Summer Auty

Summer Auty is a recent Fine Art graduate from Central St Martins; her work explores the relationship between people and land through photography and interactive installation.

Over the last year she has looked at feelings of grief towards the quickly vanishing countryside, in England, to new housing developments and the impacts this has on communities and individuals.

Her recent exhibition Homesick focuses on the proposed Selwood Garden Community development in Frome, Somerset.

Photographs of the site are printed onto multiple pages of A4 and tiled together, to divide them into sections with white borders, reflecting the way we build houses in rows and grids like boxes, breaking up the landscape. The work mirrors the complexity of a new housing development through the layers of image. Each page is stapled to the wall so that the pages are easy to remove, revealing the photograph behind. When a page is removed the audience discovers a quote on the back from a local resident, voicing how they felt about the proposed development.

I’m Afraid It Won’t Feel Like Home (2022) Installation view 204 x 384 cm Inkjet printed image onto standard A4 paper 25

The following text is an extract from Common Salt, a book by artists Sheila Ghelani and Sue Palmer (Live Art Development Agency, 2021). Common Salt originated as a live show and tell about memory, nature and empire that toured museums and libraries, funded by Arts Council England. This extract focuses on how we learn about nature without recognising the contexts of colonialism and the oil industry, and their impact on the environment.

‘People and plants belong to the same colonial story.’ (Corinne Fowler, Green Unpleasant Land, 2020)

I grew up listening to the 45” single Sounds of the Countryside narrated by Johnny Morris. It was dreamy - pastoral dusky sounds, with a sleeve cover of a winding road with thick hedges, an oak tree and clouds. The record label was Shell. The small logo on the sleeve was that distinctive yellow scallop shell on a red background with red text. The record was part of their Natural History series that included Sea Birds and the Dawn Chorus. The vinyl record was made from polyvinyl chloride, the basic raw materials of which are oil and salt.

I absorbed that visual sign long before I knew anything about Royal Dutch Shell. That transnational corporation had normalised its appearance in my life and sewn itself in through the car, the farm, sounds, nostalgia - it made itself natural. I grew up not knowing. In my mid-30s, I saw Dan Gretton’s durational lecture performance ‘Killing Us Softly,’ with Platform London’s work around oil; it was a life-changing exposure to seeing the extraordinary power and invisibility of these corporations. Shell and the Niger Delta and Somerset - a triangulation linking colonialism with the English pastoral with environmental destruction in Africa.

As a child I was embedded in colonial histories with no knowledge of that, with ancestral connections to empire in both the East and West Indies. My extended family lived in India as part of the British Raj. I remember the awful moment when we found a crate of tiger and wild animal skins in the garage at the house clearance after their son died. That moment influenced a

A Natural History - Common Salt by Sue Palmer

previous live art work It Is For The Tiger in 2005.

Extraction, exploitation, displacement, hunting, collecting, forced land removals, extortion, market undercutting, enclosure, destruction of the aboriginal and the indigenous, racism, forced labour, cheap labour, market forces, environmental destruction.

We can do no more than bring to the surface just a fraction of the complexity of nature and empire; our gardens, the rural, cities, culture, food, industry - every aspect of our lives are completely entwined - of course they are.

‘Follow the path ... you come to Basildon Park, an estate now held by the National Trust. Its 400 acres of parkland were enclosed by Francis Sykes, the former MP for Wallingford and Governor of Cossimbazar, whose fortune was amassed through his work for the British East India Company. Ten miles south of us run the razorwire fences of Burghfield and Aldermaston’s nuclear weapons facilities. The interests of agriculture, hunting, aristocracy, colonialism and war were laid out before me in the undulating valley, like a series of open books’ (Nick Hayes, The Book of Trespass, 2020)

We took Common Salt to the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading, not far from Basildon Park. Ollie Douglas, the Curator at MERL put together a display in a case beside our show and tell table, of objects that connected the rural to the colonial including: a copy of the East India Company Charter signed by Elizabeth I, a salt jar, cricket balls, a hedge slasher and gloves, a hurdle, a Ladybird book of Ships, a box saying ‘Suttons Seeds’, a silver salver and a large brass Sutton & Son sign in Bengali and English with the Head Office at 130, Russell St, Calcutta-16. Why were we surprised Sheila? After everything we had already learned?

‘Suttons Seeds grew from a local shop into a global firm. In 1912 they established a Calcutta branch, from which they developed and grew seed for the UK and Indian markets. Indian independence came in 1947 but colonial structures persisted. The last British Managing Director of the Calcutta branch was given this sign and silver salver when he retired in 1972.

Suttons and Sons (India) broke away from the parent company. It still trades out of Kolkata today.’

‘In 1848, botanist Robert Fortune stole tea plants from China for the British East India Company, helping to give rise to the Indian tea industry. That English mainstay - the cup of tea - conceals a complex and conflicted colonial history.’

‘Boundaries and access points play a vital role in the history of rural England. Fencing meant land could be enclosed and the rights of people and animals managed more easily. Across the British Empire land was routinely taken from local populations. These processes were enforced by marking parcels of land on maps and by the introduction of physical barriers and controls.’ (Ollie Douglas, Curator of MERL collections, 2020)

Both of us - you and me Sheila - are into nature; curious about other species and life forms, fascinated by how they live and what they get up to. My garden is full of the foliage and flowers that we lay on the table and string to make garlands. And it’s full with plants, descendants of those brought here by plant hunters.

