Rocking The Boat: The Presenceof Absence
MARK WALTER in conversation with Anne Lydiat
A couple of weeks ago l was at Hastings Arts Forum gallery for the Changing Spaces exhibition. As I peered into and around every corner of the gallery my eye was immediately drawn to a series of drawings with a serene and delicate web-like quality. I was intrigued, and sought out the artist. This is her story.
Anne Lydiat first went to art school in Sheffield in 1978 to study sculpture. It was a great time to be a student, she explains: sit-ins, a full grant, free materials and creative freedom. Then, as now, her work was concept-driven, selecting a medium most suited to realising her ideas and not aligned to any specific discipline.
Leaving art school in 1982, she began teaching five days a week as a part-time lecturer at various art schools in the UK and abroad. Then in 1987, she became the first woman to receive the Henry Moore Fellowship culminating in a one-person exhibition Waiting for the Seventh Wave at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. Anne got her first full-time teaching post at Nottingham Trent University and had her second one-person show there, Beyond the Shadow at the Bonington Gallery.
Lydiat’s personal and artistic life changed significantly when she went to live afloat, on board a British Medway Coaster named ROCK moored on the River Thames, downstream from Tower Bridge. “Inspired by my elemental existence I made a series of drawings by suspending a pen that traced the continual movement of the ship. I used a similar process when sailing around the Scottish Western Isles on board The Lady of Avenel. That time I collected stones from each place we anchored and used the ship’s movement to trace around the stone. The wind and the tides, therefore, were also important elements of this process.”
She started a PhD in 2014 researching women sailors, and discovered the American Arctic explorer Louise Arner Boyd. She explains “I began a series of Arctic voyages in the wake of Louise Arner Boyd, and in 2018 I hired an Icelandic sailing ship, the OPAL, to take me far north, to ‘the lands that hold one spellbound’: to Louise Boyd Land, named in her honour for her discoveries and contribution to the scientific knowledge of the Arctic.
“An outcome of this incredible voyage will be an exhibition of photographs at the Royal Geographical Society, London, alongside speakers who have a connection in some way to Boyd: a writer, a glaciologist, a Greenlander who voyaged with me, and the archivist Susan Peschel from the Boyd collection at the American Geographical Society, USA. I am particularly excited to be working on this project with artist Alexandra Drawbridge at Solaris who will be printing my photographs, Patrick Adam Jones at Project 78, and artist and framer extraordinaire and local film-maker Rod Morris.”
For personal reasons, Lydiat gave up her river existence and moved full-time to Hastings to be near the sea, just as Covid struck. “Like so many others, I felt that the profound sense of loneliness and isolation was hard to bear. I survived by meeting a very special person, who has sadly since died, and connecting with friends and family through Instagram where I could share photographs of my daily existence.
“Before Covid, I had been invited by Helen Savage to show my work at Hastings Arts Forum and this opportunity was only finally realised two weeks ago at the Changing Spaces exhibition where I showed a series of ink – wind – stone drawings made by placing a stone on paper, suspending three pens from a bamboo tripod, and allowing the wind to make the drawing. I finally removed the stone, hence the title ‘The Presence of Absence’. The response to my work has been wonderful and has led to lots of new connections and opportunities to show my work in this wonderful vibrant town I now call home.”
Anne will be showing at The Abstraction group exhibition at The Blast Gallery, St Andrews Mews, Hastings, TN34 1SJ. Opening hours; Wednesday 16-26 August 12-5 pm. Private View: 18 August 6-9 pm Website: anne@annelydiat Instagram: anneonrock
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