Filey-based Jane Poulton was an artist in residence at Liverpool’s two cathedrals during the city’s prestigious Capital of Culture celebrations. Together with her colleague Lin Holland, she created a series of installations that celebrated the life of the buildings and their communities. This month she gives a talk in Scarborough on her work.

Jane Poulton writes:
Liverpool's two cathedrals are vital to the identity and life-blood of the city, and the duration of the residency allowed us to approach an understanding of the relevance of these iconic buildings to the city and to the people who use them.

We spent our first weeks observing the religious rituals and daily life of the two cathedrals. We looked at their presence in the city from spiritual, secular, political and cultural perspectives, and spent time with people who work in them and visit them. Our aim was to create work that was sensitive to the fabric and architecture of the cathedrals, and to their purpose.

Our collaborative work linking the two cathedrals, Ring of Roses and Paper Falls On Stone, involved international delegates to The Big Hope, a youth congress, and local elders. Together they made hundreds of paper flowers and thousands of petals. We chose to work with the flower motif because of its universal symbolic associations with peace and beauty, and because of its particular relevance in faith-based iconography. Making paper flowers is an almost-forgotten craft skill that several participants remembered from their younger days.

For the opening ceremony of The Big Hope at the Metropolitan Cathedral, we placed the petals in a deep drift, like a welcoming garland, around the first step of the circular Sanctuary. The number of flowers grew during the week to more than three hundred and for the closing service at Liverpool Cathedral these were arranged on the floor of the Baptistery to form the word HOPE. At the end of the service the ten thousand petals were dropped from the Corona Gallery to fall amongst the unsuspecting congregation, 174 feet below; a shimmering cloud of colour in the dark, neo-Gothic interior of the cathedral. The response to this event was a spontaneous uproar of celebration – a fitting end to an intense and thought-provoking week.

Another work, Two Seas: High Water, is a film of the two seas that define the east and west coasts of Britain; the North Sea and the Irish Sea. It was projected on to the High Altar of the Metropolitan Cathedral in a continuous loop during the Cathedral's opening hours. The work was filmed at Filey on the east coast and Hilbre Island off the west coast. Both seas were filmed as a static, ‘single shot' that replicates the real-time experience of looking out to sea. The work explores the physical and spiritual changes brought about by watching the waves; a stillness of the body, the quieting of discursive thought, a sense of something greater than ourselves. 

Both seas were filmed at high tide. The particular significance of ‘high water' is that it is the vital moment of outward and homecoming journeys – the beginning and ending of adventure, pilgrimage and endeavour.

An artist’s residency is a unique collaboration; the relationship between the artist and the host venue is key to the development of the work. I approached the residency with no preconceived ideas. My only expectation was that the experience of being in those two buildings would influence my thinking and my approach. Every aspect of ‘cathedral life’ was potential raw material for ideas: the architecture, the liturgy, the rituals – the purpose and meaning of the buildings to the people who use them.

The final body of work was made not for the cathedrals, but because of them. The outcome was almost inevitable.

Creating Spaces, a talk by Jane Poulton together with Rachel Howfield, is on 22 June at Woodend Creative Workspace. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for details