‘wandering sailor’ is a short film made during my year long residency at spudWORKS in Sway, New Forest, as part of SPUD’s Graduate Launchpad programme.
It follows the winding journey of a sailor, a queer archetype, waking up in the New Forest, an uncertain and unfamiliar terrain, and how the sailor then finds their way, using unconventional methods of navigation:
a ‘telescope’ made out of rolled up cardboard covered with individual chocolate wrappers, an eye to see through
a paper hat, folded as a child would, a sense memory hanging in the balance, a cloud drifts across the sun and it changes our mood
Gorse, flowers pressed and laid out in the shape of an arrow, an individual flower drifting across a puddle on the heath, a guide to north and south, to go with the wind.
Along this journey, the sailor begins to notice a code within the language of the forest, seeing ‘accidental’ X’s in brambles and sticks.
An installation video of the film on show during our group exhibition ‘Possibilities, Gaps, Overlaps’ at spudWORKS can be found here: Instagram
It is part of a larger body of work around the idea of ‘queer archetypes’, the narrative of a Sailor being one of these.
I am interested in human connection to place and community, through folklore, superstitions, sayings, and the ‘pastoral’ in literature.
Inspired by queer representations of sailors in old photographs, paintings, and films, along with visual research of Sailor’s clothing and Flags through online archives.
These threads of inspiration join the past with today through a visual fairy tale.
The Sailor’s objects connect to the New Forest through a narrative imbued with folklore and plants such as Gorse (a guide between North and South by its coconut smell) and Brambles (the subject of many superstitions).
