Hull has always been susceptible to floods. Whilst its extensive waterways have been the foundation of its success as one of the country’s most significant ports, they also remain the city’s main vulnerability. In 2007, a month’s rainfall fell in a single day and overwhelmed drainage networks, impacting 10,000 properties – including my grandparents’ home. Just six years later, another 1,100 properties and 7,000 hectares of land flooded after the largest ever recorded tidal surge. And these events are becoming a more imminent, and recurrent, threat. Over the next 100 years, the River Humber is expected to rise by up to 1.3m, and the increase in extreme weather events could threaten 100,000 properties. As the government’s HECC 2023 report testifies, multiple socially vulnerable groups are disproportionately affected by flooding.
Jack Pell draws on these elements of Hull’s watery history, and its future, in his first institutional solo exhibition Byland’s Super Saga, open at Humber Street Gallery until 7 July 2024. Even the title emphasises the city’s relationship to water, with the artist telling Hull News, that ‘“Byland”, a word originating in Old Norse, describes an area surrounded by water, which I feel is a fitting word to describe Humberside.’ The Hull-born artist also showcases a research-led, interdisciplinary approach to championing working-class experiences. Centuries-old folk tales collide with contemporary challenges surrounding industrial heritage and the preservation of natural landscapes in a fantastical hybrid of folklore, popular culture and local – often forgotten – histories.
Walking into the exhibition is a little like stepping onto a carousel: objects positioned around the outside of the room encircle a central installation – a large screen suspended from the ceiling displaying a video of the Humber – encouraging circular movement around the space. Pell evokes the fairground in reference to Hull Fair, an integral part of the city’s cultural history since 1278. This motif continues across the installations: neon LED’s illuminate 3D-printed sculptures of Hull’s cast-iron bridges; a stylised sea monster snakes around a pencil in a way reminiscent of a helter-skelter. Familiar iconography contrasts with the bizarre and unsettling: sketches of fantastical, almost demonic creatures; two faceless, puppet-esque shapes; a moving-image microorganism positioned against the backdrop of a canal.
The visitor’s first encounter is with a glass display case containing volumes of East Yorkshire’s history as well as several sketchbooks, evidencing Pell’s research-led practice. In the sketchbooks, an aqua-blue monkey plays a dog as though it is bagpipes, a fox preaches a sermon to disinterested geese, a yellow chicken stares questioningly over one shoulder at the viewer. There is a practised playfulness – comedic pops of colour in contrast to the historical artefacts beside them. Studies for the nearby film installation, ‘Fleet’ (2024), the sketches are inspired by Beverley Minster’s misericords. These hinged wooden seats acted as perches during prayer, and carvings tended to feature subversive artwork. By maintaining the humour of the original carvings but re-energising them in bright, joyous colours, Pell disrupts the separation of past and present.
Epochs continue to collide in a series of six shoebox-sized sculptures depicting Hull’s cast-iron bridges, including two now-demolished structures. To those familiar with the area, these 3D models are instantly recognisable, though reconceptualised with vibrant automotive paint and LEDs. Pell transforms the rigidity and coldness of these industrial structures to resemble customised cars with underglow lighting. Here, the familiarity and knowledge of one’s hometown – even of the very structures beneath our feet – is presented as in a state of flux. Pinned on the adjacent wall, pages in faded print resemble photocopies of an old manuscript. This is another trickery: the ‘Canal Gospels’ do not exist, and the maps and illustrative plates presented on their pages are drawn by the artist. It is a critical commentary on historical documentation, on the conflict between the significance of preserved archival materials and the inherent subjectivity of record-keeping.
In the centre of the room, another conflict plays out in the dialogue between the two puppet-like figures of ‘Wyke’ and ‘Grim’ (both 2024), draped either side of the footage of the river. The grouping’s placement is deliberate: the central screen is positioned so visitors face the real Humber less than a quarter of a mile away. The multi-dimensional installation juxtaposes the physicality of these characters against the river’s flat canvas, and their suspension positions them closer to the marionette than the scarecrow. The puppet, in the words of American literary critic Kenneth Gross, is ‘barely human in form, like a monster or a mistake’, a perfect description of these two examples’ grotesque yet compelling appearances. Both are crafted from found materials – tarpaulin; a camouflage jacket; bulrushes; a frayed length of climbing rope – in an unnerving collision of local flora and human-made detritus. Their names nod to their heritage, the former taken from Wyke Upon Hull, the name replaced with Kingston Upon Hull when it received its first royal charter in 1299, and the latter from Grimsby, claimed to have been founded by another Grim, a Danish fisherman. The centuries-long rivalry between the two ports is evinced by the figures’ comedic repartee, their voices echoing about the room.
Byland’s Super Saga is a collective history, but also a personal one. In film installation ‘Fleet’, the interspersal of animation with footage of the local waterways helps tell a story of class division and industrial legacies. Its narrator is the ‘Erudite Blob’, a collective, blue-bodied microorganism with diamond-shaped faces that resemble both brooches and beaks. At intervals, a self-reflexive, metafictional commentary invades its narration to comment on Pell’s thematic ambitions and personal life: places he’s lived or visited; the friends who once resided near him; the standout occasions of his memory. Throughout, the voice vibrates, as though its echo has been overlaid upon it, to become the sound of the collective: an auditory metaphor for the communities Pell describes. Images of the waterways – a recurrent, white-sailed model boat; a swan plucking at reeds; a single monarch butterfly fleeing a cluster of leaves – are juxtaposed with animated intrusions in which a sea monster rises onto the screen. The animated creature is joined by Sir Dagonet, a man or monster, or something in-between, whose name recalls the foolish knight from Arthurian legend. The oscillation between mundane, sometimes candid moments, and the unnerving invasion of the Erudite Blob and other fantastical creatures offers disorientating shifts in tone that compel repeat viewing.
Pell turns back to the threat of floods ‘as Hull expands’ towards the end of ‘Fleet’, a theme present also in previous works, including ‘Deep Sea Graffiti’ (2021), made during his participation on Tetley’s Associate Artists’ Programme. ‘Fleet’s warning concludes with a sombre, almost ominous finality: ‘That’s it.’ Yet it is far from over. The exhibition, like the histories Pell portrays, is a changeable and evolving space. At the far end of the room is a drawing station, where postcards headed with suggestions of what to commit to paper prompt memories connected to Hull. These can be taken home or stuck to the gallery wall. As my visit concluded on the exhibition’s opening day, there were already fourteen completed postcards. By its end, the space will become an embodiment of the social histories Pell strives to reflect: the unification of personal remembrance within a wider community.
Jack Pell: Byland’s Super Saga is at Humber Street Gallery, Hull, 3 May – 7 July 2024.
Megan Jones is a writer and PhD student from East Yorkshire.
This review is supported by Humber Street Gallery.
Published 01.06.2024 by Benjamin Barra in Reviews
1,314 words