Tina Dempsey and Tracy Hill’s collaborative exhibition, Grounding, was conceived as a twelve-month research and development project. As The Grundy describe it, the project aimed to ‘explore the slow act of walking, thinking, observing, and making, leading to creative responses and new ways of considering place’. Focusing on the Fylde coast in and around Blackpool, this is Dempsey and Hill’s first collaboration, a show in and for the locality which also paints a thought-provoking picture of Blackpool for visitors, encouraging us to journey slowly amongst our coasts and natural environments.
On her website, Dempsey describes her work as beginning with walking: ‘meandering along beaches, clambering over rocks, wandering through woodland, anywhere that nurtures her relationship with nature, absorbing the landscape on foot. During these wanderings, data is gathered; colour, sound, pattern, activity, artefacts, all of which gently build layered, sensory maps of the places she explores.’
On her own site, Hill proposes that ‘to reconnect with place we must first reconnect and understand the experience, knowledge and memory of these physical encounters’. She describes her practice as situated ‘between aesthetic and digital worlds, with the walking body acting as a conduit, connecting traditional beliefs and customs, rhythms and vibrations’.
I arrive in Blackpool on a bleak winter’s day, but the Grundy is ready to welcome me with an energetic cacophony of colour. The Annual Open Exhibition and the Schools Exhibition are in full swing. Their curation is gloriously busy and bold; a celebratory gesture on behalf of every one of the contributing artists. I cannot help but be drawn in, buzzing, to the creative mêlée. Already I am appreciating the Grundy’s canny winter programming strategy of turning inwards to luxuriate in the local, when Blackpool’s seasonal tide of visitors is largely absent and the community can blossom in its own imaginative spaces and places.
But this colourful encounter is not why I am here today. I turn towards Gallery Four, where the creative pace immediately changes. The contrasting atmosphere envelopes me with a sense of calm. I relax. I breathe. My shoulders release their tension. I feel light on my feet, suspended amongst the slow, rhythmic sound of waves on the beach and the clack of pebbles being drawn back out to sea, emitting from a video installation in the far corner.
Grounding is like opening a great big coastal sketchbook and stepping in; a linked series of thoughtful, multisensory vignettes, rippling with pattern and texture. These take many forms and exhibit the artists’ broad yet connected practices: early stage sketches and photography, notes and scavenged ephemera are displayed in glass cases; a series of soil samples extrapolated into their various components using chromatography; small abstract collages; a video installation; and examples of drawing, painting and printmaking.
The pace is unhurried and the presentation meticulously structured, but with a good deal of action built in. I immediately enjoy the blurred relationship between artefacts and artworks – Are we in a museum or a gallery? – accentuated by the careful arrangement of items in glass cases and Dempsey’s use of heritage materials: typewritten notes about coastal sounds on old, yellowed, headed paper from a seafront business, detailed sketches on discarded book covers and the stumps of recycled notebooks. Historic sepia postcards of huge storm waves breaking on the promenade pay homage to Blackpool’s visitor economy; they highlight the power of the waves upon our fragile coastlines, but also the power of the ebb and flow of people. Small, coastal watercolours from the Grundy’s permanent collection slide subtly and very naturally into the presentation, inviting you to visit your attention on their faraway beaches and bygone summer times. There is a definite joy and playfulness to be found amongst the very structured layout of the items in the cases. I discover that some of the delicate ‘paper’ holding Hill’s intricate drawings is an experimental paper grown from bacteria, a quiet commitment to the science of creating innovative, sustainable materials.
I am led clockwise by a stream of hand-painted lettering, low on the wall, describing the many actions, movements and reciprocal gestures which connect the artists to this coast. It brings me to ‘Erde’ (2023), a series of soil chromatography samples, wall-mounted and framed in perspex. There is no labelling and fortunately, thanks to my own academic background, I understand what these portray, and they sweep me back and forth in time – an example of earth’s ancient, dynamic geology brought to life.
I arrive at ‘Boulder Clay’ (2024), the first of Dempsey’s five collages, a group of vibrant, pint-sized abstract landscapes, a re-working of familiar forms and processes. Dempsey told me that she recently downsized her living arrangements to a caravan for a while, so I can understand the necessity of working at a smaller scale, but it is clear from Dempsey’s enthusiasm that the practice of packaging ideas into small, neat parcels has become creatively rewarding for her. To me it seems like a way of controlling the pace, and ordering and processing her thoughts.
The exhibition’s soundtrack emits from ‘Reuma’ (2024), a video installation propped on the floor in a corner; perfect, un-fussy gallery placement encouraging me to look down at the spume line as if I am stepping onto the beach. Mirrored videos accentuate the coast’s rhythmic breathing, their mischievous symmetry conjuring fantastical, moth-like creatures poised momentarily in my mind’s eye, shivering and fluttering with a life of their own. The film again washes me backwards and forwards in time, named for the ancient Greek concept of Reuma, or the ‘moods’ of the tides in the context of the lunar cycles.
