HALF LIVES / GATHERING / THE FLOW
Alistair Debling Jamie Jenkinson Cristina Picchi
Florence Arts Centre
September 6 – October 13, 2024
In 2022, Alistair Debling, Jamie Jenkinson, and Cristina Picchi, as part of Cumberland’s Coastal Programme, were awarded art-research residencies in West Cumbria. The artists embedded themselves within the landscape and communities of the area and were paired with an academic specialist at the Centre for National Parks and Protected Areas at Cumbria University, partnerships that allowed interdisciplinary collaborations in place-based research.
The work in this exhibition explores issues of in/visibility, safety, conservation and time. Through in-depth research, and choosing to present different aspects of life on the west coast, the artists reveal aspects that often go unnoticed. Their work invites discussions about identity, belonging, heritage, and collective futures.
The west coast may sometimes be referred to as the Lake District Coast, connecting it to a romantic vision of the National Park, yet, from Millom to Whitehaven, this part of Cumbria is perhaps better known for its rich geology and a mineral abundance that has made the area a magnet for mining. Its heritage is also strongly linked to the maritime industry and to centuries of farming, while archaeological remains, including stone circles, are echoes of lives from a distant past. This long and multi-layered heritage continues to shape the landscape and the very fabric of today’s communities.
In their research during this residency and in the resulting artworks, the three artists have each navigated the area from distinct vantage points. In his exploration of Sellafield’s internal LGBTQ+ network, Alistair Debling examines themes of identity, conservation, and safe spaces through a queer ecological lens. Jamie Jenkinson’s sound installation crosses scales of time and place and presents interviews and field recordings in collections made using his site-specific research methodologies. Cristina Picchi’s video work explores the flow and complex relationships between nature, industry and time, via the region’s waterways.
These artists meditate on a unique place, showing not only how people have played a pivotal role in shaping the coastal landscape, but how the coast defines communities, people and their histories.
ALISTAIR DEBLING
1. Gatekeeping 2024
C-type darkroom prints, wooden frames, non-reflective glass, tinted perspex, mountboard
2. Safeguarding 2024
Silver gelatin darkroom prints, darkroom processing trays, tinted water
Three black and white photographic prints sit in darkroom processing trays, echoing the storage ponds in which legacy waste is held at Sellafield. Each photograph is taken from the perimeter of the Low Level Waste Repository at Drigg, where barbed wire and dense landscaping screen the internal operations from public view. Over the course of the exhibition these images will be lost as the fibre-based paper disintegrates into the water.
Framed prints depict the boundary fences, gates and checkpoints surrounding Sellafield. The black and white negatives were developed using plants foraged from the power station’s periphery, leading to unpredictable results and imparting soft colour to the images.
Throughout the installation, Debling uses scale, water, glass, tinted perspex, the breakdown of natural materials and the irregularities produced by plant-based developer to restrict easy viewing. Mediating our ability to read the images, he foregrounds questions of access and visibility in ways that may resonate with the experiences of queerness voiced in Half Lives.
3. Half Lives 2024
Single-channel HD video with sound, 14 minutes
In Half Lives, Debling explores the nuclear landscape of Cumbria’s west coast through ecological, sociological and queer lenses. Interviews with members of Sellafield’s internal LGBTQ+ Network are juxtaposed with a point-cloud rendering of the site, offering a fractured digital glimpse of the Sellafield complex and other post-industrial sites in west Cumbria. As the language used to describe personal experiences of queerness bleeds into the terminology used to manage nuclear waste, unexpected connections emerge: between the work of decommissioning - of building, architecturally, extraordinarily safe spaces to house radioactive material - and the work of building socially safe spaces for queer people within a historically unwelcoming industry.
Alistair Debling, background and process
Alistair Debling makes films, photographs, performances, meals and installations that share unexpected stories about rural life. Based in Cumbria, he uses his practice to investigate relationships between diverse fields, from ecology and queer nightlife to militarism, agriculture and architecture. Debling turned his attention to Sellafield’s decommissioning work and its internal LGBTQ+ network; and met with the University of Cumbria’s Dr Lois Mansfield, former Professor of Upland Landscapes, and Dr Jamie Mcphie, Associate Professor of Environmental Humanities and Social Science.
Debling has previously made work exploring queer ecologies: the questioning and queering of binary ecological models in favour of inter-dependence and fluidity. Sellafield is in a state of transition, as the site and others like it are gradually decommissioned. Through an interview with the Heritage Officer for the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, we learn that the architecture of nuclear power is also at risk of being lost. Whilst digital preservation offers one solution, Half Lives questions how much these technologies can truly capture a space and its inner workings.
