haptic /tacit: Edgelands

Plot: Winter Dormancy 2024-25

County Hall Pottery - London

Exhibition opening at County Hall Pottery, https://countyhallpottery.com/ Monday 18th March 2025

Edgelands at County Hall Pottery responds to the book of the same name by poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts which explores landscapes that are neither city nor countryside, the in-between places that are so familiar that we often overlook and ignore them, explores landscapes that are neither city nor countryside, the in-between places that are so familiar that we often overlook and ignore them.  In prose but with the spirit of lyric poetry it is landscape writing that reveals these unobserved liminal areas as places of possibility, mystery and beauty.

As makers we are also drawn to these between spaces and frequently return to them as a rich visual and material source.  Transitional, not quite urban, not quite rural, where nature reclaims the derelict or post-industrial, the pocket wildness of allotments and verges, the unkempt edges around modern infrastructure canals, pylons and train lines. 

‘An essentially peopled landscape, the allotment fits unfamiliarly in contemporary cultural expectations, somewhere in between the city and the country and yet representing neither contemporary projected landscape. It falls between being a public and private landscape in a way that few others do. Its visibility is accompanied by the fact that it is not used or presented for display’

The Allotment it’s Landscape and Culture

David Crouch and Colin Ward

Stuart Road Allotments: Feb 2025 walk with Sarah Christie.

For haptic/tacit’s fifth series Kim worked in collaboration with ceramic artist Hilary Bird Mayo.

Kim’s work has been directly inspired by her time in residence at Stuart Road Allotments, in Nunhead, south east London. Hilary’s work, closely observed the mysterious land of Orford Ness in Suffolk.

Small sections from the installation sitting along side images from the allotment site 2024-25

‘Plants give us life to the dead highways and byways of our land, they open our hearts and make our spirits soar in times of grief, the sight of a bud bursting into life can give hope of happier times.

They are our wise companions on this planet and they have much to teach us.’

Elizabeth Brooke