Hearts of darkness
Back in 2020, 26 writers from Dark Angels' sister organisation, 26, undertook a collaborative project with Eames Fine Art, a gallery based in Bermondsey. Eames specialise in original prints, and have a stable of artists.
The idea of the project was for artists to be paired with writers, and complete both a new work of art and a written response to the artwork, both around the brief of finding their ‘common place’.
One of these collaborations was between Martin Lee, and the Midlands based print maker, Jason Hicklin. Jason was very taken indeed with the project, and it made him think that he’d like to work more closely with writers in future.
So since then, in 2022, 2023 and now in 2024, Martin, along with Neil Baker, Therese Kieran and Elen Lewis, have contributed a poem or prose poem each to one of Jason’s annual box sets, which are sold in a very limited edition by Eames, and launched each November during a lovely, convivial evening with art collectors and other artists.
The last two collections have both featured a sequence of prints that Jason has made as part of his long walks along the Thames. The last of these features walks along the Thames estuary, which has resulted in a set of prints featuring big, often brooding skies and marshy landscapes. As part of this, Jason was keen that the writers also re-read the first three pages of Heart of Darkness, where Conrad sets the opening of his novella. So all of us were triangulating between Jason’s work, Conrad’s depiction of the estuary, and our own response to it all. A truly fascinating brief.
To give you a feel for Jason’s work, we have reproduced one of the prints from the box set below. This one especially caught Martin’s attention, because The London Stone (which marks the official point where the river meets the sea) is a lonely obelisk in stark contrast to the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf which featured prominently in last year’s collection.
Jason Hicklin’s print of The London Stone
If you’d like to see more of Jason’s work, this link takes you to his website.
What the river says
Somewhere under this low horizon,
this brooding gloom burnished
by untainted light, its mouth opens
to the sea and the river meets
its tranquil death.
It brings stories waiting to be found,
in creeks and slips of mud and memory;
having carried them to us,
it calls on us to tell them.
We can’t hear, but we must listen.
We can’t see, but we must look.
We don’t have time, but can we learn to wait?
What needs to be spoken
lies far beyond words.
What we have done
is not who we are.
This is what the river says.
by Neil Baker