We were charmed by the anecdote of a tame Robin landing on Eliza’s hand (Eliza Brightwen, Rambles with Nature Students, 1899), with those Lemurs living in her conservatory, but alarmed at the thought of her going to the docks to buy exotic traded animals. We were undone by Octavian Hume with time on his hands while Commissioner of the Great Hedge, able to fund those expeditions to catch, kill and catalogue Indian birds, to fulfil that voracious collecting drive. (Roy Moxham, The Great Hedge of India, Constable, 2002)

Collections, natural history, botanical drawing and colonialism. Now I see it, I cannot imagine how I haven’t always been able to see it - how could it have been so normalised, the connections so invisible; of course Shell would have its own natural history record label for children’s learning.

Sue Palmer is an artist and producer based in Frome.

The Future Generation

Future generations may suffer the worst with eco anxiety as their futures are so unsettled. Equally, younger generations seem to be the most passionate and the most brave to stand up for planet, with Greta Thurnburg leading the way and millions of children around the world joining protests demanding action on climate emergency. Solastalgia received work from two secondary school students in Frome which were particularly moving.

The End (2022)

Ted Neylor

Ted Neylor is an art student from Frome Community College. He writes ‘I was inspired to create this drawing because of the increasingly rapid destruction of our planet, which we infinitely rely on and take for granted. It aims to show the catastrophic effects of the climate crisis on us and how we live our lives. I drew inspiration from a quote by Greta Thunberg that simply states, “our house is on fire.” I chose to take this very literally as in order for humans to change, we need to understand the sheer power of what we have done and therefore we need a very hard-hitting message that makes people think, “Why?” The flames represent all of the effects humans have inflicted and are inflicting upon the world and how at the moment we may not see it but they are roaring and are out of control. Is this the end?’

Thomas Yeatman is a Year 9 art student at Frome Community College who looks at the saddening habitat loss in the Artic due to the climate crisis. He states ‘my drawing depicts a minute amount of ice as because of climate change polar bears must swim vast distances just to find sanctuary for another day. It is imperative that the polar bears stay alive as they are of cultural importance to people in the Arctic region as well as being of importance to the wider world and the loss of these magnificent creatures would disrupt the natural food chain.’

Thomas Yeatman

International Artists

Solastalgia originated as a Somerset focused magazine however we reached much further than intended and had beautiful submissions from around the world. We felt it was important that we looked at other artist perspectives of climate breakdown from across the world, not just here in the South West of England.

Juan Brouwer

Juan Brouwer is visual and contemporary artist who graduated from San Alejandro Academy, Cuba.

Juego de ninos (2022) 65 x 65 cm Acrilico sobre Lienzo

Untitled (2022) 19 x 19 cm Tinted paper, chalk, black wax crayon

Irina Tall Novikova

Irina Tall Novikova is an artist, illustrator and writer. She graduated from the State Academy of Slavic Cultures, Moscow, with a degree in art. Her first solo exhibition “My soul is like a wild hawk” (2002) was held in the museum of Maxim Bagdanovich. In her works, she raises themes of ecology and anti-war, in 2005 she devoted a series of works to the Chernobyl disaster. She also writes fairy tales, poems and illustrates short stories.

This artwork is a small sketch that Irina made in the area that she lives. She depicts autumn trees and the Svisloch River, Belarus.

Adhie Kencana is an artist based in Indonesia. His piece Getting Desperate looks how the balanced ecosystems within a forest are disrupted by human intervention. The clearing of forests for the purpose of making roads will affect the ecosystems and future of the forest, including all the biodiversity within it. Road construction and clearing forests will lead to smaller and isolated habitats for the ecosystems to exist within. These ecosystems are becoming increasingly desperate which leaves the animals that live within them vulnerable to extinction.

Adhie Kencana

Getting Desperate (2020) 80 x 60 cm Acrylic on canvas 35

The Rebirth of The Earth (2022) 100 x 80 x 55 cm Chicken wire, puzzle pieces, crochet, crystals Robelis Rodriguezuez Mijare is a German mixed media artist situated near Düsseldorf. Robelis’s work is made from recycled materials. The Rebirth of the Earth is made using chicken wire from her garage and discarded puzzle pieces that she saved from the rubbish. She crocheted directly on the wire and embroidered it with small crystals.

Robelis Rodriguezuez Mijares

Lauren Goodey In Memory of Life (2018) Digital photograph

Thank You

Solastalgia is a non-profit magazine to raise money to set up a Community Market in Frome, Somerset, as part of the Edventure Frome Start-up course. The market aims to promote community resilience by focusing on coming together to share, mend, swap, donate, and support each other. The course starts in January, and we hope to be testing our idea in March 2023. There are still some places on the course if anyone is interested in getting involved.

Edventure supports community entrepreneurship in Somerset, UK. At Edventure people come together to start things up, tackle community issues and gain skills and confidence to build a positive future, meaning livelihoods, a resilient town, and a fairer, greener world.

Thanks for supporting Solastalgia and Edventure!

ISSUE 1 | JAN 2023 | £9.99

Editor Summer Auty

Cover Artwork Sophie Mason

Instagram @solastalgiazine

Website https://solastalgia.square.site/

Submissions for Issue 2 solastalgia@outlook.com