Fighting Resistance 2017 - Salford Museum and Art Gallery and Working Class Movement Library 27th July 2017

In Service  1918 - 2017 James Bloomfield

Salford Museum and Art Gallery & Ordsall Hall, Salford | 31st July - 10th November 2017 | Launch 27th July The Working Class Movement Library 6.30 - 9pm

To mark the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele, artist James Bloomfield has been resident at Salford Museum & Art Gallery and the Working Class Movement Library. Delving into this fabulous rich archive, Bloomfield has created a truly special piece of work that engages with the audience directly and asks us to look at our history and the global legacy of the war to end all wars. 

The outcome of this research is the creation of 226 commemorative ceramic plates. The plates reference each conflict and the number of fatalities for that conflict. Instead of being in display cases or on the gallery walls, the plates will be placed into service in the Gallery Cafe, presenting the findings of Bloomfield’s research directly to visitors.

The plates will be used as part of the regular dinner service at Salford Museum & Art Gallery‘s bustling Café and in Ordsall Hall’s coffee shop. The plates will be presented for service on 31 July and later decommissioned on 10 November to coincide with the centenary of the battle of Passchendaele, which runs over these exact dates (3months and 6 days).

“When I started this project I didn’t know where the research would take me, I especially didn’t think I would be hand decorating 226 plates each plate to mark a global conflict since the end of the war to end all wars. I want the work to become part of the domestic, our consciousness to remember those that have been involved in conflict or who still are “ says Bloomfield of the project.

Signalling the launch of In Service, Professor Paul Rogers (Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University) will give a special talk on "New Wars and How to Prevent Them. Giving insight into the three core issues facing the world and our approaches to these issues.

In Service has been funded and/or supported by Arts Council England, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Salford Remembers Fund, Salford Community Leisure and Salford City Council’s programme to commemorate the centenary of World War One, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund .

 

Future Wars and How to Prevent them

Thursday 27th July|6 - 9pm , Working Class Movement Library, Salford

Join us for the launch of this brand new solo exhibition , which will include an introduction to the project and insights into the work from James Bloomfield and a talk from Professor Paul Rogers on "New Wars and How to Prevent Them" For more information on the event, including booking details please visit www.jamesbloomfield.co.uk

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Fighting Resistance Meeting with SMAG and WCML

Last week saw my research period come to a close and the presentation of my ideas to the team at Salford Museum and Art Gallery and the Working Class movement library. It was a great meeting with everyone interested in the process I had undertaken over the last 6 months. From researching Pilkingtons Tiles and learning about the infamous William Burton to visiting the amazing collection at SMAG and WCML.

I talked about my fascination with the idea for a Refuge and the possibilities of recreating one in the gallery setting and of my visit to Lindesfarne and Holy Island to document the refuges there. I really like the idea of offering refuge or sanctuary in these times we we live in.  Other ideas included the transmitting through radio waves the names of the 16,000 conscientious objectors and the creation of a set of Commemorative plates marking each global conflict since the end of the First World War of which there have been 226.

The idea that excites me most and ties in with my practice in the strongest way is the commemorative plates, it links in with the Pilkingtons Collection and Archive situated at the Gallery, it ties in with my current obsession of conflict and ceramics and then there will be a perfomative aspect of the presentation of the plates by having them used in the cafe at SMAG and Ordsall Hall as part of the regular service.

I am know in the process of creating 226 commemorative plates! watch this space

Thomas Paine - a welcome distraction at the Working Class Movement Library - 29th September

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After a full sunny morning of trawling through archive records at Salford Local History Library  I thought I would treat myself to a visit to the Working Class Movement Library. The weather was turning and the wind was starting to blow a gale as I sat in the grounds of the University.  I crossed Chapel street and rang the bell and received a warm welcome at the library. What I wanted to see was the pamphlet “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine. I had read a little about the corset maker revolutionary and wanted to read for myself the words that sparked such controversy.

