The Yellow Wallpaper
Aug. 15th, 2018 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustBelsay Hall is an English Heritage property in Northumberland, and one which is, depending on your point of view, either somewhat anomalous or ahead of the curve. There are gardens, including a spectacular quarry garden, and there is a genuine ruined medieval castle, which is the sort of property I associate with English Heritage. But the Hall itself is early nineteenth century Greek Revival, and not ruined. Neither is it furnished like a stately home: English Heritage explain "Under the terms of the guardianship agreement by which it passed into state care in 1980, the hall is displayed without furnishings, revealing to visitors the fine craftsmanship that went into its construction." It's an empty shell, in other words, and this is deliberate. They don't, however, leave the visitor to appreciate that fine craftsmanship and classical severity unaided. Each year the Hall hosts a different art exhibition or installation. This year's offering is Susan Philipsz's The Yellow Wallpaper.
My only previous encounter with Philipsz's work was in 2010, whendurham_rambler and I heard fragments of her Surround Me in the City of London. I wrote at the time:
So I was interested to know what she might have done at Belsay.
I have read The Yellow Wallpaper, but not recently. My memory of it is vague (and I may be confusing it with The Victorian Chaise-Longue - apparently I wouldn't be alone in associating the two). But that's irrelevant, because although Susan Philipsz's visit to Belsay made her think of The Yellow Wallpaper:
where it took her was to the woman devoured by the house, melting into the walls, haunting the fireplaces:
and from there to ghosts and Border Ballads (Belsay is in the rich farmlands of south Northumberland, rather than the Debatable Lands of the Borders, but it's north of the Wall, so let's not quibble). Her singing of The Unquiet Grave emerges from the fireplaces in the upstairs rooms, and the library, though it's clearly audible as soon as you enter the great open space of the hall, so I had no sense of wondering where the sound was coming from. The documentation talks of eight (I think) versions of the ballad playing on a loop, and that may well be so, but what you hear is a single voice, and if it is cycling through eight different versions, it uses the same tune for all of them. Even more disconcerting, that tune is not one I associate with The Unquiet Grave - I know it as The Parting Glass. Fair enough, tunes and verses are given to wandering, and I have been looking for evidence of this particular combination: but all the references are to its use in Penny Dreadful which I have never seen - help me out here, internets!
Down in the basement, the cellars are filled with an earlier piece, The Shallow Sea, which makes similar use of the song Willow Waly. The most ghostly thing about this piece was the American family playing hide and seek, and the way the father's laughter echoed through the dark cellars. I do not know what a child's voice singing this song has to do with shallow seas, and the explanation, which involves The Turn of the Screw and The Innocents, makes things if anything less clear. The connections are in the mind of the artist, which is what the artist is for.
Anyway, that's what we did on Saturday. A leisurely drive out to Belsay, lunch at the Blacksmith's Coffee Shop (the turning immediately before Belsay Hall, between the Estate Office and the Woodland Burial site), then to the Hall, followed by a walk through the gardens to the Castle:
There's a little sales counter at the back of the Castle,selling icecream and plastic swords and gingerbread men-at-arms.
When we had completed our circuit of the grounds, we drove cross-country to Corbridge, where we called in on Forum Books in their new home, and had a work-related conversation, then sampled the 'Pele Ale' at the microbrewery opposite (in the Pele Tower, of course). And home via Waitrose in Heham.
My only previous encounter with Philipsz's work was in 2010, when
durham_rambler and I heard fragments of her Surround Me in the City of London. I wrote at the time:We met [the Bears] at Saint Olave in Mark Lane, arriving just as the light was fading and the recording was finishing, so that I was hearing faint melodic sounds as we approached, not quite sure if this was art, or church bells or some other ambient noise, possibly from traffic, and concluded that it was surely the music we were looking for just as it ended, and
So I was interested to know what she might have done at Belsay.
I have read The Yellow Wallpaper, but not recently. My memory of it is vague (and I may be confusing it with The Victorian Chaise-Longue - apparently I wouldn't be alone in associating the two). But that's irrelevant, because although Susan Philipsz's visit to Belsay made her think of The Yellow Wallpaper:
where it took her was to the woman devoured by the house, melting into the walls, haunting the fireplaces:
and from there to ghosts and Border Ballads (Belsay is in the rich farmlands of south Northumberland, rather than the Debatable Lands of the Borders, but it's north of the Wall, so let's not quibble). Her singing of The Unquiet Grave emerges from the fireplaces in the upstairs rooms, and the library, though it's clearly audible as soon as you enter the great open space of the hall, so I had no sense of wondering where the sound was coming from. The documentation talks of eight (I think) versions of the ballad playing on a loop, and that may well be so, but what you hear is a single voice, and if it is cycling through eight different versions, it uses the same tune for all of them. Even more disconcerting, that tune is not one I associate with The Unquiet Grave - I know it as The Parting Glass. Fair enough, tunes and verses are given to wandering, and I have been looking for evidence of this particular combination: but all the references are to its use in Penny Dreadful which I have never seen - help me out here, internets!
Down in the basement, the cellars are filled with an earlier piece, The Shallow Sea, which makes similar use of the song Willow Waly. The most ghostly thing about this piece was the American family playing hide and seek, and the way the father's laughter echoed through the dark cellars. I do not know what a child's voice singing this song has to do with shallow seas, and the explanation, which involves The Turn of the Screw and The Innocents, makes things if anything less clear. The connections are in the mind of the artist, which is what the artist is for.
Anyway, that's what we did on Saturday. A leisurely drive out to Belsay, lunch at the Blacksmith's Coffee Shop (the turning immediately before Belsay Hall, between the Estate Office and the Woodland Burial site), then to the Hall, followed by a walk through the gardens to the Castle:
There's a little sales counter at the back of the Castle,selling icecream and plastic swords and gingerbread men-at-arms.
When we had completed our circuit of the grounds, we drove cross-country to Corbridge, where we called in on Forum Books in their new home, and had a work-related conversation, then sampled the 'Pele Ale' at the microbrewery opposite (in the Pele Tower, of course). And home via Waitrose in Heham.
