Kurt Jackson: Clay Country

Kurt Jackson Clay Country KU R T J AC K S O N Editions

The orange cat men, Littlejohns. 2018 mixed media on museum board 16 × 22 cm

The clay country runs over the Cornubian basilith (the granite

Kaolin bonanza that made fortunes for many invested and

spine of mid-Cornwall). Its signature is a rough landscape of man-

countless livelihoods here was never the home of its creative

made mountains of spoil and deep troughs caused by extraction.

use, shipped out to the Potteries of Stoke and Worcester to

The cones represented the days of innocence pre the dreadful slag

make the work that would make their legend.

heap collapse at Aberfan in the 1960s after which all heaps were

Kurt, as ever, captures the land with an eye of grandeur,

converted into Ziggurats to prevent slippage. Creating a landscape

melancholy, beauty and hope and we are so proud to see

hinting of a lost civilisation and an Eden Project channeling The Lost

creative justice done to an area that symbolises more than

World of our inner Arthur Conan Doyle. Despair turned into a mark

anywhere on earth the malleability of the human imagination.

of hope and new direction.

The marvellous irony of Kurt’s work is that this white gold, the 2

Tim Smit KBE The Eden Project

Littlejohns mist. 2018 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

3

In the clay pit, Littlejohns. 2018 mixed media and collage on board 7 × 9 cm

China clay deposits in Cornwall are the largest in the world, with the history of the industry carved into the landscape around us.

IMERYS Minerals continues this more than 250-year-old tradition in our mining operations and is honoured to have hosted artist Kurt Jackson at our Littlejohns mine. His work has yielded a stunning collection of wall pieces and ceramics, capturing both the historical and modern-day mining activities in and around Clay Country. The exhibition, aptly titled Clay Country, will be the first exhibition at Wheal Martyn, offering a unique picture of modern-day mining.

Ashely Shopland UK Director IMERYS

4

Littlejohns winter sunshine. 2018 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

5

Clay Country

Cornwall, the less glamorous, industrial side.

Dramatic (and sometimes extreme) variations in the weather inspired a diverse range of drawings and paintings, perched on the edge of the pit or down in the depths; including the clay and stone itself in the mix.

From the ‘washing’ of the clay from the face with high pressure monitors, to the pumping, the blasting of the rock and breaking and transportation, all became subject matter to the apparent tiny figures and machines working in this vast open air pit, the aquamarine pools, the white pits and sky tips.

In my field just below my home here in West Cornwall lies a subterranean seam of creamy soft china clay. I know this because of the short-

Cornwall’s extractive industry and its role in

winter and spring of 2018 in Littlejohns China

lived tin mine in another field of ours where they

shaping the physical landscape, culture and

Clay works. Observing the workers in the pit,

tried and failed to sink a shaft into the crumbly

heritage of Cornwall has always interested me;

extracting and transporting the china clay in this

stuff over 100 years ago; and then there’s the

over the last 20 years I have explored the geological

extraordinary manmade landscape to make mixed

now-disused clay pits at Balswidden –‘the white

workplace as a source for making art. This new

media paintings, from huge tarpaulin-sized

works’ up on the hill. And then there was the time

body of work is the latest to add to the series of

canvases to small intimate studies all completed

the holes for our geothermal heating were drilled

projects already completed that toured round public

on site.

and the problems associated with the collapsing

galleries within the UK and further afield; works

China Clay / Kaolin is an ingredient of all our

clay that had to be overcome. As a result China

made in the last working tin mine in Cornwall,

everyday lives – it is in our paper, our light bulbs,

Clay has always had a fascination for me, this

South Crofty [ toured from1996], Carnsew, a

toothpaste, plastics and porcelain. It is a two

stuff of Cornwall that has played such a large

working granite quarry [toured from 1998] and

hundred year old thriving industry based in a

part in the industrial life of the area but also that

Delabole, a slate quarry [toured from 2001].

twenty-five square mile piece of central Cornwall

has been so instrumental in the shaping of our

off the usual beaten track. This is the other side to

topography and landscape.

