Of the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Touching Topography: Negotiating Landscape Encounters with ‘Several Parts’ of the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Gregory Paul Dunn A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Birmingham City University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. September 2017 School of Architecture & Design, Birmingham City University ii Abstract This collaborative research project explores the significance of the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty as a meaningful site for contemporary society and especially for a small selection of artists who reside there, some of them, for over thirty years. The research has enquired as to the possible agency of the landscape in expressive media and the artist’s part as catalyst in the creative process. Over the last four hundred years, many representations of landscape in Western Europe, including those of the Wye Valley, have reduced human experience of topography to a vertical, flat and oblong plane. By being framed, drawings, prints and paintings have hedged in foliage, cordoned vistas and fenced off panoramas. Such depictions have arguably reduced a comprehensive, corporeally centred encounter to an ‘ocularcentric’ one. Subsequently, due to the continued nature of framing, photography, and more recently, smartphone photography has done little to dissolve the frame placed between us and the world we witness. Such photography repeatedly reinstates the visual values of others and continues to centre on the visual account of reality. A botanically abundant setting such as the Lower Wye Valley is arguably a sensorially stimulating site; a place within which to be near living (and dying) matter; investigations were therefore situated within the predominantly arboreal landscape along the Wye, roughly between Ross and Chepstow and through the implementation of a broad range of intentionally immersive research methodologies. By using auto-ethnography, observation, ambulatory interviews, researcher-led group walks and making pilot- studies, it was hoped that any resulting data would be informed by actual encounters with the material nature of the location. By adopting a physically centred approach to the study, it was the intention to elicit primary responses from participants as part of iii endorsing a more multi-modal approach to experiencing landscape with the intended result being a more ecologically and empathetic relationship with place. iv Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank Director of Studies, Richard Coles, for his continued confidence in my abilities. Richard devised this collaborative project and I am grateful to him for selecting me to carry out the research. I would like to thank Henry Rogers and David Maund for being my referees and the BCU Student Services staff, who under the leadership of Caroline Wall, have been fantastic. I would also like to acknowledge the impact that my former tutor and friend Barbara Downs has had on my creative practice over the last twenty-something years. I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC Grant Ref. AH/L002973/1) for funding the project. I would also like to thank the professional collaborators in this project, the Wye Valley AONB Management Team whose generosity, local knowledge and facility for fun was inexhaustible. Thankyou Andrew Blake, Andrew Nixon, Nick Critchley, Nikki Moore, Sharon Seymour and especially Sarah Sawyer, whose boundless enthusiasm, imagination and understanding kept me going when I most needed it. Thanks also, to all the Wye Valley creatives I interviewed, especially Susan Peterken, Walter Keeler, Doug Eaton, Phil Mundell and David Hurn, as well as all the research participants and co-researchers who were so honest and generous in their responses to all the enquiries I made in the Wye Valley. Sian Vaughan helped me to write this thesis and I would like to thank her for going over and above her supervisory responsibilities, enabling me to carry on and see this through to the end. I would also like to thank my family, firstly for participating in research activities, and secondly for supporting me at every turn with love, positivity and beer. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Jo, for her selfless support and limitless loyalty. I am forever grateful for her un-conditional love. v Contents Page Abstract iii Acknowledgments v Contents vi List of Figures ix Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Aims 7 1.2 Objectives 11 1.3 Thesis Structure 12 1.4 Terminology 16 Chapter 2 Literature Review 20 2.1 The Wye Valley and its Historical Significance 21 2.2 Environmental Perception and the Eco-Haptic 23 2.3 The Framed World 26 2.4 The Therapeutic Landscape 29 2.5 Landscape Perception 31 Chapter 3 Methodology 33 3.1 Introduction 33 3.2 Ethical Considerations 36 3.3 Familiarisation with the Wye Valley through walking 37 3.4 Familiarisation through observation of the AONB 44 Management Team Activities 3.5 Review of artistic works relating to the Wye Valley AONB 50 3.6 Walking Tours 53 3.7 Testing the integration of historically informed technology 53 into research methodologies. 