In a nut­shell, my prac­tice exam­ines and rein­ter­prets gen­dered expe­ri­ences in mate­r­i­al land­scapes as a way to play­ful­ly reclaim cul­tur­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion through a post-human, fem­i­nist lens. I often approach my engage­ment with archives through geo­log­i­cal land­scapes that have the poten­tial for me to become con­cep­tu­al­ly entan­gled, as the mate­ri­al­i­ty of his­tor­i­cal sites and events ignite a process of recla­ma­tion and or reimag­in­ing via objects, sto­ries and sites vis­its. The Lan­cashire Archive holds mate­r­i­al that doc­u­ments aspects of the famous Lan­cashire witch-tri­als — specif­i­cal­ly the Pen­dle and Sam­les­bury witch-tri­als of 1612, and this is where my research at this site began. There is how­ev­er a less­er known account of a Lan­cashire witch, nick­named Meg Shel­ton, and her sto­ry has become the main focus of my archival research and sub­se­quent stu­dio-based development. 

In Wood­plump­ton, on the out­skirts of Pre­ston, there is a gran­ite boul­der promi­nent­ly posi­tioned in the church­yard of St. Annes Angli­can parish church. It is an unas­sum­ing but pecu­liar fea­ture in this neat­ly plot­ted grave­yard, sur­round­ed by the famil­iar sight of engraved head­stones and enclosed tombs. A small plaque accom­pa­nies the boul­der, iden­ti­fy­ing the rock as the mark­er of ​“The Witch’s Grave”, below which lies the remains of ​“Meg Shel­ton, alleged witch of Wood­plump­ton, buried in 1705”. The folk­loric tales that sur­round Meg Shel­ton are fan­tas­ti­cal and implau­si­ble, like many of the accu­sa­tions record­ed against per­se­cut­ed women of this time. But what I find most inter­est­ing is that there is a bur­ial record for this indi­vid­ual, held in the Lan­cashire Archives, and this fac­tu­al scrap of mate­r­i­al evi­dence of her exis­tence led me to con­sid­er what her bur­ial might reveal in the con­text of my broad­er inter­ests as an artis­tic researcher. 

From what can be ascer­tained from his­toric men­tions of so-called Meg Shel­ton, lat­er iden­ti­fied as Margery Hilton, she was an old woman liv­ing in abject pover­ty. Most of the mis­de­meanours that make up folk­tales about her cen­tre around theft of food and tres­pass. In her famous book Cal­iban and the Witch Sil­via Fed­eri­ci states that, as a direct result of land pri­vati­sa­tion and the migra­tion of vil­lagers look­ing for work, old­er women were ​“par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ad­van­taged”… ​“no longer sup­port­ed by their chil­dren” and sub­se­quent­ly appear­ing on ​“the poor rolls or sur­vived by bor­row­ing, pet­ty theft, and delayed pay­ments.” Indeed, Fed­eri­ci goes on to state that ​“the out­come of hatred and resent­ments […] is well doc­u­ment­ed in the records of the witch-hunt, which show that quar­rels relat­ing to requests for help, the tres­pass­ing of ani­mals, or unpaid rents were in the back­ground of many accu­sa­tions.“2

Obvi­ous­ly, we will nev­er actu­al­ly know for cer­tain what Margery’s life was like. All I have to work with is a bur­ial record, var­i­ous folk sto­ries and a boul­der with (alleged­ly) Margery Hilton’s body buried ver­ti­cal­ly, face down, beneath it. The dig­ging of a ver­ti­cal grave, in to which a body is placed, head first, is an act that I have imag­ined repeat­ed­ly dur­ing the course of this project. I’ve thought about the gravedig­gers and the priest per­form­ing the exor­cism, sit­u­at­ed at the site. I’ve thought about them deter­min­ing the space for her body with their spades, carv­ing through the earth so that they could con­trol her body’s posi­tion in the ground. Over time and through the mak­ing process in the stu­dio, this grew in to a metaphor for con­trol­ling her posi­tion in soci­ety — her face pressed hard against the bot­tom of the pit, her tor­so slumped, her legs in the air — reveal­ing the deep dis­re­spect from those who vil­i­fied her — even if just through the sto­ries they con­struct­ed and told. We see this pat­tern repeat­ed through his­to­ry in dif­fer­ent forms. Indeed, the cur­rent rise of the far-right and the increased con­trols on gen­dered and racialised bod­ies form an impor­tant cat­a­lyst for the works devel­oped. Through sculp­tur­al exper­i­men­ta­tion in response to this archival mate­r­i­al found at Lan­cashire Archives, the marked hole in the earth came to sym­bol­ise a ves­sel, her awk­ward rest­ing place trans­formed in to a site of renew­al and politi­cised sub­ver­sion with­in our tur­bu­lent con­tem­po­rary context. 

