Earlier in the year, Sheffield-born poet Joey Connolly was commissioned to produce two new poems in response to Arts Council Collection Touring Exhibition, On Paper which has been touring the country since January 2018 and recently opened at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea.
The Arts Council Collection touring exhibition makes paper the subject, rather than the often overlooked support for drawing and presents works with paper that has been rubbed, folded and embossed, works that have been burnt, torn, cut and even three dimensional objects made with paper.
Inspired by two of the works from the exhibition, Connolly created the poems ‘A Series of Imagined Acts (2017)’ and ‘Forty-nine Moments for the Substrate’. The former takes as its starting point from Cornelia Parker's ACC work, Meteorite Lands on Wormwood Scrubs, 1998, whilst the latter was inspired by Tania Kovats’, Books from the Museum of the White Horse Library, Non Fiction, 2007.
Cornelia Parker's work is part of a series of meteorite "landings" in London. By heating up an iron meteorite and placing it on famous cultural locations on an enlarged map of London, the meteorite burns its way through the city's famous and infamous sites, leaving only its imprint, the burn on the page of a map, marking the spot where the everyday meets the extra-terrestrial.
Tania Kovats’ work comes from a series she created during a residency at the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford in 2006. Kovats assembled a collection of anthropological objects, records and books relating to the Uffington White Horse to complement her own drawings and prints displayed in the 'Museum of the White Horse', which she refers to as a 'travelling landscape museum in a horsebox'.
About Joey Connolly
Joey Connolly grew up in Sheffield and studied in Manchester. Now he lives in London, where he is the manager of the Poetry Book Fair. His poetry and criticism have appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Sunday Times and Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt), as well as on BBC Radio 4. He received an Eric Gregory award in 2012.
Listen to the poems Connolly has created and performed in response to these works using the links below.