Inevitably, things are being cancelled and delayed.
I should have been completing a commission with Mid Pennine Arts to create a celebratory engagement with the National Clarion Cycling Club on Sunday 14 June.
This will now take place in 2021 on Sunday 13 June.
The working title for this commission is ‘The Fellowship of the Wheel’, and I will explore the journeys and landscapes of rides to the last Clarion House at Roughlee, Lancashire.
Clarion Cycling Clubs from across the North and North-West regions will converge at Roughlee, recording data from their rides for me.
On the day I’ll be using a pop-up photographic studio to complete a series of formal portraits of riders and their bikes. Along with the data, stories and incidental photographs gathered from each club, I will then create a limited edition artist publication of the living tradition of Clarion Cycling for each participant.
“The beauties of the countryside could be enjoyed by mere possession of the magic wheel …
Hence, Socialist Cycling Clubs, the product of fellowship and mutual help, sprang into existence all over the country.”
Tom Tyas, Handforth Clarion (pre-First World War quote)
Mid Pennine Arts is an arts and culture charity working in Pennine Lancashire. This commission is funded by Pendle Radicals, part of a programme to celebrate the Pendle Hill area. Pendle Radicals explores the stories of the nonconformists, dissenters, independent thinkers and change makers who have been drawn to this rugged, rural landscape over the centuries.
Image: self-portrait from ‘Grimpeur’ a previous cycling project.
I was also due to speak at the ARA National Conference about Photographs from Another Place, however The Archives and Records Association have postponed their conference until 2021 (date to be confirmed).
I was going to be presenting a paper with my daughter, Bethan, on our approach to research and how we went about initially interpreting the Gearing photographic archive, which then informed my work.
Image: From pop-up studio that featured in ‘Place’, Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, December 2019.
Place was the engagement strand of Photographs from Another Place.
