Ghost Dancing: Pin the Pits Wunderkammer

When I arrived back in Doncaster in 2010, I packed up 10 years of artwork, books, photographs and emphera into my Sisters garage. A few years later, after a meeting with Theatre Director Kully Thiari I was commissioned to create a new piece of work relating to my old artwork and political campaign Pin the Pits.

I called the commission Ghost Dancer, which is loosely based on the Native American tradition of honouring your ancestors through the ritual of performance. David Douglass, a well known and National Union of Mine workers leader, writer and activist described this tradition in his book XX It always resonated with me, as the more years that pass the more people want to re-live the traditions that was lost post-1984 and the miners’ strike.

This image was sourced from the Native American Online, I found this particular story very moving:

“The Minneapolis Institute of Art put on the first and only exhibit of ghost dance shirts and dresses worn by men, women, and children. The room was black and the clothes were suspended in two circles. You could even see the bullet holes and the blood stains on the shirts from the slaughter of ghost dancers at Wounded Knee under the orders of the government.

“Several Native Americans went to the exhibit, elders as well as young people. The museum would keep it open at night, just for us. We would sit in a circle, surrounded by these ritual dance shirts and dresses, and pass a sacred pipe. We were listening to hear what we could hear, and watching to see what we could see. We wanted to get in touch with those people, those spirits, those ghosts of the past, to reconnect, and to show them that we still carry this love for the earth.

For the Ghost Dancer project created a  3D collection of objects, or Wundakammer, which is the  German word for “Cabinet of Curiosities” which would feature of all the things I had collated from 2003 -2010.

In order to create my own Pin the Pits Wunderkammer I had to collect the boxes of artwork and emphera from my sisters garage. It was like a family outing to find Aunty Rachel’s artwork that was tucked away at the back of the garage coverred in dust and grime. My niece and nephew were quite perplexed, especially when I found a letter, which I wrote to myself three years earlier when I packed it all away.

When I got home and read the letter, I burst into tears. It was the most amazing thing to read, to compare my thoughts then and now. I would recommend writing a letter to yourself and hiding it somewhere.

Within the piles of stuff, I found an weathered PDF document given to me by Sarah Richards Head of Doncaster Arts Service in 2006. It was the Coal Field Regeneration Fund Evaluation report from that time. I used it to create the wunderkammer layout bringing different elements together like a giant collage. It seemed poetic at the time.

After spending hours in the studio, the piece started making sense, I got into this weird rhythm of moving things around and placing framed elements on top of one another. It began to feel 3D and sculptural and had a visual poetry about it.

The 2m x 2m frame was built by Graeme Frost a Sheffield based carpenter. He sourced builders scaffolding boards and metal fixtures to create the industrial style cabinet. Having the collective support of other artists was such an asset to make the piece possible. The big panic came when I was trying to get the monster creation out of Church View Studios and into the Theatre in time for the launch. Luckily, these quality guys helped us to get the piece into the rear stage door of Cast.

The opening night of  Cast was a massive day for Doncaster it was unreal to see the Wundekammer being admired by people on the night. Six thousand people turned out over the weekend to join the opening celebrations.

I  feel completely honoured to be given the opportunity to share my work with people and that this collection of objects actually means somethings to people.

One of the best parts for the Pin the Pits Wunderkammer has to be photographing my little niece in front of the piece. She knew it as boxes of stuff in her mums garage a month earlier. What the strike and coal means to me, will me something completely different to her when she’s all grown up.