Henge

Traces and Echoes

I gaze at the land and imagine the structures Neolithic humans built. Remaining traces still visible and I reconstruct forms in my mind. I wonder where these conjured images originate. Am I responding to photographs, stories, history, symbols on maps or memory of places visited? I interrogate my assumptions and allow the unconscious to emerge asking, what is my relationship to this land.

I have a sense of a place, a sense of others who came before us and this ignites my imagination. Hints in the land whisper and reveal their secrets. I struggle to fully comprehend the forms and apply logic to piece together remaining evidence of human endeavour. Imagining those who dug earth, erected tree trunks and blocks of stone, humans moving together and more thoughts emerge.

A Place to Gather

How do we recognise a special place, what makes us stop, gaze and wonder? What primeval connections are stirred, what am I unconsciously digesting? My imagining is creating a connection to a place of which I have little experience, but this makes me notice. It is a place living in my mind, and the perception of an invented reality is now with me wherever I go. It dwells with me, substance from the past.

How do observations of these ancient landscapes help us with the present or the future? Why do we gather and what is significant in coming together in the same location as our ancestors. Will it make our lives feel insignificant, but significant at the same time?

WE ARE HERE - descendants, a continuum.

Are we here? We exist in the physical world, but I wonder at philosophical discussions about reality, how we use senses to perceive everything and how we are delusional. We comprehend and receive signals via senses: information relayed to our brains and interpreted. Deviated from reality we think we see, but we do not. Monuments somehow try to fix a perception of our selves, of existing on this planet. Collectively we confirm each other’s existence.

Mapping the Land

We walk. We seek visible remnants of pathways to retread in the footsteps of humans long gone. What do we hope to experience and find. We follow blindly assuming the path leads somewhere. The walking takes on significance, does the destination matter. Pathways crossing and scaring landforms, we make our collective mark. Tracts. Did Neolithic humans walking in lines and paths, lead to a feeling of security, of sacredness, a link with others, leading to meeting points, gathering points, for, feasting, ritual, observance? We continue our obsession moving in unison, making pathways, and corridors, conquering the land.

How much do we guess, how much do we misinterpret, how much do we imagine? We map the land today with symbols on paper, technologically and in our minds. The format presenting a different reality, altering our perception of the land. Symbols to be decoded telling different stories. What language are we using, what knowledge is required to interpret these layers? How do we map that which we cannot see?

Green, green in my mind, lush verdant.

I wonder at the species of plants and insects familiar to our ancient ancestors. What sounds would they have heard, do they differ from ours today? Crows descendants like us flutter overhead. I make presumptions in my imagined place. I wonder at gentleness and brutality, of yearnings and the awe our forbearers experienced at incomprehensible celestial rhythms, longing for the certainty of weather, the rising and setting of the sun, the seasons, utter connection to the environment in which they lived without protection. How relevant this continues to be for us today.

My imagination wanders and is ignited. I am bound to play, moving materials recreating new forms with infinite possibilities, using senses, allowing the substance and material to determine the forms that emerge. Sand trickling through my fingers, stones placed in piles, sticks stacked high. Did interaction and collaboration in ancient times lead to a co-ordinated consciousness resulting in built forms, HENGE.

Mound

How do we distinguish the worn and smoothed mound made by humans within the land. Evidence of moving, shaping, reforming and repositioning earth, wood, stone. Forming their story of endeavour and purpose. Circles, ovals, rectangles, why geometrical shapes? Is this how we now recognise the forms made by early humans, but why these shapes. Are we emulating the precision and symmetry instinctively found in the natural world, is it our way of controlling the world, at what point did moving materials to create meaningful new forms become geometrical. Where does the aesthetic fit in, appreciation of the beautiful, evidence of awakening consciousness and ability to hypothesise? Sense of purpose and compulsion to leave our collective mark seems vital, drawn to the monolith, of something larger than our selves; scale, size, strength and power of the form. Permanence.

My response when faced with real or imagined blocks of this scale, is echoed in the work of other artists.  The presence of these images is physically grounding and has resounding permanence within my subconscious. They stand with me. Bound in time, an ethereal memory.

Egocentrically we seek answers believing we can fully understand the use of Neolithic structures and we guess at possibilities. Yet the substance and presence of these sacred structures are etched on the land and in our minds.

Being

When I place myself in the landscape, I am healed. Feeling the earth, rock and soil, beneath my feet, hearing the whisper of grasses, the smell of trees, awakening what is deep within me, but often hidden today. Using my senses leading to a deep primary response.  I wonder at my compulsion to record, to in some way hold onto my observations. If I rid myself of this construct accepting all experience received via secondary recording must be a corrupted and curated version, I will live in the moment, where new and exciting things are observed and noticed. The hidden reveals itself both in the land and in myself.

Then I note the HENGE is a record of human presence.

 Hidden

Locating myself in an ancient landscape leads me to close noticing. I discover that which is hidden within the landscape and myself. This piece is a key to encourage an awakening of our senses, to nurture an internal space, opening up possibilities and unlocking the hidden. Sustainability starts with, our sense of self, our inner voice and being. We have a need to be grounded and our sense of location is vital.

I invite you to place yourself at a location in the landscape for five minutes and notice how your senses are awakened. You may, like me, find closing your eyes, holding a pebble heightens your experience encouraging thoughts and images to emerge. Sharing the experience with others leads to feelings of being heard and of being connected.