3.8 Conclusion 58 Chapter 4 Not just one man’s viewpoint – William Gilpin 59 and his art of looking at landscape 4.1 Introduction 59 vi 4.2 Meeting and Mediating the World through technology 64 4.3 Setting the scene (Landscape as theatrical metaphor) 69 4.4 Graduated, progressive un-folding of space 73 4.5 William Gilpin as Eco Advocate 77 4.6 Land Art, Robert Smithson and the Picturesque 80 4.7 Robert Smithson 89 4.8 Conclusion 92 Chapter 5 Witness to the Wye 94 5.1 Introduction 94 5.2 Reflections on the 2014 Ross-on-Wye River Pageant 94 & Waterside Festivities 5.3 River Festival. Monmouth: ‘The Trial’ Parts1 and 2 99 5.4 mindSCAPE and “What’s beyond the frame?” 112 5.5 AONB Annual Conference Lilleshall, Shropshire 118 5.6 My AONB Conference Briefing: Tactile Tourism in the 121 Wye Valley 5.7 Conclusion 126 Chapter 6 Testing Modes of Engagement 128 6.1 Introduction 128 6.2 My Personal Written and Visual Responses to the 132 Wye Valley 6.3 Trunnels and Spatial Temptation 139 6.4 Canoeing: Drifting Down the Wye in the Wake of Gilpin 144 6.5 Handling the Land 165 6.6 Environmental Perception and the ‘Eco-Haptic’ 166 Chapter 7 Life Outside of the Frame: Encounters with Wye 173 Valley Artists 7.1 Introduction 173 7.2 Susan Peterken 179 7.3 Walter Keeler 183 7.4 Doug Eaton 195 7.5 David Hurn 208 7.6 Keith Arnatt (1930-2008) 218 7.7 Conclusions 224 vii Chapter 8 Working with the Wye: ephemerality, the agency of 226 place and addressing the ‘un-representable’. 8.1 Introduction 226 8.2 Tintern Walk 1272 – following a tourist trail 228 8.3 Tour of Tintern’: Pilot photography walk 234 8.4 How the walk unfolded 238 8.5 World War One Walk 254 8.6 The ‘Making Moments’ Walk 276 8.7 Conclusion 302 Chapter 9 Findings & Recommendations 305 Bibliography 317 Appendices 343 viii List of Figures Page 1.0 UK location of the Wye Valley AONB 16 1.1 Map of the Wye Valley AONB area 17 1.2 Self portrait in Rice Fields. Mino, Japan 19 1.3 Making Mino Washi – Mino Paper Museum 20 1.4 Man and Wife: Pressed Mino Washi Squares 20 1.5 Mino Washi, Japanese Newspaper, Gingko Leaf 21 1.6 Image from Masters Dissertation: ‘Stress Relief: 28 Geo-Emotional Relationships and the Embodiment of ‘Extent’ 3.1 Example of a tweet 49 3.2 Transcription of a Blog Entry 52 3.3 Field Research Vehicle (Caravan) 54 3.4 Tweet about the LEMUR event 58 3.5 Tweet on Landscape Olympics 59 3.6 ‘Rose Trellis of the Citadel Garden’ 67 3.7 Video screen grab from Chest-mounted GoPro camera. 68 Taken at ‘Bream Scowls’ 4.1 A466 Driving south from Monmouth 72 4.2 Tweet about technology and images 74 4.3 William Gilpin by Henry Walton 77 4.4 ‘Door’. Ellen Harvey 2009 78 4.5 Aquatint image from ‘Observations…’ 83 4.6 Tweet about experiencing immersion in the landscape 86 4.7 The River from a canoe 90 4.8 The Matter of Time. Detail. (1994–2005) Richard Serra 93 4.9 Tweet. Trunnels 95 4.10 ‘Shift’ 1971-1972 Richard Serra 98 4.11 Robert Smithson in Wistman's Wood, Dartmoor 102 4.12 Nancy Holt in Wistman's Wood, Dartmoor 102 5.1 Tweet with images from the River Festival 108 5.2 Photograph of Water Olympics host William Wilding 109 5.3 Photograph of Ratty 111 5.4 Publicising the project through Twitter 112 5.5 Publicising the project through Twitter 114 ix 5.6 Ratty captured in the Church Yard 115 5.7 Ratty captured in the Church Yard 115 5.8 Ratty captured and paraded 117 5.9 The human-powered contraption transporting Ratty 118 5.10 A Wildlife Trust ‘Witness’ testifies at Ratty’s trial 119 (held in Monmouth Town Hall). 5.11 Publicising the project through Twitter, local Gillie 120 George Woodward at Ratty’s Trial 5.12 Publicising the project through Twitter – the Squirrel 122 5.13 ‘Creative Facilitator’ Rachel Shilston with the materials 125 at the mindSCAPE day 5.14 Extract from research notebook 130 5.15 Giuseppe Penone. ‘It Will Continue to Grow Except 134 at this Point’ 5.16 Lucy McRae ‘Germination – Day 8’ 2008 135 6.1 Example of a Tweet 145 6.2 Example of a Tweet 146 6.3 Blog entry 149 6.4 Screenshot of Blog entry concerning run from 151 Monmouth 6.5 Highbury Woods – The Guardian 153 6.6 Holloway – Stanley Donwood 154 6.7 Blog entry on walk through Highbury Woods 158 6.8 The canoes being unloaded 159 6.9 The laminated map we were given as a guide 161 6.10 Goodrich Castle.

Load more