Neroche’s Weblog

Sue Palmer is working to produce an interactive website which explores some of the species and events passing through the Neroche landscape, which will launch in November/December 2008. The artwork will map the migrations and transient movements of seeds, birds, soil, butterflies, people, ideas, weather, ghosts, satellites and water.

By travelling both ancient and contemporary roads and routes as well as research and collection through conversation and encounter, Sue is gathering materials for a website that will create the sense of a moving and transitional landscape that is inter-connected and full of visitors.

Sue has a blog which is continually updated with her collected materials and process, and a youtube site for some of the short videos made in response to her journeys through the Neroche landscape.

What in particular do you find interesting about the Neroche landscape at this point in the project?

I love the abundance of plant life, bird sounds, animal tracks, and since I’m reading about stories and folklore in Somerset, I’m hearing also another subterranean layer of sounds – the trees talking, people from past ages driving their cattle, gossiping, minding the forest….

In what way has this project affected your personal artistic practice so far? 

I’m going to start carving the longest tree trunk yet – it’s 16 and-a-half metres long – so it gives me great scope to develop and spread carved images. These will be in some kind of narrative, I think, but the new length will be a wonderful challenge.

What in particular do you find interesting about the Neroche landscape at this point in the project?

I love the variation and contrasts in the Neroche landscape – it seems quite different to me each time I visit. I can’t think of anywhere with such a range of different landscape within such a small area. It feels very mysterious and dramatic and full of contradictions and secrets. I don’t feel I understand it at all yet which makes it continue to fascinate me.

In what way has this project affected your personal artistic practice so far?

This project has been a great opportunity for me to explore traditional music and song of my own culture – there is some fantastic music coming to light and I think its very exciting to be involved in bringing it out of the dusty library shelves and archives and back to life. I’m really looking forward to working with children and finding out their responses and contributions. It feels very pertinent to be working with people and roots- both in cultural and natural senses – in a time when a lot of people seem to feel rather lost and ‘Identityless’ – beginning to question the throw-away consumerist culture, and looking for something deeper. Its fantastic to have the chance to work with a storyteller in an ongoing project, and to be able to talk to people in the community and get a real sense of how things were, and what we can learn from the past. Its been only relatively recently that we’ve come to rely on the mass media for entertainment, I hope perhaps we can help in the revival of the times when songs and tunes were real possessions and music was only ever live! And of course, to be able to perform outside in the beautiful Neroche woods is a privilege.

What in particular do you find interesting about the Neroche landscape at this point in the project?

This is a landscape that holds its own stories…all that I experience on Neroche at first glance seems natural and wild but the truth is much more intriguing. The interweaving of human, rock, plants and wildlife have created a landscape that whispers and dances with stories and delight. There is always another layer to discover.

In what way has this project affected your personal artistic practice so far?

The Neroche scheme has been a fantastic opportunity to research and develop the telling of Somerset and local stories…a new departure for me. I really love the idea of telling our stories form our land, very few word miles! Some times it feels as though, as a culture we diminish “Englishness” but it is not all bad. We have great traditions and strange and curious folk beliefs, many of which have nearly disappeared. To scratch at the surface and rediscover some of these is a way of really connecting to the land and the people that have inhabited it before us.