Jurassic Coast Art Exhibition Coming to Honiton

Well Trodden Wrong Ways – a new art exhibition exploring East Devon’s Jurassic Coast

By Emma Molony, Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton

The Jurassic Coast is 95 miles of evidence of 185 million years of the Earth’s history. Its path is trodden by 22 million visitors each year.

Through sculpture, film, photography and drawing, artist Jo Lathwood and photographer Paul Blakemore have collaborated to create a new body of work which explores our relationship to this special place.

For this exhibition Lathwood has ‘coded’ the landscape in a series of drawings. Visitors will be able to decipher hidden messages inspired by East Devon’s historical figures. Jo explained: “The coded landscapes reveal truths about our past. Like fossils, they help us understand who we are and add to our understanding of the Earth’s formation”

Following investigations into coastal erosion, Lathwood will also present a new body of work inspired by sea defences – ‘tetrapods’. These engineered geometric forms are designed to cleverly disperse water. Using local stones (clay, sandstone, gypsum, salt, chalk) Lathwood has echoed these structures in the gallery only to return them back to the sea to dissolve after the exhibition.

The Jurassic Coast Trust’s local Ambassadors were also involved in the creation of the exhibition, spending a day on the coast with Jo to add to her understanding of the geology and history of the World Heritage Site.

Paul Blakemore has captured the life and landscape of the Jurassic coast through a series walks, documenting often like a diarist might, a note, a thought or idea in film and photography.

The documentation is often co-authored as Blakemore invites collaborators to contribute to the work through their own recording of the landscape. The works are more than a contemporary record of the Jurassic Coast; a landscape of beauty, a habit and a home, but are also a collective memory.

Paul commented: “I discovered how the communities along the Jurassic coast are changing and adapting with the landscape, an ebb and flow of lives intersecting, I wanted to reveal this activity through a multiplicity of voices”.

The collaborators’ research culminates in a special HARVEST event and feast on Saturday 5th October 2019.

THG’s Curator/Manager, Ruth Gooding explained,

“This is such an exciting project for THG and East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty incorporating the Blackdown Hills. The artists have discovered some fascinating stories about our local area and presented a new body work which inspires you to read the land like a book and record your own observations”.

Exhibition details:

Well Trodden Wrong Ways (14 September – 26 October 2019). Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm. Free admission.

ACCOMPANYING EVENTS PROGRAMME:

Private View, Saturday 14 September, 3- 5pm

Join us to celebrate the opening of Well Trodden Wrong Ways with talks from Jurrassic Coast Ambassadors, Chris Woodruff – Manager East Devon AONB Partnership and artist Jo Lathwood.