Engrained Voices: Carvings Inspired by Norfolk Folktales

Norfolk is steeped in story. Whether we are travelling along the coast, through the loam-rich farmlands, across the sandy brecklands, among the inland waterways of the broads, or over the marsh and fenlands to the west of the county; whether we are threading the Saxon and Medieval streets of Norwich, Kings Lynn or Thetford, stories are everywhere. These stories that are held in landscape are what the Aboriginal peoples would call the 'dreaming' of a place. When they are told the sleeping landscape reveals its dreams. Its secrets are disclosed. The medium is the breath - the spoken and the sung word. In this exhibition the narratives of place are returned to the bedrock of landscape. Breath is become stone. The chisel leaves traces in the stone in the same way that the blade of the plough furrows the field or the bird's foot marks the mud . . . but it carries with it traces of the voices of our ancestors, engrained fragments of ancient stories.