Joanne Coates presents Rural Realities (Film Screening)

Building on themes from her Baltic exhibition, , Joanne Coates presents a screening of Andrew Black’s experimental documentary On Clogger Lane (2022) and Warren Harrison’s documentary film The Creek (2018).  

In relation to Coates’ research these two films explore class, gender, inequality and the rural, drawing on parallels between places and people. Delve into the themes and questions these two films raise around climate change, disparities of wealth and the impact on low-income communities.  

Named for an old road, now submerged beneath a reservoir, On Clogger Lane 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 - and British and US imperialism in different capacities - over decades. Further contributors are local people whose connections to the Washburn 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, including music by Leeds improvisational band Vibracathedral Orchestra, synthesised medieval English 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. Commissioned by Lux Scotland as part of the Margaret Tait Award. The Margaret Tait Commission is a LUX Scotland commission delivered in partnership with Glasgow Film, backed by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland. 

Directed by Andrew Black 
Edited by Andrew Black, Daniel Hughes, Jen Martin 
Production assistance - Annie Crabtree, Emmie McLuskey 
Sound - Richy Carey, Mark Readhead 
Colour - Daniel Hughes 

The Creek is a ‘cinematic excavation’ of Greatham Creek, an intertidal salt-marsh in Teesside, exploring the memories and experiences of a working-class community that existed there from the early 20th century to the mid 1980's. Similar to the ‘plotlands movement’ of the same period, the community built a vernacular settlement of cabins, cottages and boat-houses on its banks as a base for fishing and family holidays, serving as an escape from the region’s heavy industry or unemployment. The film charts the demise of the community and interlaces an exploration of the important photographic work made there by Ian Macdonald. 
 

The work formed part of Harrison’s PhD by Completed Work, awarded by Teesside University. 
 

Produced and Directed by Dr Warren Harrison 
Cinematography by Richard Johnston 
Edited and sound design by Matt Dennis 
Aerial cinematography by Matt McGough 

Joanne Coates is a working-class visual artist working in the medium of photography who lives and works across the North East of England. Her work explores rurality, hidden histories and inequalities relating to low income through photography, installations, and audio. Coates uses photography to question the concepts of power, identity, wealth, and poverty, by exploring the social histories of land, gender, and class to narrate stories that have long been forgotten – or simply never told.  

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, South Shore Road, Gateshead, United Kingdom