Text by CLOT Magazine
Walking through Aldborough, a small peaceful village in North Yorkshire, one would never guess that it was once a site of a big and busy Roman fort and urban centre Isurium Brigantum. Established around 1 AD, the town was an important trading centre with a large population boasting numerous administrative and public infrastructures such as a Forum, basilica, bathhouses, an amphitheatre, and even a sewage system. This August, a collaborative exhibition merging visual and auditory art with archaeology will shine a light on the concealed landscape below Aldborough’s surface.
Soundmarks is the project of Dr Rose Ferraby and Rob St John and consists of an art display, a sound installation, and an ‘art trail’ that allows visitors to browse around Aldborough exploring ‘soundmarks’ – sites of the old Roman settlements. Each site features Dr Ferraby’s visual work and Rob St John’s sound work that explore and interpret the site’s heritage. The main exhibition takes place at The Shed, where viewers can appreciate Dr Ferraby’s artwork and Rob St John’s immersive, atmospheric audio piece created using the sounds of Aldborough.
Rob St John is an artist and writer. Working primarily with audio and video, his artistic practice is connecting nature and culture in contemporary landscapes. Dr Ferraby is an archaeologist, geologist, and artist whose multi-media work explores the relationships of humans and landscape using narrative and illustration. They collaborated throughout 2019 to seek a meeting point between art and archaeology. An excavation work conducted by Dr Ferraby and her team in spring enabled both artists to find novel ways of recording using audio and visuals and incorporate various archaeological techniques, datasets and maps into their work.
The exhibition held at The Shed, Aldborough, along with the ‘art trail’, will be open to the public from August 24 to 31, 2019.