For this project I worked in situ throughout the

6

Clay Country November. 2017 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

7

Clay country through a wet car window on the A30. 2017 mixed media on museum board 16 × 23 cm

When looking at the ordinance survey map

ground open up and then are refilled. An entire

remain as such for years; locked up and gated,

of the St Austell district in Cornwall you see huge

topography was moved, removed and replaced

dangerous no-go-areas that become havens for

blank empty areas of nothing, just white void.

for its (ironically) whiteness. Watercourses, lakes,

the deer and skylarks. Others have been redevel-

They remind me of those ‘empty’ unmapped

hills have been created, changed, moved again

oped with solar parks and the erecting of immense

areas on maps of the deserts– the empty quarter,

and again and then eventually left; deserted as a

wind turbines where the new resources are

the unknown. However, here in clay country we

despoiled, over-exploited wasteland that nature

now exploited or as the potential sites for new

have the opposite – not the unexplored but the

gradually recolonises. We are left with vast

recreation, the obvious being The Eden Project.

maybe over explored, places that have been

stretches of mica dams, aquamarine pools, coni-

turned over, dug up, removed for the purpose

cal sky tips, miles of tracks leading to nowhere

johns for their help and the access to the site in

of extracting the kaolin; sitting in between the

with acres and acres of raked, bulldozed,

making this body of work.

vanished hills and valleys of this former Cornish

churned stoney soil that slowly grows a covering

moorland. These places are still moving, it is a

of ling, grass and bramble, gorse and buddleia

dynamic almost nomadic land where hills vanish

then willow carr.

only to reappear nearby again, huge holes in the

8

Some of these discarded unwanted lands

I would like to thank Imerys and all at Little-

Kurt Jackson 2020

Three figures Higher Moor November. 2017 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

9

Clay Sink Littlejohns Pit And Dorothy’s Tip The immense pit sunk below the sky tip The hollow below the sky Fills with sound and sunlight As the tiny men Try to empty it Their toy dumpers and diggers Orange and yellow Clawing and hammering Scraping and carrying Pull and push and wash The light holding Kaolin This stuff that is so white In 80-ton loads This heavy light clay From bottom to top Up, out into the light

March 2018

10

Rattle and rumble, the sink, Littlejohns. 2018 mixed media on wood panel , 60 × 60 cm

11

12

Stripping back the layers. 2018 mixed media on linen 198 × 223.5 cm

Tyler the hose man’s view, washing the clay off stope 18. 2018 mixed media on museum board 24 × 25 cm

13

Tyler hosing. 2018 mixed media and kaolin on paper 59 × 41 cm

14

Tyler washing clay out of the stent and sand. 2018 mixed media on museum board 19 × 23 cm

15

Littlejohns, Dorothy Flag. Across the pit to three diggers and a dumper. 2018 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

16

Washing, Littlejohns. 2018 mixed media and kaolin on geological map 29 × 42 cm

17

Sunlight fills the pit. 2018 mixed media on wood panel , 60 × 60 cm

18

Sunshine and diggers and dumpers and clay. 2018 mixed media and kaolin on paper 57 × 61 cm

19

Sitting on Hensbarrow in the rain. 2017 mixed media and collage on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

20

Washing above the main sink. 2018 mixed media on paper 57 × 60 cm

21

Late afternoon Littlejohns, big orange digger. 2018 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

22

Dorothy. 2018 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

23

Dorothy. 2018 mixed media on canvas 76 × 102cm

24

Dorothy A plain of aquamarine milk Laps at the ling A soup of mica A colloid of kaolin This quarry pool, a sink, a drain Her face has been washed Stent and sand cleaned Hosed with a rainbow Her milk was gleaned Until just her pale skeleton is left to show And that pit full of colour lying below Benches have become quiet Under a coat of new growth Her furzy locks and tresses Smothered, healed and hidden the works The croak of the raven And soaring kestrel in flight Now fill this void For Dorothy sleeps tight