Throughout the video, Debling uses photogrammetry, a digital process used to create accurate measurements of buildings and landscapes - to render a point cloud portrait of Sellafield. This fractured depiction is mirrored throughout the video – from the glinting of a disco-ball to the machinery from a local dairy farm – alongside glimpses of cordoned-off sites. In reducing Sellafield to this atomised rendition, Debling disrupts the permeability of its real and imagined borders.
A term used to describe the nuclear deterioration of radioactive material, a ‘half-life’ might also describe the experience of shielding parts of one’s identity. As Debling comments: “Sellafield is a seemingly unlikely host of one of West Cumbria’s only public-facing queer groups” and yet, the decommissioned nuclear power station has a thriving internal LGBTQ+ Network. Voiceovers from members of the network reveal experiences of LGBTQ+ people - from the isolation of living in rural settings, where queer people are forced to leave the area to seek kinship and supportive spaces, to the code-switching within working environments; and the rewarding moments of finding or building community. Highlighting experiences of identity, transition and legacy, the work portrays the intimate side of an organisation typically known for its secrecy.
By charting the creation of a safe network for queer-identifying staff against the backdrop of the decommissioning process, Debling shows the intergenerational shift in attitudes towards nuclear power and queer communities.
“Confronting the deep time of the nuclear industry gives us an opportunity to consider which parts of our culture are important to hold onto for future generations, and which areas might be radically reimagined.”
JAMIE JENKINSON
4. Coasting 2022, 10 giclee prints
Coasting was the first series of Fleeting photos made by Jenkinson while travelling on the coastal train route.
5. Gathering 2024, 5.1 surround sound system
Gathering accumulated from an audio archive made while in residence in what was Copeland. Over 7 hours of recording have been mapped to a 5.i surround system forming a circle of cairns, reminiscent of local stone circle structures.
6. IMG_5479 from Fleeting series 2022, 6 sheet bus stop print
Fleeting is an image series taken on an iPhone at x10 zoom from moving vehicles. It reflected Jenkinson’s presence in what was Copeland, and the transient nature of life – workers/industries/birds/weather – in the district.
7. Gathering DVD 2024, DVD
Gathering is available on DVD to be played on 5.1 surround sound systems at home. Each case features a pressed flower from areas between SSSI and National Park boundaries.
8. Spirits of Copeland 2022, a selection
Spirits of Copeland was a workshop held in Muncaster to celebrate Samhain. People of all ages drew their idea of local spirits using pastels made using local pigment by Florence Paint Makers, using locally recycled paper.
Jamie Jenkinson, background and process
Jamie Jenkinson’s research-based practice connects human, natural and digital experiences. Based in Morecambe, Jenkinson explores the culture and communities of the North-West of England, including the Lakes, as the basis for his personal and communal practice. For this residency, Jamie spent 30 days backpacking in the region; he also spent time with Cumbria University’s Dr Jamie Mcphie, Associate Professor of Environmental Humanities and Social Science at the University of Cumbria.
In Gathering, field recordings and interviews recorded during several trips in the west coast region are combined to create a five-channel audio installation. Through walking, caving, traveling by train and bike-packing, Jenkinson amassed hours of audio that capture everything from birdsong to dialogues with farmers and vape shop owners. The installation not only portrays this process of collection but symbolises a convergence of people, landscapes and experiences, underscoring the communal essence at the heart of Jenkinson’s practice.
During the residency, Jenkinson used characteristics of the area as the basis for a series of site-specific/localised research methodologies. This ranged from Nattering – a term derived from chatting with residents, as well as a nod to the Natterjack Toads found along the coast – to Nicholsonism, named after poet and Millom’s most celebrated lifelong resident, Norman Nicolson. In allowing these localised processes to dictate the form and pace of his research, Jenkinson aimed to create methods that communities across the region could relate to and contribute towards. This included drawing sessions with young people, flower pressings, photography workshops and ceramics, many of which are shown at Florence Arts Centre.
Through his research partnership with Dr Jamie Mcphie, Jenkinson also explored animism - the attribution of souls or energy to non-living objects and natural phenomena. Whilst being careful not to overstate this term, Jenkinson’s work shows an interest in the ongoing resonance of pagan objects, such as stone circles, alongside natural sites and manmade phenomena in the area. Jenksinon uses animism as a way to acknowledge the incomprehensible power of these sites and objects, opening up space in which to connect with their histories and create new works in dialogue with them.
