditional, patriarchal notions of inheritance and legacy. Kate’s work insists upon the multiple histories that institutional monuments attest to.
‘Soft Core’ is a series of drawings made using an ink and charcoal Kate made from storm-felled elderberries and branches gathered in the carpark at Souter Lighthouse. The drawings are responses to sound recordings of a series of conversations she had with her research group (QMAP: Queer Mothers and Adoptive Parents) at the lighthouse. The discussions explored the ways we manifest our family’s identities. The drawings speak of the ways memory and history is held, transformed and circulated within and out from a body beyond the language of blood and DNA.
View 'Soft Core' here.
Little light by Kate Sweeney
In the first weeks of motherhood, we visited Souter, the lighthouse between the Tyne and Wear – between there and here. I knitted a jumper in jubilant red and white bands and sent out an image of the lighthouse to everyone. Now I’m here again. Searching. Wondering what exactly I was signalling with that lighthouse image? One step off tarmac and I am back. I collect elderberries and a few of her blown down branches to make ink and charcoal to draw us together. A palette of place, dyeing ground, deepening tone.
Designs on Heritage is supported by the National Trust, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Newcastle Culture Investment Fund and Arts Council England.
In the first weeks of motherhood, we visited Souter, the lighthouse between the Tyne and Wear – between there and here. I knitted a jumper in jubilant red and white bands and sent out an image of the lighthouse to everyone. Now I’m here again. Searching. Wondering what exactly I was signalling with that lighthouse image? One step off tarmac and I am back. I collect elderberries and a few of her blown down branches to make ink and charcoal to draw us together. A palette of place, dyeing ground, deepening tone.
Designs on Heritage is supported by the National Trust, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Newcastle Culture Investment Fund and Arts Council England.