 The library assistant showed me into the reading room and then produced the archive box containing the book and some other reading material around the pamphlet. The book that contained the piece was hand bound and incredibly old, I presume it was published on or around the 1870’s , each page was punched through with the original letter press giving each page a textured feel not seen in today's printing. You could feel the mark of the maker and it was akin to reading a handwritten letter. The only problem was that the typeset was unusual in that the capital S looked like a lowercase f. Now this gave the whole reading a twist as many words I had to read twice as I was reading them with a lisp! For example “support” read as “fupport” and “sentiment” as “fentiment” after the first few hundred words or so I got used to it and enjoyed the first half very much.
 
 Thomas Paine is very clever in setting up his audience with an argument that you can all agree on , he then like all great philosophers uses this same premise to de-bunk other taken truths and succeeds in changing your viewpoint as you read. I can see how such a pamphlet stirred minds and created action. In hindsight though I think it would have been great if he had cast his rhetoric to the viewpoint of the Native Americans who at the time were experiencing a ruthless and programmed horrific genocide.

The more I read the more I begin to feel demoralised about the state of the word and the fact that history does repeat itself. The other great book Ive been reading at the moment is “The Silk Roads” by Peter Frankopan a history of the world from the viewpoint of the East. From this it is apparent that the collection of taxes and share capital has always been the great motivator of war and greed of Mankind and that history has been a repeat of conquer and be conquered throughout all of history, from great nations and civilisations, to hordes of Vandals and Mongols, Fascists and Empiricist's, all at the expense of the common man and woman. Many of the earliest writings are mere ledger books about trade and who owes who.

Out of all this came a glimmer of hope as Lynette passed me a leaflet for an up a upcoming convention.

Conscience and Conscription: Resistance to war, Friday 14th and Saturday 15th October 2016. There are a series of talks organised by the abolish war campaign , Cyril Pearce is talking and a whole host of other talks. I followed the trail to the abolish war campaign and found a link to a brilliant talk by a lecturer from Bradford called Professor Paul Rogers : "Future Wars and How to Prevent Them". This talk is in two versions the long one is the most comprehensive and I found it to be totally uplifting and hopeful that people are studying this and looking into how we can effect change. More on this in future musings.

more info on abolish war here : http://www.abolishwar.org.uk/ 

The you tube Paul Rodgers talk is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDg4F769ciw&t=715s

Abraham Lomax, 16,000 experiments - Salford Local History Library 29th September 2016

This morning I took some time to visit Salford Local History Library and have a quick peek at the archival records for the Pilkington Tiles Archive which Duncan McCormick the librarian had kindly dug out for me.

The folder contained some 122 pages each one documenting an object, letter, artwork that forms part of the History of the company. The file was put together by Barry and Angela of the Lancastrian Pottery Society. What struck me most amongst the many correspondence and documents was how similar daily life seemed to be to ours. There were rent and rates demands, insurance documents, share capital and tax returns. Letters from prospective employees, legal demands for slander, magazine cuttings, artwork ideas, and a thousand patent requests. Just reading through the list of documents and objects gave me a real feel for the company and what it achieved. The company was a bit of an anomaly really, creating its own identity outside of Stafford and Stoke the pottery capital of the world. I think this gave it a real unique identity, it was also different for the workers who were used to the satanic mills and coal mines. The pottery was a place of imagination, colour, art and spectacle.

 I highlighted some things that I think will be of interest to the project one of them being the notebooks of Abraham Lomax who was the ceramic chemist left to experiment with glazes and clay bodies. He did some 16,000 experiments over his initial first years with much of his work providing the factory with important discoveries and glaze recipes for years to come.  The other is a book by Franklin Shaw entitled “my Fifty years” which I believe will touch on the the War years.

The Archive and the way it is documented is interesting in itself as life becomes History to be stored and sorted through at a later date. The pressing arguments of the day become a memory or artifact with little relevance apart from the lives it has touched at the and for someone looking for clues for the future.