Bummock: Tennyson Research Centre

As artists, we embrace materiality and the unknown. In this way, the ‘controlled rummage’ method bypasses the catalogue through mutually beneficial ways of accessing unseen material, facilitating original research, and supporting archivists to re-engage with collections.

This was the 2nd Bummock project, after the Lace Archive, Nottingham. We were joined by artist-researcher, Sarah Bennett for this project. Commonly the researcher uses the archive’s catalogue to narrow their study material, the digitised archive means this can happen remotely.

The three artists embrace materiality and the unknown. In this way, the ‘controlled rummage’ method bypasses the catalogue through mutually beneficial ways of accessing unseen material, facilitating original research, and supporting archivists to re-engage with collections.
 

 
The controlled rummage is a way to identify the yet-to-be-appreciated parts of an archive. Significantly the TRC is a family archive, not just for the poet. The most captivating item was Hallam Tennyson’s tiny childhood notebooks, including notes, sums and chess problems.

In these two small notebooks containing drawings by Hallam Tennyson as a child, some content relates to the journeys taken to France and Germany in 1864, determining that Hallam worked on the books when he was around 12 years old.

These woodblock prints replicate pages from the notebooks as accurately as possible, yet diverge in multiple ways: through shifting the size more akin to an adult hand than a child’s; human error; the mirroring effect, paper, ink and flaws in the print process.

This practice-research translated into  deductive processes of reasoning through careful observation, reading, the visual analysis of the archival material and  processes of iterative 'making' through the woodblock printing processes.

As an early aspect of the Action Research phase, three large-scale photographic artworks were sited in the village of Waddington in the Summer of 2019. This allowed a non-gallery going audience to encounter the project.

Exhibitions were held at the Natural World Centre at Whisby and The Hub: A National Centre for Craft and Design in Sleaford. These served as a means to test the artist outcomes, glean feedback from visitors and generate interest in the Tennyson Research Centre.

At The Hub, insight was given to visitors into the making process behind the artworks by displaying chisels, sharpening tools and paper, alongside a completed woodblock and print. This left speculative space for the process and conditions Hallam was in to create his notebooks.

At The Collection, Lincoln archival objects used as research starting points were shown with the new artworks. Hallam’s notebooks were shown publicly for the first time beside the film and my woodblocks and prints, making the scale and materiality palpable.

The woodblocks were shown in a bespoke cabinet alongside a curatorial decision to mirror the order of the prints. The materiality of the notebooks is what drew me to them initially; my material process is what I hope will lead to future research for the wider Tennyson family.

Titles of all the prints were based on Alfred Tennyson’s poetry. Hark! The Dogs Howl was based on the poem of the same name offering wider connections between son and father but also through a curatorial decision to also show Pre-Raphaelite works based on his poems.

A picture of the life of this Victorian schoolboy emerged. The approach of close looking and making invited speculation in contrast to mere fact. The richness contained in the notebooks offered an excellent means of understanding the individual but also a sense of the period.