Fallow Land - the art work

I’m going over different ideas for an eventual art work or works relating to the Fallow Land project and its themes. I’ve covered a lot of ground (literally), what with the art walks, my own walks and spending time in the field (again literally), looking, listening, thinking, exploring through all the senses, in both the mindful and the mindless modes. The other part is the social dimension which involves growing initiatives in the town and those are going very well. I’ll report on them next.

A few ideas are coming to the fore. Some of these involve recycling ideas and concepts that I've had bubbling away as part of previous investigations into Jedburgh and its hinterland. I had discussed with two of the farmers I know the possibility of making small signs to put on the gates of those fields along the paths where people walk the most, signs illustrating through symbols and/or words what’s going on in the fields. This might still happen and my own preference here is for some kind of ideograms that encapsulate the growing or function that the various fields are undergoing over a given period.

​From my neighbour Alfie Dodds who farms below Hunthill south of Jedburgh I have some wonderful descriptions of the fields in the area I’m investigating. One goes like this: Species-rich meadow used for grazing, cannot be ploughed without permission from Department. Presumably that’ll be the Department of Agriculture. I thought this was all about insects, maybe dragonflies, but what it means is that there are rare grasses in that field and somebody has considered it worthwhile to protect them. As you’d expect other descriptions are very functional, for example Permanent Grass will be left until July and cut for silage or, more detailed, Arable silage field under sown with grass. Will be ploughed out in Spring and re-sown with arable silage mix and grass. To be cut for winter fodder 2025. I especially love this one - Winter stubble scheme to encourage birds, will be ploughed and sown in Spring with Spring Barley, because it's a novelty to me that food growing involves feeding the birds. It all makes sense within a more holistic view of the food environment.

Out of all this I’ll be spending a lot more time in the spring, wallowing in the amazing milky light you get at this latitude. In and around these fields employing cameras, lenses, a bunch of objects and ‘stuff’ to make some short test films and staged photographs, probably in my performance mode as ‘Landowner’. Back to the ideograms I can see a place for those as objects, printed out or as linocuts, brought into the environment.

Sound is tricky and I say that as someone who works with the medium every day. The sounds in those high fields and woodlands can be undifferentiated, nuanced and subtle at the same time, not without interest but difficult to manipulate into an accessible art work. Until I adequately decode the soundscape my way round this problem is to represent the sounds visually or even sculpturally which I find fascinating.

Finally, alongside finding a place for the words and phrases that the farmers themselves use to describe places and processes, I'm considering some activity around sonograms, again linocuts or other prints. If you’re not sure what I mean by sonograms I should make it clear that I'm not doing pregnancy testing for cattle.

​After all that lot I might be able to make some decisions.