Andrew Black: On Clogger Lane

20 Jan-10 Mar 2024

PV 19 Jan 2024

Overview

LUX is pleased to present the first London solo exhibition by Glasgow-based artist Andrew Black featuring his new Margaret Tait Award 2021 film, presented in collaboration with LUX Scotland.

‘On Clogger Lane’ is a new experimental documentary. Named for an old road now submerged beneath a reservoir, the film meanders through the Washburn Valley in Yorkshire. It explores the infrastructures of capital on land overshadowed by a monstrous surveillance station, flooded and dammed, haunted by accusations of witchcraft, and populated by the traces of many generations of past inhabitants – from prehistoric carvings to the Victorian graves of child labourers.

The film incorporates newly-recorded conversations with Sylvia Boyes, Anne Lee and Lindis Percy, local women who have been involved in opposing the activities of RAF Menwith Hill, an American-run signals intelligence base near Harrogate – and British and US imperialism in different capacities – over decades. Further contributors are local people whose connections to the valley tell complex and interlinked stories of industrial exploitation, social history and folklore – farmers, antiquarians, dowsers, grandmothers, Quakers and Communists. These oral histories are accompanied by an experimental score by Leeds improvisational band Vibracathedral Orchestra, as well as synthesised Medieval song and archival sound and film from the Yorkshire Film Archive. ‘On Clogger Lane’ explores the meeting points of passivity and protest, public and private, past and present, all coincident in the same patch of ancient land.

Presented by LUX and LUX Scotland.

The Margaret Tait Commission is a LUX Scotland project delivered in partnership with Glasgow Film, with support from Creative Scotland. Previously known as the Margaret Tait Award, the name was changed in 2023 to more accurately reflect the opportunity.