Freedom For A Song

"Freedom For A Song comes from INDIFFERENT, a series of prints, images and texts, by artist, poet and cultural forager Paul Conneally. INDIFFERENT emerges from cultural forages in and around Snibston Discovery Park and the villages that surround it. The forages form part of the process underpinning Spoil Heap Harvest a piece commissioned by Snibston as part of TRANSFORM.

INDIFFERENT sees Conneally juxtaposing the poetry of the playwright and poet Francis Beaumont, who was born in Thringston, North West Leicestershire, with not frottages but presages of plant and other materials, made on a cultural forage through the Snibston Colliery spoil heap, now a country park. The artist invites the viewer to seek for pictures within the presaged image in the same way that a psychologist might ask a patient to look for images in the famous Rorschach or Ink Blot Test. What can you see? You can report back to the artist what you feel the image to be by email: little.onion@ntlworld.com or by commenting on this page using the comment form.

Throughout Spoil Heap Harvest Conneally will make psychogeographic cultural forages through the wider footprint of the former Snibston colliery which is in Coalville, North West Leicestershire. The forages and interventions will be mediated by the poetry of William Wordsworth, Francis Beaumont and the paintings of John Constable. All three of these cultural giants deeply connected with the area in ways for the most part unknown by local and wider communities.

Wordsworth lived in the area, with his whole family, for a whole year and it was at Coleorton that he first read his completed masterpiece, The Prelude, to Coleridge. Constable, Sir Walter Scott and many other famous artists and writers clamoured to North West Leicestershire to stay with George Beaumont at his home Coleorton Hall, just down the road from Snibston. George Beaumont himself was the lead benefactor for the setting up the National Gallery in London."

SNIBSTON DISCOVERY MUSEUM - 2011

Snibston has now been closed down by Leicestershire County Council it sits at this moment closed up with all the people's cultural and heritage artefacts locked up inside.

Concrete Mining Helmets

Concrete Mining Helmets - Snibston Discovery Museum

Photo: Paul Conneally 2014

Maurice Takes A Bow

Maurice Maguire - artist - curator - cultural geographer

Photo: Paul Conneally

Tunnel Talk with Maurice Maguire

'Maurice' - New Century Works, Maguire and Conneally (2012 - 2015)

In 2011 as Transform Snibston took shape I spoke with artist and cultural geographer, Maurice Maguire about the tunnels spreading out and to Snibston Colliery, now the site of Snibston Discovery Museum.

Tunnel Talk was the resulting podcast: Tunnel Talk

http://everymothersson.podomatic.com/enclosure/2008-05-15T12_22_15-07_00.mp3

Take a listen and then take a trip to Snibston.

Paul Conneally

August 2014

Hilversum

HILVERSUM - Paul Conneally 2012

mixed media valve radio with framed concrete visual poem - the radio dial set to HILVERSUM

Freedom For A Song

Freedom For A Song - Paul Conneally 2011

Freedom For A Song comes from INDIFFERENT, a series of prints, images and texts, by artist, poet and cultural forager Paul Conneally. INDIFFERENT emerges from cultural forages in and around Snibston Discovery Park and the villages that surround it. The forages form part of the process underpinning Spoil Heap Harvest a piece commissioned by Snibston as part of TRANSFORM.

INDIFFERENT sees Conneally juxtaposing the poetry of the playwright and poet Francis Beaumont, who was born in Thringston, North West Leicestershire, with not frottages but presages of plant and other materials, made on a cultural forage through the Snibston Colliery spoil heap, now a country park. The artist invites the viewer to seek for pictures within the presaged image in the same way that a psychologist might ask a patient to look for images in the famous Rorschach or Ink Blot Test. What can you see? You can report back to the artist what you feel the image to be by email: little.onion@ntlworld.com or by commenting on this page using the comment form.

Throughout Spoil Heap Harvest Conneally makes psychogeographic cultural forages through the wider footprint of the former Snibston colliery which is in Coalville, North West Leicestershire. The forages and interventions  mediated by the poetry of William Wordsworth, Francis Beaumont and the paintings of John Constable. All three of these cultural giants deeply connected with the area in ways for the most part unknown by local and wider communities.

Wordsworth lived in the area, with his whole family, for a whole year and it was at Coleorton that he first read his completed masterpiece, The Prelude, to Coleridge. Constable, Sir Walter Scott and many other famous artists and writers clamoured to North West Leicestershire to stay with George Beaumont at his home Coleorton Hall, just down the road from Snibston. George Beaumont himself was the lead benefactor for the setting up the National Gallery in London.

Paul Conneally is cultural forager at Snibston Discovery Museum for TRANSFORM SNIBSTON.

The Indifferent

Never more will I protest,

To love a woman but in jest:

For as they cannot be true,

So, to give each man his due,

When the wooing fit is past

Their affection cannot last.

Therefore, if I chance to meet

With a mistress fair and sweet,

She my service shall obtain,

Loving her for love again:

Thus much liberty I crave,

Not to be a constant slave.

But when we have tried each other,

If she better like another,

Let her quickly change for me,

Then to change am I as free.

He or she that loves too long

Sell their freedom for a song. 

Francis Beaumont

Three Jars of Coal Dust Jelly

Three Jars of Coal Dust Jelly - Paul Conneally 2012

Three Jars of Coal Dust Jelly is now part of the permanent collection at Snibston Discovery Museum, Coalville, Leicestershire, UK.