I am mesmerised for a while by the sea foam pulsing upward between gaps in the rock armour. Gaps are just as important as solid objects here – they represent space for change, for movement, for growth and habitats, and room for us to exercise our imagination. Hill explores this idea further in ‘Natural Frequency’ (2024), a curved, sculptural artist book paying close attention to these spaces. She illustrates the aforementioned gaps deftly, repeatedly, exploring the nature and feel of each space using carbon ink overlayed with sharp, delicate detail from the surrounding rocks. Enclosed in a glass case and held with fishing weights, ‘Natural Frequency’ is a pinning-down of the ephemeral, capturing a single moment in time for us to inspect in detail.
A site-responsive installation, Hill’s ‘In the Balance’ (2025) is a bold translation of sonic scavenging into hand printed wall sculpture. The work itself is made up of long strips of intricate wood block printing on Japanese Kozo paper, illustrating abstractly the resonance traces Hill has collected. Draped the full length of the wall in the loose form of a soundwave, her rich yet delicate hand drawn prints are a show of balance, flow and strength, the strips of printed paper allowed to run free along the wall before coming together to be collectively held by their own friction against pins on the wall. Revisiting the glass case in the centre of the room equips me with images of soundwaves gathered from beneath the pier, and I return to ‘In the Balance’ and examine it again. There are no headphones or other paraphernalia to distract me, and I revel in the opportunity to get up close to this unexpectedly lush visual treatment of noise, with the sound of the sea playing to me from the film screen.
Circle the gallery once, and you explore a fascinating collection of connected exhibits. Repeat the circuit, and the works start to fully coalesce and enter into a reciprocal dialogue. Like the artists, you walk, and walk, and become drawn further into the detail as you do so. Interpretation is intentionally minimal and links between items are not always immediately apparent. In my capacity as reviewer I was fortunate to enjoy an accompanied visit with Dempsey, so I do wonder how much of this detail I would have gathered had I visited solo. Nevertheless, there is a delicious gratification in slowing down and making connection after connection yourself, gradually building up your own patterns and rhythms as you navigate the room a few times.
In terms of rural and environmental practice some of these methods are not new, but the context here is everything. The urban setting challenges popular perceptions of coastal Blackpool as – and I employ the cliché with great hesitancy – ‘gritty’. Grounding demonstrates that Blackpool’s coast is fascinating and delicate if you slow down and look a bit more carefully; that nature is still in charge, that the place harbours hidden things of huge value. Dempsey and Hill’s work draws out details of life, beauty, colour, rhythm, heritage, themes of renewal, and patterns from which we can build and learn. They reference the climate crisis but with a tender, subtle approach. Their work does not preach; it beckons, enthrals and reframes, allowing you to walk away and decide on your own terms what action – if any – you will take.
This exhibition is part of the Grundy’s Turning Point programme, commissioning artists with ‘definitive ideas and trajectory who need solo opportunities to catalyse a step up in their practice and profile’, curator Paulette Brien explains. During current lean times it is refreshing – and, indeed, essential – that these opportunities for supported, self-directed creative exploration still exist; that socially and environmentally engaged artists who build sustained relationships with communities and organisations are rewarded with development time and profile-building. This is how it should be.
Brien says she makes a point of circling back to artists with whom she’s worked before. This framework allows the artists space to explore and develop their practices over longer periods before reconnecting with the gallery. Her approach has facilitated the convergence and coalescence of Dempsey and Hill at a time when their practices intertwine well, and I get the feeling that she has also found it a pleasure to slow down and take a walk with these two. Their work brims with a relaxed, companionable, collaborative feel, as if they are perfectly comfortable making separate work for a while then coming back together loosely and easily to share and ruminate, finding touchpoints between their practices as they go. There is very little ego in the room. I get a strong sense of balance, and a feeling that they are welcoming Nature as a co-creator.
It is intensely satisfying and encouraging to experience Blackpool’s coastal environment treated not with the unforgiving harrow of the beach tractor or the lazy stereotyping of popular media, but with delicacy, sensitivity, and the gentle, innovative, persistent curiosity established by this unique collaboration.
Tina Dempsey and Tracy Hill: Grounding, The Grundy, Blackpool, 18 January – 8 March 2025.
Anne Waggot Knott is an artist, geographer and creative consultant working across northern England and southern Scotland.
This review is supported by The Grundy.
Published 04.03.2025 by Jazmine Linklater in Reviews
1,862 words
