Laura Harrington is interested in the natural world and how humans understand and interact with it – working with multiple mediums including film, drawing and installation.
A shared interest in upland environments and peat as a lively and dynamic material provided the impetus for a collaboration with physical scientist Jeff Warburton (Department of Geography, Durham University) as part of a Leverhulme Trust Artist Residency. Their collaboration focused on Moss Flats, an upland bare peat flat in the North Pennines. The research has evolved into an exploration of this dynamic eco-system through moving image, words and sound.
The book, Haggs and High Places, brings together their work, with poems by Josephine Dickinson, to explore and illustrate the pull and experience of Moss Flats.
Published by New Writing North as part of the Durham Book Festival 2015 on the occasion of the exhibition The Liveliest of Elements: An Ordinary Extraordinary Material at The Norman Chapel, Durham Castle from 10-17 October 2015 and at Woodhorn Museum, Northumberland, from 17 October-1 November 2015.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by artist Joseph Beuys who once described a European bog as ‘the liveliest of elements’ and scientist Noel Hobbs who referred to peat as an ‘ordinary extraordinary material’ due to its unusual characteristics and behaviour as an earth surface material.
The exhibition includes: Liveliest of Elements, a new moving image work that explores the nature of Moss Flats through image and sound – the supposed nothingness revealed in its entirety; dis/sonance, a new four channel sound installation consisting of five voices recorded at Moss Flats – aiming to capture the movement and rawness present on the surface of the site, translated through the most primitive and paired down instrument we have – the human voice. |