Neogeographies
Exhibition by Maker Member, Helen Snell
Riverside Gallery | 25 January - 1 March 2020
James Cook’s official artists recorded some of the first encounters between Europeans and indigenous peoples with varying degrees of objectivity. Helen Snell’s work is a response to the extraordinary drawings, paintings and prints that documented Cook’s three voyages, notably the remarkable works by Sydney Parkinson, William Hodges and John Webber. On closer inspection, these seductive images often reveal a darker more disturbing subtext.
Helen has sought to reinterpret and reframe the Cook narrative in order to challenge notions of home, nationality, identity and freedom of movement. The exhibition raises questions about the legacy of European imperialism, and how we view and review these images in the light of geopolitics, racial equality, cultural appropriation and the destruction of our natural world.
Helen has been working closely with curators from The Box, Plymouth, The Captain Cook Memorial Museum Whitby, Whitby Museum and The Museum of Whitby Jet.
The Box, Plymouth provided Helen with access to first edition volumes of Cook’s voyages and other eighteenth century works in its historically important Cottonian Collection.
The many original works in the Captain Cook Memorial Museum collection have also been a rich source of inspiration, including a complete set of coloured plates from Sir Joseph Bank’s Florilegium, a recent bequest to the Museum library.
A sailing residency around the Outer Hebrides with Sail Britain and An Lanntair Arts Centre, Stornoway in 2018 provided some of the locations for the photoshoots.
This exhibition first opened in July 2019 at The Captain Cook Memorial Museum, featuring bespoke additions to the historic interiors, produced through laser cutting and water jet cutting. The museum itself is situated in the original house in Grape Lane in Whitby where the young James Cook was apprenticed to Master Seaman John Walker, and where he learnt the art of seafaring along the treacherous North East Coast.
Other works, costumes, jewellery and props have in turn been used to create a series of staged photographs.
The work Appropriation Scissors is the result of Helen’s collaboration with Rebecca Tucker, an award winning jeweller and silversmith who trained in Birmingham's jewellery quarter. She specialises in the making of Whitby jet jewellery and ornaments, and is a passionate researcher of the gemstone's history. She is also curator at the new Museum of Whitby Jet.
For further information about Helen’s work please visit: