This feature describes Gordon MacLellan’s work for Buxton Museum during the 2020 lockdown.
Have you ever wandered around a museum and been drawn to a specific artefact? Perhaps that object spoke to you from across the ages? You may even have heard its voice in your head?
This is just one of the fascinating questions asked by local artist and storyteller Gordon MacLellan, a.k.a. Creeping Toad, as part of his response to the Arts Council’s Emergency Response Fund, secured by Buxton Museum and Art Gallery during the first lockdown. Gordon is a long-time collaborator with the museum; forever coming up with new and inventive ways to interpret the collections and running workshops for the younger visitors. Like the other artists in the project, Gordon was challenged to produce a piece of work whilst the place was closed to the public. He created several.
The museum artefact Gordon gave a voice to was a Greenlandic tupilak figure, described in the original feature as a sperm whale-tooth carving shown in the museum’s Between Two Worlds exhibition. In Greenlandic traditions, a tupilak could be made in secret and sent against an enemy; carved figures are artistic representations of these beings. Nuuk Art Museum explains more about the tradition. This fuelled Gordon’s imagination: “Made from discarded flesh, bones and skin, original Tupilak have apparently never been seen by people outside of those indigenous cultures and are bound around with stories of anger and revenge. I was captivated”.
Gordon collaborated with filmmaker Aidan Rhode, who directed and edited the film, with voices from museum staff.
Like many of us during the first lockdown, Gordon found time to stroll through the countryside and reconnect with the natural world, or in his words: “One of the positive things about this strange summer has been a rediscovery of local landscapes, with people taking the time to walk half-forgotten paths, to find lost corners of just down the street or up the road. We have remembered that home territories hold their own delights”.
With the support of the Arts Council, Gordon and Aidan also made other films. Gordon’s long-standing love for mystical creatures is explored in Earth Trolls and a reverence of water in As Long As Waters Run and Pond Ripples. There is even a detour into rodents in response to a beautiful carved soapstone lemming in the Museum Collection.
The 2020 feature linked to these films and poems:
Tupilak: youtu.be/wW0rzw8h83E
As Long As Waters Run: youtu.be/sXl8LStyW-o
Earth Trolls: youtu.be/S-XtWbAC3bQ
Pond Ripples: youtu.be/6xLPhiosBfg
Between 2 Worlds, telling stories: youtu.be/TVO5Z3e7DTg
You can also read more about Gordon’s work with the museum as well his other projects in his blog here and you can also follow him Facebook and Twitter.
Buxton Museum and Art Gallery has since moved to a temporary home next to Buxton Library.
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