RESEARCH + COLLABORATION
The Dufton Hoarde is a living research site concerned with landscape knowledge, material knowledge and the systems used to record and care for evidence.
Some knowledge is formed through long acquaintance with land, work and material. It can be exact without being easily written down. The Hoarde places that knowledge beside maps, records, classification and museum procedure.
LANDSCAPE KNOWLEDGE
Weather, water, vegetation, paths, repair, mining traces and repeated return.
MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE
What is learned through making with rag pulp, fibre, wool, earth pigment, barytes, stone and timber.
FRAGMENTS AND EVIDENCE
Partial records, text fragments, field notes, images and absences. The gaps are not repaired.
INSTITUTION AND STEWARDSHIP
Registers, catalogues, condition reports, governance and care. The museum becomes a structure for testing what can be held.
T’OWD MAN
T’Owd Man is a vernacular landscape reader, formed through mining, walking, weather and long acquaintance with place.
He reads frost, water, grass, stone and changes in the ground as signs of what lies beneath.
His knowledge comes through return and comparison. Within the research, it sits beside geological maps, mining records and museum classification.
T’Owd Man asks what the land is doing.
THE MATERIALIST
The Materialist knows through handling, transforming, preserving and repair.
Her knowledge is carried through materials, domestic labour, agricultural work and the procedures by which life is maintained.
Current sculptural propositions draw on need-fire, women using the plough, ore washing and dressing, dairying, seed, cloth and small economies.
The Materialist asks what can be made, kept and carried.
T’Owd Man reads conditions in the landscape.
The Materialist knows what materials will do.
FUTURE DOCTORAL RESEARCH
The Hoarde is being developed as the basis for future practice-led doctoral research.
The proposed research will use the artist-made museum as a working site for testing landscape knowledge and vernacular material knowledge alongside institutional stewardship.