HOGCHESTER ARTS

Woolwich E-N-E-R-G-Y group, 2021-22, oil paint on linen, 180 x 120

​Alice found me drifting aimlessly between intercoms at the bottom of a quiet east end cul-de-sac, imitating a blurry easel toting extra freshly plucked from the most bucolic of Constable’s landscapes. Ladened with everything you might possibly need to survive a fortnight in the countryside, my shiny new housemate had kindly agreed that this shuffling pile of bags could hitch a lift. Driving out of the city we both registered the release from finding ourselves on the motorway and out of London’s clutches. We quickly got to know each other, chatting non-stop, curious what algorithm Chantal had used to pair us together. We established I was someone who is easily scared of the dark and can get out of breath just carrying the shopping home from Lidl. Whereas Alice, occasionally climbs an Alp or two and keeps a boot dryer in the back of her car. I’ve since come to accept how fundamental to the residency this contraption was. Before we knew it, we had turned off the final A road and onto a long bumpy track which terminated at a vista that could only belong to my tv statured childhood, like the sepia opening to a 1960’s tv adaption of a Hardy novel. We’d arrived at a piece of paradise. 

Chantal and Piper were there to warmly great us and we were promptly introduced to our new life on the (Jurassic) farm. Everything had been taken care of and no fuss was to be made. There were no expectations, just beauty. Eye searing splendour. I asked myself, does the world look like this, noticing how the rolling hills bizarrely dissolve into a briny cold sea. Hogtopia surely felt like a parcel of land where an artist can perhaps think less about the unremitting work-art balance. For now, a small black goat watched me pull my bags from the car. Baphomet be thy name, thou who symbolise a perfect social order. Well, for 14 days anyway under Chantal’s care. 

We began the fortnight by walking a lot. Alice would set the pace and on most days we’d cover a lot of ground. Our boots caked and coagulated in mud, we would trudge in the rain and wind until Alice thought me suitably diminished in oxygen and dangerously tripping over my feet with hunger. We spent hours following deep Holloways (most notably in view of the majestic Colmer’s hill) and scaling the Golden Cap (and beyond to Seatown’s Anchor Inn), sinking and ascending into the area’s shape and connected geology and lore. The weather seemed always fresh and the breeze blew away the morning fug. London had left me in only a few days, quicker than I should have imagined. And, with it, the constraints and relating conventions of being an ‘oh-so-serious-artist’ slowly dissolved. I fanaticised about living in and responding to a landscape such as this, constantly pondering the lives of my favourites - Nash, Agar, Ravilious - seeing them circumnavigate the deep ponds around the farm. The ponds seemed to surround us, covered in high grass which made it hard to get close to them. They appeared in a state of dormancy, their existence comparatively wretched and occult when positioned along such gentle tectonics. In the first instance, they terrified me. Their latency psychically gnawed, chewing the yet manifested work in my life. Artworks which were starting to act a bit more grown up and self-directed. I had come here to try and draw, to cling manically on to the hem of ideas which had been walking quickly in front of me for so many months and years. 

Chantal has all the focus and energy of a high priestess. It was a pleasure to work within her alchemic workshop, amongst all of her creations, stones and the objects she had collected from the surrounding locale. The studio in fact seemed far from a state of solitude, it felt incredibly wholesome to be in such a peaceful place which was habitually populated, rather than spending so much of my time alone and in a place full of people. The set up worked well, there seemed to be no awkwardness in experiencing each other’s working process. I put this down to Chantal and Alice’s unfaltering work ethic, it allowed little space for hesitation. The moment I unpacked my materials, I began to draw something. I can assure you this wasn’t usual, I’m a chronic procrastinator in the studio. It was shocking how quickly I eased into things, into the ‘plan’. The proposal being that the farm would act as an invocation, or fire alarm, to alert me to the pure terror I had sought to tackle, where customarily and disappointedly I’d drift from a starting point or sketch and allow frustration to immediately seep in once starting a work. Maybe it was the place, maybe it was the huge quantity of fresh air and lack of pollution that was affecting my brain. But usually these things aren’t too complicated, I think I just needed to keep away from paint for a bit and go cold turkey for a couple of weeks to make myself see what could be underneath all that scratching and fiddling. I look now and see, ‘deep ponds’, written in my sketch book, and a small stupid drawing of a pool of black water surrounded by high reeds. There was a lot of darkness in that fortnight, the night was overwhelming. I’ve never experienced such obscurity as I did when fetching my charger from the studio before bed. The kind of sensation that confuses you, laughing nervously when seen through a doorway, a wall that sits 2 inches in front of your face. Alongside an accompanying soundtrack of goats and chickens shuffling in out buildings, watching you through the cracks in the boards. The silly human tripping over his half-appended slippers, pertaining to an existence that means he hardly leaves zone 2. It sounds silly but I spent most of the time scared, or rather in some state of fear. I listened to too many ‘Jamesian’ radio plays to not be suspicious of the bucolic, the eerie in more modern terms. This aspect of our trundles has remained with me. The oddness felt when approaching of the crest of a hill, being full of markers and crumbling monuments to people. How one small patch of place can hold somewhere as notable as Hell Lane, alongside a little-known shrine commemorating some of the last martyred Catholics in England (Queen of Martyrs & St Ignatius in Chideock), it outstands me. Lonely places, pumped full of atmosphere. Country churches, village museums, old book shops, the area is saturated in lore and magic. 

My time at Hoghester amounted to a series of striking unremitting experiences. The results of which perhaps still lay dormant within me, quiescent until triggered by some arbitrary interlude during an episode of day time tv, such as in Bargain Hunt or Time Team. Wherein, I will begin to froth at the mouth (much like Nash on the bus to Avebury) and the dark waters of those deep ponds will swallow me up again. 

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