Lindsey Colbourne

Ar y gweill - Work in Progress

The starting point for my work with Merched Chwarel has been my house - Coed Gwdr, Nantperis - which was built by a quarrying family in 1873 (but owned by the Vaynol Estate, who owned pob dim in Dyffryn Peris - the quarry, houses, land, pub etc etc). Before Merched Chwarel, I’d already done quite a bit of work on the history of the house, and the families who lived here before me, and turned these into two 'shows' with National Theatre Wales (Digging Down and the Curiously Collaborative Museum of Lost Found and Broken) .

With Merched Chwarel, I've been building on this work by exploring further the domestic - quarry connection, seeing what light it will cast on my relationship with the quarries, and my sense of belonging here. I've found that (in the words of Virginia Woolf) "The present when backed by the past is a thousand times deeper than the present when it presses so close that you can feel nothing else". My relationships with others who live here has deepened, as we have shared our research and ideas about place, culture, language and changes over time. And the interconnectedness of our lives mirrors those of previous inhabitants (see Ellen Williams and the Other Women of Coed Gwydr). The "neglect of Welsh history" (David Lowenthal), the parallel lack of understanding of and exploitation of land and culture and people here places a particular responsibility on me, as an incomer from (just!) across the border.

A big part of my work with Merched Chwarel has been to develop the wider engagement of others with the idea of ‘Merched Chwarel’, building relationships and setting up events (eg Canu Chwarel Singing Slate), developing this website and researching stories of merched chwarel (despite their absence in official records). I see this ‘process’ side of my work as important as anything that goes into an exhibition.

Experimenting with scales and body extensions - domestic and quarry scale....

I’ve been working with Chris. Dugrenier and Lisa Hudson with bamboo in the quarries, playing with the idea of creating a critical mass of women in the quarry, and useless activity that also mirrors domestic activity/repetition. This is a quick cut, playing with mirroring (as in rorschach blots, fractals etc)

Relationship between the home and the quarry

The body of the mountain hesitates before my window
"How can one enter if one is the mountain,
If one is tall, with boulders and stones,
A peice of Earth, altered by Sky?" - Jules Supervielle

As an incomer to the area,  I find myself clinging to "House Geneology" -  of my place as  the latest in a series of women living in this house (the first being Ellen Williams, then Ellen Jones, then Ena Lynas-Gray) -  and looking for traces of connection, tying their experience to mine

Trying to bring the quarry inside with a mirror

Glyn Rhonwy Tapestry: Another experiment in mixing the domestic and quarry tasks, sound and scale, this one using repeated sounds and images from walking down one of the slate tips. The image is my shadow moving down the slope into an abandoned building...

Mapping Nantperis: I've been playing with deep mapping the role and connection of women with the quarry (past and present) in my home village, through conversation and research. I've written down everything I've found out about the names of all the houses  that have existed in Nantperis, and their female inhabitants (focusing on 1851 and changes to the present) on one blackboard.... and layered it up with the same information presented on old overhead transparencies. I've also been experimenting with mapping the details of the houses just in my section of Nantperis, including how they've changed over time, the current fate of the houses (the vast majority are now holiday homes) and their quarry views. With many thanks especially to Huw the Post,  Gwilym and Mary Roberts (Cerrig Drudion), Elin Tomos (Ty'n Twll) and Lesley and Pete Bishop (Frongoch).