At Florence Arts Centre, the work is presented as an audio-installation with collections of haematite rocks encircling listeners. These rocks are used as cairns, or wayfinding tools, across Cumbria, and here we can see them as indications of Jenkinson’s own navigation through the area and his research material.
The audio work is also shown at Millom Library as ‘Nattering’, where longer recordings can be listened to from a ceramic-based audio archive.
CRISTINA PICCHI
9. The Flow
Showing in the performance space
three screens immersive video installation
UK/ITA, 16 min., 2024
Cristina Picchi’s moving image works blend documentary elements with fictional storytelling to create experimental narratives. In The Flow, Picchi gives an expanded portrait of the west Cumbrian coast, showing the delicate balance between communities and the landscapes they occupy.
Through an exploration of the lasting influence of industry and agriculture on the ecology of the West Cumbrian landscape, Picchi explores the steady flow of time in an area defined by geological and nuclear timescales. Distorted underwater recordings, archival sounds of local industry and poetry readings ebb and flow throughout.
Like layers of rock, these invisible and inaudible histories are within the foundations of these landscapes; hidden but not forgotten, lingering beneath our feet. The Flow raises questions about how we shape our environments and, in turn, how they shape us.
Directed, filmed and edited by: Cristina Picchi
Sound design: Diego Schiavo
Colour grading: Simone Poleschi
Featuring Dr Gill Notman
The poem Windscale by Norman Nicholson is performed by Jonathan Powell
Cristina Picchi, background and process
Italian filmmaker Cristina Picchi blends documentary elements and fictional storytelling to create experimental narratives. With other works, including a portrait of the Siberian winter and an exploration of past and impending apocalypses, Picchi often navigates challenging climates to examine the relationship between people and their environments. During her visits to the west coast, Picchi worked with freshwater ecologist Dr Gill Notman, course director in Marine and Freshwater Biology at University of Cumbria.
The Flow begins at the source; babbling water from the fells. From there, Picchi’s work traverses the waterways of west Cumbria, from the cascading waterfalls inland to the windmills of ‘Britain’s Energy Coast’ in the choppy Irish Sea, to give an expanded portrait of ‘the Lake District Coast’.
Using a three-screen installation, Picchi shows the balance between communities and landscape, questioning how much human influence shapes the place, and vice versa. Freshwater biologist Dr Gill Notman is shown gathering and testing water samples, examining material as part of her research, and scenes of Ghyll Scaur Quarry, a working site producing aggregate materials, and a nearby dairy farm, show the steady flow of milk and minerals out of the region.
The riverbed contains a network of wildlife - shredders, gatherers, grazers and predators - that ensure the breakdown of natural matter. These cycles of life and decay are also present throughout the post-industrial landscape. In sequences shot at Florence Mine (the site now occupied by the Arts Centre) derelict monoliths of the site’s former industry cast a stark profile. Images of a torched steel plug, a relic of Millom’s Steel Works, similarly appear as a totemic scar on the landscape. The film ends with the flashing of Whitehaven’s lighthouse, a beacon of the town and an evocation of its seafaring past and its connection to the British Empire and transatlantic slave trade.
The Flow’s carefully crafted audio track weaves together sounds recorded on location, recordings made above and beneath the surface of water, archive recordings from Millom Ironworks, and fragments of a reading of Norman Nicholson’s poem, Windscale.
Picchi’s film expands the notion of a coast to include natural and industrial inland systems, and timescales defined by geological and nuclear activities. From the sublime shots of Wastwater and the majesty of Swinside’s standing stones, to the instantly recognisable profile of Sellafield, Picchi uses stillness to evoke the area's deep past and its perpetual transformation.
Acknowledgements
The artists would like to thank all the local residents who have helped with their exploration of the area and their process of research during their residencies in 2022.
They would also like to thank specialists from the University of Cumbria for provocative and informative conversations, and additional on-site research support: Dr Jamie Mcphie, Dr Lois Mansfield and Dr Gill Notman.
The artists’ residency placements and the exhibition have been funded by Arts Council England and Cumberland Council, with support from the University of Cumbria and the Centre for National Parks and Protected Areas (CNPPA). The residencies and exhibition are part of Cumberland Council’s Coastal Programme.
The exhibition is being curated by Harriet Fraser and Rob Fraser, co-founders of the PLACE Collective at CNPPA, with support from Sue Mackay, Director, Florence Arts.
The exhibition texts have been compiled in collaboration with Will Rees.
Particular thanks from all the artists, and from Harriet Fraser and Rob Fraser, to Diane Ward at Cumberland Council and Sue Mackay at Florence Arts Centre.
Florence Arts Centre, 2024
