Ros & Sam
Dover Residency
We spent three weeks on foot, by the sea. Breakfast in the Urban room and coffee to take us on our individual journeys – Sam to Joanna’s former drawing studio and Ros to the painting studio. Between solo sessions we would meet and exchange our wanderings before roaming into and around Dover.
We met people where we found them, on the cliffs, on their bikes and on the beaches for swims at low tide and high, and encountered strange things that turned up in the harbour. We found ourselves chasing the moon and its shifting seas, each time meeting a different light on the water.
We crossed over with previous and neighbouring residents and heard stories of others: from treetops to tunnels and deep under the fig tree; circulating stalls for balls at the car boot and contemplating the perfect egg; imagining the man who turned up on his horse; the sounds of screams as the Romans approached; and the simultaneous rumblings of Britain First. We started to see layers of history surfacing slowly and hear echoes of parallel timelines, lives lived and living.
In the tunnels, caves and forts, the initials of past travellers are etched into the walls in serif font, deep enough that they were sure they would be found. While much more toothless gestures sprayed in black on the white chalk reveal a more apathetic author, whose expectations to leave a permanent trace seem far less certain.
Something about this time in Dover has been about being in between. Sam between jobs, between focuses, sculpting a seagull whilst waiting for them to land on the sill. Ros between academic years, between studios, rolling out lengths of paper and pushing graphite around, looking for an image.
We were drawn in by the model in the metal detecting display case at the Dover Museum depicting a scene from a dig with archeologists, site officials and detectorists rendered with varying affection. And similarly the brilliantly devotional sculpture of Spiderman in the foyer of the industrial park Cineworld. And a framed A4 photograph we found at Tilmanstone, printed on a home printer with the telling pink lines of ink running thin – a boy, mid strike of a penalty kick, the captain of the opposing team in despair behind him and other children at the sidelines pulling managerial expressions. And spotting a pile of fridge magnets – a cat, somebody’s cat. Each of these objects a microcosm, a single person’s perspective, offering some sort of capsule of our shared reality.
We witnessed a spectacle down at the beach. On a hot day, a man entirely sunk his pick-up truck while attempting to put his jet ski in the water. Coast guard, fire engines, harbour patrol, police, didn’t deter the onlookers, bathers and paddle boarders surveying the scene from the shallows. Up on the cliffs we observed a series of cosmic events and watched as people posted images in the aftermath – of their colanders and blown-out pin hole cameras, lots of tiny crescent moons landing and layering on surfaces everywhere. The scenes that unfolded eclipsed one another as people gathered in their plenty, heeding the collective call to attention.
As our offering to Dover, it occurred to us that we might leave a trail of things that hold something of the memory of the encounters and the ideas we’ve been percolating….