While vis­it­ing Lan­cashire archives in Pre­ston, I became inter­est­ed in myth, par­tic­u­lar­ly those relat­ed to the appari­tion of witch­es. Myth and super­nat­ur­al belief are reoc­cur­ring trends in cul­tur­al con­sump­tions, a man­i­fes­ta­tion of which can be seen via the glass slides tak­en not long after the end of the first world war by J T Smith. This slides where an attempt to doc­u­ment sites of witch­es’ appari­tions and were intend­ed to be shared as part of a pub­lic lec­ture. The site J T Smith pho­tographed were relat­ed to the Pen­dle Witch­es (1612) and the sub­se­quent book The Won­der­full Dis­cov­er­ie of Witch­es in the Coun­tie of Lan­cast­er writ­ten by Thomas Potts (1613) which loose­ly doc­u­ment­ed the Pen­dle Witch­es tri­al. While work­ing in the archives, I won­dered if our ever­last­ing appetite for myth­i­cal sto­ries, explored in many films and tele­vi­sion series, has some­thing to do with a loss of faith in our polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions and in the glut of infor­ma­tion con­stant­ly avail­able to us. It is dif­fi­cult to trust what is pre­sent­ed to us as facts, and where such sto­ries are com­ing from, yet we all want to nav­i­gate and under­stand the com­plex world we live in. Refram­ing myths and belief sys­tems whose traces can be found in archival mate­ri­als can offer new mean­ings and a way to under­stand how injus­tices and pow­er dynam­ic work in the world we live in. It is star­tling to find par­al­lels in archival mate­ri­als with the soci­etal, philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal ques­tions we are grap­pling with today.

My approach to archives and col­lec­tions is nev­er to delib­er­ate­ly seek but only to encounter; to watch the arc when one col­lec­tion speaks to anoth­er like weld­ing sparks. But on this occa­sion, in select­ing mate­r­i­al for the vis­it, I typed in my Great Grandfather’s name, know­ing that he had moved through his life in this area. Levi Whit­tle was ​‘invalid­ed out’ dur­ing WW1 fol­low­ing being gassed in the trench­es. Levi Whit­tle was a glass blow­er at Pilk­ing­ton Bros, in St Helens before the war and upon his return, with his dam­aged lungs, he could not return to his trade. That’s all I have ever known of him. And so here a Levi Whit­tle sits in a pho­to album of patients in hos­pi­tal 33.9 miles from his birth­place. Is it him? Per­haps. I stud­ied his face, this long time ago face. I stud­ied his hands, his wrists; long Whit­tle hands. And he looks like my cousins and some­thing about the eyes like my broth­er. But is this imag­ined? The first time I have encoun­tered a source which could touch right to the base of me. And then I turned the page, and anoth­er page, and anoth­er page. Crisped and the pho­tos curled and this peach paper and green dots and pho­tos cut out. Redac­tion. Because archives are as much about redac­tion as they are about col­lect­ing; about amass­ing. They are in them­selves a struc­ture of empti­ness. Con­ceal­ing in spaces. And then I turned to the side. Because this isn’t the sto­ry, this is for anoth­er time. Levi Whit­tle, I’ll come back.

But it was these turn­ing of the pages of, of face upon face. Each on the same stool, dressed uni­form­ly, neck­tied, but­toned. This eugeni­cal idea of study­ing face and pro­file. These spec­i­mens of war. Made abject. Face for­ward, with their pro­file reflec­tion sit­ting beside them, as if in anoth­er room; a strange unspo­ken con­ver­sa­tion between them, cold shoul­dered and whis­pered. And I became obsessed with this flip in each. Each was almost the oppo­site of the oth­er. In those that face the cam­era with assur­ance; their mir­rored, pro­filed oth­er seems to hunch, abashed; whilst those who defer from the seek­ing glare of the cam­era are haunt­ed by their out­raged oth­er. And so it flipped through all of my look­ing that day. This flip, this unknown oth­er that inhab­its us. 

And so I looked aside. And ruins and dust. Ruins not made by time but by this instant and uncom­pre­hend event. New bat­tered holes; new bat­tered absences. Redaction.