IV 2018

25

Dorothy sleeps. 2018 mixed media, collage and gravel on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

26

Across Dorothy’s pool. 2018 mixed media on museum board 17 × 20 cm

27

Pit and benches. 2018 mixed media with kaolin and sand on linen 201 × 261 cm

28

29

30

Pits of noise and light. 2018

Grey pit. 2018

mixed media with kaolin and sand on linen 201 × 203 cm

mixed media and kaolin on museum board 24 × 29 cm

31

Bucket wheels. 2018 mixed media on museum board 20 × 32 cm

32

Evening quarry pool. 2018

Into the pit. 2018

mixed media on museum board 18 × 18 cm

mixed media on museum board 18 × 24 cm

33

China clay benches. 2018 mixed media on museum board 25 × 25 cm

34

Below the Cornish Alps mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

35

Washing in the sunshine mixed media on paper 57 × 61 cm

36

Cold winter evening above the pit. 2018 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

37

Sunset behind a manmade mountain. 2018 mixed media on museum board 27 × 29 cm

38

Cold winter evening above the pit. 2018 mixed media on wood panel 60 × 60 cm

39

Evening washing. 2018

Claypitscape. 2018

mixed media on museum board 23 × 21 cm

mixed media on museum board 18 × 23 cm

40

Night in the pit. 2018 mixed media on museum board 18 × 19 cm

41

Cornish china clay pit. 2018 drypoint plate size 18 × 15 cm edition of 30

42

Cornish china clay pit. 2018 drypoint and monoprint and collage plate size 18 × 15 cm

43

Tip, pit. 2019 porcelain 22 × 22 cm diameter

44

Cornish white. 2019 porcelain 23 × 23 cm diameter

Prigwynn. 2019 porcelain 18 × 18 cm diameter

45

Kurt Jackson

numerous art publications released to accompany his exhibitions. Four monographs on Jackson have been published by Lund Humphries depicting his career so far; A New Genre of Landscape Painting (2010), Sketchbooks (2012), A Kurt Jackson Bestiary (2015) and Kurt Jackson’s Botanical Landscape (2019). A Sansom & Company published book based on his touring exhibition Place was released in 2014.

Jackson regularly contributes to radio and

A dedicated environmentalist and true polymath, Jackson’s holistic approach to his subject seamlessly blends art and politics providing a springboard to create a hugely varied body of work unconstrained by format or scale.

television and presents environmentally informed art documentaries for the BBC and was the subject for an award winning BBC documentary, ‘A Picture of Britain’.

He has an Honorary Doctorate (DLitt) from Exeter University and is an Honorary Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford University. He is an ambas­ sador for Survival International and frequently works with Greenpeace, WaterAid, Oxfam and

Jackson’s artistic practice ranges from his trade-

and independently, painting wherever he went

Cornwall Wildlife Trust. He is a patron of human

mark visceral plein-air sessions to studio work

before putting down roots in Cornwall with his

rights charity Prisoners of Conscience. He is

and embraces an extensive range of materials

wife Caroline in 1984.

represented by Messum’s in Cork Street, London

and techniques including mixed media, large canvases, print-making and sculpture.

Jackson’s focus on the complexity, diversity and fragility of the natural world has led to artist-

and is an academician at the Royal West of England Academy.

in-residencies on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza,

Kurt Jackson and his wife Caroline live and

1961, the son of artists. While studying Zoology at

the Eden Project and for nearly 20 years Glaston-

work in the most-westerly town in Britain, St Just-

Oxford University he spent most of his time painting

bury Festival which has become a staple of his

in-Penwith where in 2015 they set up the Jackson

and attending courses at Ruskin College of Art.

annual working calendar.

Foundation. They have three grown children and

Jackson was born in Blandford, Dorset in

On gaining his degree he travelled extensively

46

Over the past thirty years Jackson has had

seven young grandchildren.

Nightlights in the pit. 2018 mixed media on museum board 18 × 18 cm

48