Independent State
Various venues, Frome, UK
It’s a Saturday evening in late September and, as twilight descends over the historic market town of Frome, throngs of expectant onlookers are lining its steep, winding streets. Tonight is carnival night and a heady mix of majorette troupes, elaborately illuminated floats, carnival queens, marching bands and thumping sound systems are providing the evening’s entertainment. Carnival has been an annual tradition in the town since 1929, and, despite being one of the more modest of the Somerset carnival season, still manages to attract more than 20,000 people. This year contemporary art has infiltrated Frome’s slightly hokey cavalcade with entries from Matt Stokes, Edwina Ashton and Bob & Roberta Smith. With two theatres, a dynamic music scene, its own radio station and an annual ten-day arts festival, Frome’s rich cultural fabric distinguishes it from many of its provincial neighbours. Commissioned by Foreground – Simon Morrissey and Tabitha Clayson’s Frome-based curatorial project – ‘Independent State’ was a major participatory venture that sought to explore and celebrate the town’s independent spirit and distinctive cultural sensibility.
Matt Stokes,Voice│Hand│Hammer│Fire (2009)
Matt Stokes chose to work with members of Frome’s hardcore music scene to create a sculptural homage to their burgeoning underground community. An unlikely alliance of punk metal bands, their fans and several Somerset blacksmiths conspired in the creation of Voice│Hand│Hammer│Fire (all works 2009), a welded steel-plate sculpture comprising a large cluster of interconnected icosahedrons. Stokes, who spent much of the summer in Frome, even staged a weekend-long ‘Forge-In’ festival, at which visitors could view the work being forged alongside live music from local bands. Referencing the town’s industrial heritage, Voice│Hand│Hammer│Fire also evokes the days when statues such as the Scales of Justice (over the Old Bailey) and Boadicea (on Westminster Bridge) were produced in Frome’s Singers Foundry (active in Frome during the late 19th century). Quite how Stokes’ idiosyncratic, crystalline-shaped structure represents this arcane musical subculture is something of a mystery, and that, one suspects, is just how they prefer it. Amidst the carnival’s twirlers and quaintly-themed floats, Stokes’ sculpture – slowly towed by a black Mitsubishi Warrior and flanked by several of his collaborators – was an incongruous sight. A barrage of recordings from local outfits All Gun’s Blazing and Bear Fights Fire provided an appropriately abrasive soundtrack.
Edwina Ashton, Who’s drinking your tea Sir? You Sir! (2009)
One of the charms of Frome’s carnival is its oddball eccentricity, an element with which Edwina Ashton’s practice has a natural synergy; her quirky, absurdist surrealism translates remarkably well to a 35-foot long illuminated float. Like Stokes, Ashton rallied a community of collaborators around her, including naturalists, craft enthusiasts and members of the local drama club. Over the course of several workshops, her float was transformed into a peculiar theatrical tableau depicting a Victorian scientist’s library besieged with squirming insects (played by 15 Frome residents dressed in bizarre hand-made costumes). Titled Who’s drinking your tea Sir? You Sir! the float features a large rotating, top-hatted head accompanied by an oversized teacup, an enormous slice of cake and several towering books. Although not as arresting as some of the larger, more elaborate creations here, Ashton’s whimsical entry, which brought up the procession’s rear, integrated seamlessly. However, beyond entertainment and spectacle, what consequence does an art project like this have when the result is largely indistinguishable from the vernacular creativity displayed throughout the carnival?
Despite being a felicitous choice for a project of this nature, Bob & Roberta Smith’s twee entry didn’t match the scale of Stokes and Ashton’s ambition. Early press releases envisaged an eccentric protest rally that would involve local people marching with placards, costumes and whistles to a soundtrack of ancient field names sung by a community choir. What transpired was four underwhelming tricycles positioned at various points along the procession’s route and fitted with tannoy systems relaying ‘The Bob & Roberta Smith Field Recordings of Frome’ radio show. Originally broadcast in July on Resonance FM, the rambling programme was recorded earlier in the year at the Frome Carnival Fun Day and features interviews with town criers and local residents. Smith cajoles them into reading or singing his list of archaic field names but, underestimating Frome’s demographic and cultural standing, he bemoans not being able to find any good West Country accents. In contrast to Stokes and Ashton’s engagement with the area, Smith’s project appeared distinctly inchoate. Aggravated by a faintly patronising bucolic nostalgia, his usually egalitarian ethos was surprisingly absent. A candid, throwaway remark made during the radio show epitomized the problem: ‘last week when I came down here to do a preliminary workshop with the people of Frome, quite a few said to me: “well, you’re just coming down from London with your fancy ideas,” and I think there’s an element of truth to that.’
‘Independent State’ is a far cry from Jeremy Deller’s epic Procession, which was presented earlier this year as part of the 2009 Manchester International Festival; in fact, it resonates more closely with Deller and Alan Kane’s Folk Archive (2000–ongoing). But, whereas that project plucks vernacular artefacts from their original contexts, displaying them in the rarefied aura of the gallery, the artists in ‘Independent State’ have – for the most part – plunged themselves deep into the local context as facilitators of community creativity. Without the influence of Matt Stokes it is highly unlikely that hardcore punks and local blacksmiths would even contemplate collaborating on a carnival entry (let alone imagine it winning second prize in the ‘Decorated Trolley or Cart’ category). Unbounded by theory, the strengths of ‘Independent State’ lay in the absence of any ameliorative agenda and a simple embracing of carnival’s grass roots spirit.
David Trigg
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