Thoughts On Binding

The following is a documentation of some of the thinking and reflection that occurred during a new phase of making, as I continue to build a body of work on the theme of the (disused) Amlwch railway line, on Anglesey. It centres on my use of copper thread as a binding material.

What is binding about?

I think of acts of care, preservation (e.g. Egyptian mummification), of recording and remembrance. A way to “re-member”, as in to put something back together again. At the same time, I think of natural binding: of bindweed and ivy that slowly entwines the Amlwch railway line in a slow, relentless act of reclamation and transformation.

So there is tension here, between:

1. The binding of care and preservation, the human intention to create, to preserve and to restore, to bring dead things back to life, and;

2. The binding of capture, control, the natural intention to change, replace, evolve.  New life growing out of the death of the old.

Is it even possible to reconcile the two in a piece of work, to place them alongside each other as I think is happening on the railway? As Tim Ingold might say, perhaps the making will show me how, might show me how to think by making….

So I take a piece of old sleeper slice and turn it in my hands, The cut edges are ostensibly smooth but I can feel the lines in the surface, both radial and circumferential. There are cracks in the body and at the edges of the wood, some from the time of the growing, and some from the time of the dying (rotting). I continue to turn the wood block over and over and a way of making comes to me from this.

Taking up fine copper thread, I combine it with the process of turning over and over. I follow the edges and contours of the piece of wood until I have bound it, but not obscured it. It seems to me, as I work, that the act of binding expresses a desire to protect and to support this old wood. To stop it coming apart. To “re-member” it:

The process flows on and so my ideas flow on with it. I keep going, taking this further and do something similar for all the remaining fragments from this “end of the sleeper” slice. The copper thread seems also to imply a spirit of reconnection, or restoration, of the wood, to the point before time, decay, and my intervention split it apart.

This end piece of wood brings me in mind of my idea of a piece called “Terminus”. The end. I had previously imagined doing it with a much larger piece of old rotted sleeper, but the coronavirus lockdown prevents me searching for one on the Amlwch railway line itself.

I am not done with this. This idea keeps me, and perhaps by extension this decaying railway, in the present tense. I take up another sleeper slice. What if I worked more closely with the grain and the lines of the wood? Is this a way, even, to bind those two halves of my thoughts on binding together. (Pun absolutely intended.)

It changes the way I do the binding. Not a relatively random reflex as in the previous pieces, but a more considered, exploratory, mindful approach. I too am progressively bound up by the idea and the process. The thread encloses the wood and it encloses me. too, in this repetitive act of making and thinking.

One hour later:

It feels like a mapping (back to my starting point – the OS map of Anglesey), an exploration, a re-discovery even, of the nature of these materials. Not an exact one, but a halting, partial, cautious and even risky one (the thread breaks several times as it catches and stretches). As I wind around the edges, notches and grooves the tightened thread makes tiny, metallic “plink” sounds like the plucking of a harp string at the top of its range.  (I must record these.)

There. There it is. The idea of the “sounding of the line.”

I am so aware, by now, of the reflective and thoughtful nature of what I am now doing. It is slower, and more careful, too.  Perhaps even ritualistic: as in Ancient Egypt, with the mummification of dead pharaohs and their belongings, the act of binding (mummification) is an act of remembering and preserving things that are precious.

I think this railway is precious. And my acts of binding have enabled me to make that tangible.

On Generosity - Part Two

My thinking about generosity has developed some way since my previous post on the subject. From generosity I have moved to include the idea of a gift; or, more appropriately since my context is a railway line in North Wales, the Welsh language equivalent of gift: “rhodd”, or the even lovelier plural “rhoddion” - “gifts”).

To make these ideas tangible, I have been spending considerable time recently applying copper leaf gilding to some pieces of track ballast stone, borrowed from the Amlwch railway line and which I will return shortly. I have found the process of gilding to be both a thoughtful, quiet and delicate process, and also challenging. This is my first attempt at any sort of gilding, and these small palm-sized stones have not been the easiest surface to work with. All these qualities and experiences make the creation of these little “gifts” all the more fitting for me.

Why copper? It speaks to me of several things: the industrial heritage of Anglesey (especially the extraction of copper, principally from the nearby Parys Mountain copper mine); of memory of the past; and of the process of making protecting and preserving (copper bottoms of ships, or copper sheet roofing, for example).

In what way can these little copper jewels act as gifts? I have turned to poetry to enable me to think further about this. Poetry is an excellent way to distill, crystallise or concentrate your thinking. Having written several pages on the subject of late, and how it can relate to aspects of a disused railway line, I’ve now reached this working draft of my thoughts in poetry form.

I am planning to return the stones (anonymously) to the line as “gifts” to be discovered in the future, perhaps by those working on the line as they clear it. Or perhaps they will disappear and never be seen again. Since entropy, decay and loss is an ultimate and inevitable consequence, even in the context of restoration, that will be OK too. The documentation of the gifts through photographs, and perhaps through this writing too, will be the artwork; at least as far as my MFA show is concerned. This blog post will form a part of it too, perhaps.

I’ve already tested the idea during my recent visit to Anglesey, placing one stone back on the line (temporarily) to test the visual impact of the stones and their resilience to the elements. They have the right kind of scale for my purposes, being variously invisible and visible. The next step will be to clarify my thoughts on the locations for the stones, and documentation of the work. There are seven stones in all, corresponding with the seven stations of the line, but this is just one idea I continue to work on.