University art exhibition inspired by ‘fragility’ of Spurn
PERFORMANCE: Between Two Tides was performed at low tide to residents at Easington Beach. Pictures by Stewart Baxter / Hinterland Creative
By Simon Bristow, Co-Editor
An eco-arts exhibition showing the fragility of Spurn Point has gone on display at the University of Hull.
Living Coast: People, Land, and Sea in Yorkshire’s South Holderness is the result of a six-month research project and documents the transient geography and human occupancy of the ever-shifting South Holderness coast.
Interviews with current and past residents from the villages of Easington, Kilnsea and the former community at Spurn have enabled researchers to develop a rich and diverse range of artistic interpretations spanning poetry, performance, film and sound.
Researchers have also worked with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and the Spurn Bird Observatory to ensure the nature reserve’s wildlife is also at the heart of the exhibition.
The project included a movement and spoken word piece called Between Two Tides, which was performed at low tide by 18 students to local residents at Easington Beach. A film of the performance can be viewed at the exhibition.
Dr Christian Billing, reader in drama and theatre practice in the university’s School of the Arts, who led the project, said: “Our work aims to highlight the dynamic fragility of the South Holderness landscape, creating arts-based pieces that urge us to see this terrain not as a static backdrop, but as a delicate, ever-evolving ecosystem.
“Environmental ethicist Bruno Latour reminds us that we humans are not separate from nature; it is not a ‘thing’ we visit occasionally but a web in which we are ineluctably entwined. As artists and academics, we feel a responsibility to engage ethically with the complex history of human connections to this living space, recognising both the power of natural forces and the accelerating impact of human actions.
“Through our artistic responses, we hope in this project to evoke a pressing awareness of shared vulnerability, acknowledging that human presence in this place is neither passive nor neutral but deeply entangled in a shifting, fragile ecology.”
Jan Crowther, a long-term resident of Kilnsea and author of The People along the Sand: The Spurn Peninsula and Kilnsea: A History, 1800-2000, said: “It has been a pleasure to be involved with the South Holderness Eco-Arts Project. At the outset the care which the team took to research the area and those associated with it impressed me. They met as many people as they could, visited frequently, and were always responsive to its very special nature.
“As a result, the performance on the beach was truly heart-felt, meaningful and beautiful. The interviews, drawn from a varied group of people who relate to the area in many different ways, provide a rare and vivid insight into this unusual place – and the resulting website, with interviews, photographs, videos, music and poetry, really captures a place which is very close to my heart.”
The exhibition is in the art gallery of the Brynmor Jones Library until December 4. The gallery is open daily from 9am to 5pm. You can see more information on the project website here.