Abstract
An installation of drawings responding to the forms and socio-historical context of spar boxes — grotto-like arrangements of minerals made by miners.
Spar Box explores visual languages of secrecy, treasure and revelation inspired by the portmanteau forms and social histories of spar boxes. It embraces the visual trickery of this Northern folk art, whose makers assembled miniature landforms and street scenes in small cabinets, multiplying them infinitely with mirrors.
Kate Liston often works across moving-image, text and installation to surface and echo motifs found in the archives and oral histories of a place. In Spar Box this process is focused through graphic shorthand drawing in an installation of distilled renderings sampled from geological teaching aids, mine surveys, and children’s books about diggers.
This exhibition has been developed through a micro-residency in 2022 at Sunderland University’s Self-Publishing Riso Lab, interviews with local spar box collectors, visits to the spar box collection at Killhope Lead Mining Museum in Weardale and archival research at The Common Room, Newcastle. It builds on Liston’s ongoing engagement with under-recognised forms of creativity that have been historically dismissed due to class, gender or cultural hierarchies.
Spar Box explores visual languages of secrecy, treasure and revelation inspired by the portmanteau forms and social histories of spar boxes. It embraces the visual trickery of this Northern folk art, whose makers assembled miniature landforms and street scenes in small cabinets, multiplying them infinitely with mirrors.
Kate Liston often works across moving-image, text and installation to surface and echo motifs found in the archives and oral histories of a place. In Spar Box this process is focused through graphic shorthand drawing in an installation of distilled renderings sampled from geological teaching aids, mine surveys, and children’s books about diggers.
This exhibition has been developed through a micro-residency in 2022 at Sunderland University’s Self-Publishing Riso Lab, interviews with local spar box collectors, visits to the spar box collection at Killhope Lead Mining Museum in Weardale and archival research at The Common Room, Newcastle. It builds on Liston’s ongoing engagement with under-recognised forms of creativity that have been historically dismissed due to class, gender or cultural hierarchies.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | Newcastle Upon Tyne |
| Publisher | 36 Gallery |
| Publication status | Published - 25 Apr 2025 |
| Event | Kate Liston: Spar Box - 36 Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom Duration: 26 Jan 2025 → 4 May 2025 https://anne.art/event/kate-liston-spar-box/ |
Keywords
- painting
- mining
- folk art