For more of my maps, including a map of all 5000 quarries and mines of North Wales, please see the Mapping Room

"Impossible Beings" sketches - inspired by the comment by a friend: "Merched Chwarel - well that's going to be difficult: There weren't any"

Darlun Merched Chwarel Portraits, combining found images with drawings of quarry tips from above ( a sort of phrenology)

Merched Chwarel - Y Canpunt

Illustrated book refuting the remarkably awful official reputation of the 'women in quarrying districts', using a typed manuscript of Y Canpunt (a play by Kate Roberts) - that I found in some old family bibles given to me by Catrin Roberts - as the backbone, together with evidence from newspapers and the census. With many thanks to Catrin Roberts and Elin Tomos (Ty'n Twll)

Experiments in mapping our second walk to Rhiw Bach, using ink... and then using slate mud found on site + pencil

Gemwaith Merched Chwarel : I've been making some jewellry (using objects found in the middens in my garden, thrown away by the quarry families who lived here before me) to wear when we to go to Cardiff with our Merched Chwarel Banner: "Merched Chwarel ddim yn dawel" (see blog for more on the banner project). I’m also making bracelets and a neclace from slate from different quarries, and making a kit so that others can make them for our Canu Chwarel Singing Slate workshops (you get to take one away if you come to the Sam Frankie Fox one at Llanberis on the 27th January!)

Merched Chwarel: Popeth dw i wedi’i ddysgu (pretty much)

Now are are moving into our last 6 months, I’m moving towards more embodied works, intuitive responses to things I’ve learned during the project so far … here is this morning’s attempt (26.9.18), Sglyfaethus (Filthy). [This is a word I first heard at Amgueddfa Llanberis, the work Merched Chwarel used to describe the quarryman’s trousers , but also introduced a the ‘word of the week’ by Glenys Davies, in my Welsh class).

Sglyfaethus (Popeth Dw i Wedi’i Ddysgu), 3 mins 36 secs

I’ve become “Mad on Furniture”

Must be a proper Merched Chwarel now! “… idle, frivolous, senseless girls… they had become mad on furniture” a description of quarrymen’s wives, in R Merfyn Jones’ book ‘The North Wales Quarrymen"' … I think I may turn these (coloured with slate dust and pink blackboard paint) into mobiles, along with some of the ‘trysor’ I dug from my garden, thrown away by the quarry wives of Coed Gwydr…

Memorialising the women?

I’m thinking of making lots of these memorials to the various women I’ve found out about… maybe combined with names/stories/images?

Seiocodiagnostigmerchedchwarel

Apparently, according to historian Diedre Beddow, “Welsh women are culturally invisible”. She talks of four different Welsh women stereotypes, used both to police the role of women, but also subverted by women who worked with them and reinvented them: The Welsh woman seen through Welsh men, the good Welsh woman, the sexy Welsh woman, the funny Welsh woman. So it seems we need to add the Merched Chwarel stereotype, the bad (lazy, extravagant, mad on furniture and fripperies) Welsh woman.

Llwch Llechi Rorshach Slate Blot

Welsh Doll Series

Having started on a whim, I have now collected about 30 Welsh Dolls, of whom I have become extremely fond. Staunchly impassive, mouths (always) closed, they seem determined to keep a lid on a forment of gender and national stereotypes, expectations and contradictions that are projected onto them. I wanted to see what happened if we encouraged them to get together, let their hair down, tell their own story, and judge us back. I have given them free reign with my collection of slate, the ‘treasure’ I’ve dug from the midden in my (slate quarry house) garden.

Quarry Truth & Reconcilitation

How about that?

Canu Chwarel Singing Slate - Jan and Feb 2019

Recently, I are bin mostly organising, taking part in, and documenting the Canu Chwarel workshops - see separate page here. I’m using material from the workshops for my exhibition pieces - in a film (Breuddwyd Merched Chwarel), for sounds to accompany Y Pum Mil: Her Dark Maps (see the Mapping page), and for the groaning dresser.

Hear a taster here!

For the most recent thinking about my work, see my blog Allan o Fath: Beyond Measure

Moving into the present - August 2019

In preparation for our installation at Llechwedd Slate Caverns, in Blaenau Ffestiniog, I looked up Quarry Women on the internet. The results are shocking. What a statement about how we live in this world… It maybe too distressing for people trying to have fun at the caverns, but I’d love it to be playing while people are waiting to go down the Deep Mine. It isn’t a historical issue, this quarrying… it illustrates our relationship to the world, and each other. Pretty awful.