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Sense of Place – An Installation on Brean Down Fort
© Donna Vale
Planned dates: October 2015 – September 2016
Sense of Place will involve four Somerset-based artists; Donna Vale, Joy Merron, Amanda Boyd and Jon
England working alongside conservation scientist Matthew Bjerregaard from Visual Persistence and
Melinda Watson from the RAW Foundation. Each will convey their own individual response to
communicate and bring to life the history of Brean Down Fort through large and small-scale installations.
Brean Down Fort is owned by the National Trust and situated close to Weston-super-Mare in North
Somerset. Permission was granted for the use of the site for the duration of Somerset Art Weeks, which
runs from Saturday 3rd October to Sunday 18th October 2015. This permission is subject to the group
being fully funded through various bodies. The National Trust’s 50-year anniversary of Enterprise
Neptune will also be celebrated through the launch of Coast 2015 and will see the fort chosen as a key
site for promotion with events and workshops throughout the next eighteen months. The project will be
completed in two stages; through 2015 when the foundations will be formed and built upon for a largescale exhibition by Summer 2016. This years event has been kindly supported by Arts Council England
and Somerset Art Works.
The aim of this project will be to respond to the stories of the people, the landscape and the buildings.
Forming a connection to those who lived and worked at Brean Down. Past histories will be brought to
life through the arts and capturing the imagination of visitors. Audience engagement will be an important
part of the exhibition within the fort, the narrative to be visually described and felt. The place itself is key
to the work, with the profoundly dramatic peninsular and striking disposition of the buildings. The
artwork will have a mutual synchronisation engaging the visitor, visually questioning, allowing for
exploration and discovery. For stage one, The Officers Mess will provide a central place for the initial
works to be shown. A building with multiple rooms with an atmosphere of the past; this will become a
central viewing point for the project and the artists journey so far.
The project is a vision conceived by Donna Vale’s initial visits to the fort and the association to her
previous large-scale installation, Recollection (2012) at the abandoned village of Tyneham, Dorset,
owned by the Ministry of Defence. This site-specific installation was made in response to those who lived
in the village until they were asked to leave three weeks before Christmas in 1943.
The installation had a greater impact on visitors due to the nature of the objects and positioning of the
work within the derelict village. Although existing signage conveyed information, the installation allowed
the human story to be conveyed through the artwork, connecting emotions through fragments of imagery,
words and ideas.
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The Threads of Belonging will represent Donna’s work as an artist in her recognised style. Through place
and identity, human element and emotion, researching local stories and kept memories to create a visually
appealing exhibition in a unique environment. The notion of belonging and the connectivity between
community and place will create a distinct visitor experience of participation and engagement. The
diversity of the artists involved will add threaded dimensions through the building structures. Making the
fort a place to discover and ‘happen upon’ long forgotten tales. Deterioration and weathering is key to the
display, incorporating wartime letters, photographs and the sound of conflict. Initial plans include textile
pieces interwoven with narratives belonging to local voices, to be collected in part during Art Weeks
(stage one).
Screen-printed plates projected from Magic Lanterns and Zoetrope’s will interactively illuminate artwork
into the underground spaces not usually viewed by the public. These will reveal hidden century old
graffiti and messages by using cutting edge contemporary projection mapping techniques. Magic
Lanterns were used by Harry Cox in delivering his lectures regarding the wildlife on Brean Down Fort
and are symbolic of his life as a warden in situ for more than 40 years.
Joy Merron will create a large-scale installation through individual stories and events; an extensive
‘fishing net’ web of mirrored and clear acrylic, capturing the flash of sunlight on fish scales, sea spray
and rolling waves. The flow of elements and livelihoods will be represented through the buildings,
drifting across and between fort structures, reflecting a sense of fluidity and time; bridging the past and
connecting the future. Incorporating discarded plastics found during beach clean ups, this will be a
poignant reminder of our continuing impact on the landscape.
This work will be completed on a small scale for Somerset Art Weeks 2015 (stage one) and will be
situated alongside other developmental phases of work in order to highlight what is to come at Brean
Down.
The footprints of the old barracks (shown above) will become the basis for collaboration between Joy and
Donna, recreating the beds that were once housed there. As the first sighting of the fort comes in to view,
these concrete markers echo the voice of those who slept there and for some as they turned to leave, it
was to be their last sighting of home. This part of the exhibition will be complete by Summer 2016 in
stage two of the exhibition.
Indigenous folk songs of Somerset will be researched and chosen specifically for lyrical and melodic
content which portray the feelings evoked by the Fort and the historical activities that occurred there. The
voice of singer Amanda Boyd will bring the elements of the installation and projected work together.
Some key places have been identified within the fort where songs will be delivered in an omnipresent
way. During the launch, the songs will be sung live. People will engage with the sound by the way the
acoustics are formed between voice and the stone fabric of the buildings. Melody, song ballads and
rhythm of sea shanties for the return journey home will echo the voices and the significance of the coast.
Recordings will be made and the songs will be accessed by the public via triggers and QR codes. These
will be sited around the fort, for interaction throughout the exhibition.
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Matthew Bjerregaard works both as a visual artist and conservation scientist specialising in the
communication of environmental concepts within the public sphere. He will bring technical artistry in
augmenting historic methods with contemporary pervasive digital media in order to communicate art
visually. Interactive technologies and social media will also be a key aspect of the representation and
history. Installation devices such as Zoetropes and Magic Lanterns will be powered through sources of
sustainable energy. Digital processing of imagery will be achieved from the local ecology and contribute
in the creation of elements to present the work of Donna Vale in the form of projection mappings within
the fort. Research and development of this work will be prepared during 2015 and finished by Summer
2016.
Melinda Watson will teach educational workshops and provide QR codes on water bottles designed and
supplied by RAW Foundation to be launched at the Beach Picnic in July 2015 and available in the NT
shop at Brean. Message in a bottle will be extended initially through NT Somerset then proposed
nationwide. Images of the artwork will be printed on the bottles connecting Sense of Place to the
‘Making Waves’ campaign. This will promote awareness of ocean plastics and the Coast programme
through the National Trust as well as the work being ‘advertised’ wherever the bottles are sold. Melinda
will be working closely with Joy to highlight the growing problem with plastic waste who in turn will
make work from beach finds.
Jon England works with veterans and through exploration of the architectural and archaeological legacy
of past conflicts. Jon’s work will be displayed at For Every Cloud Gallery during Somerset Art Weeks
(stage one) and will begin the journey along the River Parrett to the estuary at Brean Down. The work
will explore the specific World War heritage of this part of Somerset investigating the lives of those who
passed through this unique landscape. Following on from recent investigations Jon will produce mixed
media works utilising salt water collected at Brean, Iodine (a battlefield antiseptic also found in sea
water), aluminium and other surfaces. Using the workshop space at For Every Cloud, Jon will
experiment and test various new methods in order to form a new body of work, to be exhibited during
stage two alongside the other artists at the fort.
Participatory and interactive events such as children’s workshops will span from Brean Down to Donna
Vale’s creative space, For Every Cloud, in Langport. The venue is situated at the heart of the Somerset
Levels where the River Parrett flows through the town and towards the sea. An arts trail, to be completed
for this years launch, will be mapped out with the use of Geocaching; a worldwide treasure hunt. The
geocaches will link back to the work and history of the site, giving a modern dimension to the sitespecific installation. By mixing new technologies with old and allowing members of the public to take
part creatively, the artwork will be uploaded via QR codes, linking the blog and other social media sites.
Memory, recollection & environment; reminding us of that Sense of Place.
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