A DELICATE BALANCE
Visitors will have a very different experience when they visit The Workhouse, Southwell in August. They will have a chance to see a series of six contemporary art installations by local artist and photographer, Maggy Milner, which she hopes ‘will enhance and expand their experience of the place and it’s complex history’
The exhibition, commissioned by the National Trust, runs from Wednesday 3 August to Sunday 4 September 2011.
The artworks can be discovered in different spaces around The Workhouse. Maggy has been inspired by the austere atmosphere of the eerie, purpose-built institution. Her work draws on the social history of the workhouse systems and parallels that exist in today’s societies.
She hopes to convey the delicate balance between the downward spiral of the ‘poverty trap’ and the rigid demands of state intervention.
In the Exercise Yard, visitors can find plaster casts of men’s, women’s and children’s hands, laid on piles of broken hardstone. This refers to the arduous stone breaking and oakum picking undertaken by inmates.
Recently volunteers from The Workhouse had a ‘hands-on’ experience, working alongside Maggy Milner in her studio. They cast plaster hands and modelled delicate translucent Papier-mâché bowls. Thirty-five of these bowls will be set in regimented rows on a dormitory floor. Titled ‘More,’ this work portrays both the need and greed in societies.
Volunteer Ann Hurt said ‘Getting involved has really given me a feeling for the techniques and materials, and I now have a greater understanding of the thought processes which have influenced the development of the work’.
Southwell’s workhouse, masterminded by Reverend J T Becher, and built in 1824. was designed as a place of last resort for the poor and needy. Becher’s strict regime of demeaning drudgery became a blueprint throughout the country.
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE WORKHOUSE SOUTHWELL
