Click here to continue the Impermanent Edge tour.

ONCA is the opening venue for Impermanent Edge, a virtual tour of photographic/site responsive work by Brighton-based artist Helen Goodwin. We are exhibiting the work online only. It is part of a micro-commission from Edgelandia and Penned in the Margins to create a response to the changing environment and meet local people. The coronavirus changed Helen’s exhibition plans from physical to digital, from a single place to a journey. This digital journey also follows the path of Helen’s chair, moving back up from Brighton to Hull and East Yorkshire, to the place where it once sat beneath white muslin curtains in Helen’s wooden hut on the cliff top looking out over the sea. It links eroding coastlines where the artist has lived: the chalk cliffs of East Sussex and the till (clay) of East Yorkshire. The digital journey begins here in Brighton and ends in Whitby. On August 31st the work travels to GroundWork Gallery in Kings Lynn.

The online journey of the work begins in Brighton, a city that is built on chalk which was formed on the sea bed some 87/84 million years ago. The chalk rose from the sea due to the tectonic shifts and is now eroding back into the sea. From here on the south Sussex coast the chalk runs up to the east Yorkshire coast as far as Flamborough Head, just north of Skipsea. The digital journey ends in Whitby. Helen explains:

This work is about impermanence, seen through the eroding edge of landscape on coastal places where I have lived. On the East Yorkshire shore, the cliffs and beach at Skipsea, the fastest eroding coastline in Europe, the work aims to catch the impact of wind, tide and sea on the cliffs, and on human life through the shifting buildings and their contents, to capture the effect of impermanence. The work was made on the beach in March, at a time of fierce, forceful winds. White cloth to reflect the ebb of the waves, the tidemark of sea on the edge of land, fixed on upright wooden struts sunk deep into the sand. They connect the sea to sky. They draw the wind in the air. Their movements with wind and water show how the earth moves and reforms and shapes the impermanent edge of shoreland. The flag-like constructions become fragile and surrender to what later seems was inevitable. Just as my cliff-top cottage finally did.

I work in landscape, using materials of place such as stones, soil, chalk, and material culture of people, such as thread, objects, pictures. As glaciers did and the sea does take and move geological materials, I may use materials of one place in another, here chalk on clay and tarmac. I also move objects from one place to another. I had a cottage on the cliff top at Skipsea for five years. Before it was taken by the sea, I removed a chair I still have, which moved with me from Skipsea to Hull to Brighton. I brought it back to visit.

This work is part of a micro-commission from Edgelandia and Penned in the Margins to create a response to the changing environment and meet local people. The coronavirus changed exhibition plans from physical to digital, from a single place to a journey. This digital journey also follows the path of the chair, moving back up from Brighton to Hull and East Yorkshire, to the place where it once sat beneath white muslin curtains in a wooden hut on the cliff top looking out over the sea. It links eroding coastlines where I’ve lived: the chalk cliffs of East Sussex and the till (clay) of East Yorkshire. The digital journey begins here in Brighton and ends in Whitby.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Helen has worked and studied in the UK and other European countries, China and Mongolia, on arts related projects. She has been selected on various international arts residencies and has works in international private and institutional collections. Helen’s practice is largely site responsive and performative, often working in chosen outdoor locations, and with an emphasis on impermanence. The particular locality, both people and place, is the basis and provides materials that feed into her work. Her focus is on issues of place, space and belonging using material culture as well as found geology, and other materials of place. She is particularly interested in the ever-changing edges of landscapes which has led her to look further at ideas around environmental impermanence.