Sometime in a Churchyard

Exhibition at the Torriano Meeting House

https://torriano meeting house.wordpress.com/2023/03/07/torriano-poetry-21/

Sometime in a Churchyard

Drawings, Prints and Collages by Charlotte Harker

Sometime in a Churchyard is a collaborative project which began in 2020 between Artist, Charlotte Harker and Poet Louise Warren.

The drawings, prints and collages by Charlotte Harker in this exhibition at the Torriano Meeting House in London are inspired by many visits to the Old St Pancras Churchyard in London.

Some of work in the exhibition is included in the publication Sometime in a Churchyard published in 2022 by Paekakariki Press with poems by Louise Warren. In this publication the poems and drawings are arranged like a journey through the churchyard. The drawings do not illustrate the poems but rather respond to them and in some instances the poetry was created in response to the drawings.

The drawings and prints depict incidental detail, for example, the edge of a tombstone, a flower on the ground, as well as viewpoints within the churchyard, the clock tower of the Old Church and beyond the churchyard boundaries, the boundary railings, for example . The drawings depict architectural and natural features and collectively are an observation of what creates a sense of place.

The collages included in this exhibition reflect a recent development in the artists work inspired by the collaborative project. The collages shown in this exhibition combine the artists photographs as well as found images.

It’s just one of those things, isn’t it?

It’s just one of those things, isn’t it? the man said

The journalist scribbled in his notebook although he did not understand what the man meant by a statement too passive for comfort

However, he did not want to press the man to elaborate because he thought it might place him under more pressure and not help the precarious situation in which he found himself

At that moment he looked up as he heard the sound of the crumbling and falling of rocks onto the beach below throwing up a forty feet high cloud of dust visible from the kitchen window.

The journalist stopped scribbling and shifted uneasily in his seat. He wondered how he could diplomatically conclude the interview as soon as possible and leave the house whilst at the same time maintaining his high standards of diligence towards his craft. The journalist had been sent on this assignment when, at the time in the office everyone else seemed to be preoccupied with one task or another

Apparently, the rock falls were a daily occurrence and often worse at night. The journalist looked at his watch. It was late in the afternoon.

He was sitting on a wooden chair in the kitchen. He was on the edge of it. He felt this would enable him to stand in an instant as he did not trust the uneasy joints that just about held the chair together. Also, he was sure the kitchen floor sloped slightly toward the direction of the side of the house facing the ocean. On the worktop most of the kitchen utensils and crockery were gathered at one end and the flex of the kitchen light seemed to hang at an angle from the ceiling like a plumb line not yet settled on the vertical.

As the journalist observed these details, he grudgingly admired the man’s resilience positioned as he was at the edge of safety

The man had always maintained he was not going anywhere. He had lived in this house all his life. His intransigence was difficult to fathom for the journalist. However, he acknowledged that for some, a home, as well as a shelter from the rain, was a place with which one could identify and absorb the spirit and sense of place into ones whole being and to be grateful for, particularly during the most trying of times.

The journalist also thought this man was in danger of becoming a martyr to his stubbornness which was a route to oblivion, but he knew he could not include that viewpoint, that judgement in his report. As a responsible reporter he was supposed to be impartial

Once again he heard the crumbling and crashing of rocks falling away from the cliff face, and also the screeching of Cormorants, Petrels and Arctic Terns and the sound of the rotor blades of a helicopter flying over the ocean in the distance

He concluded there was nothing impartial about this man living in this house at the edge of this cliff.

Nothing impartial at all