A clear, bright day, the sky full of lapwings, curlew and skylark. The lapwings ‘peewit’ as they swoop and dive. Along Edge Lane to Reaps Cross, looking over towards Widdop and northwards. Wide open space on the tops, still some snow on the dark heather moorland and pale blonde, late winter grass. Bitterly cold.
After the snow, murky, misty, damp day, the air full of flies, the swallows have arrived and are flying low. The curlews calling as they fly over, the legend of the seven whistlers; six unidentified birds were said to call constantly during their search for a seventh.
Deer barking in the woods and running alongside me, high up. I stop at the edge, still, while they watch, then quietly move off. The field silent with tracks.
Jo Gorner works primarily in editioned prints on paper, and drawing. Her practice starts in notebooks with drawing, writing and observations from walking. The controlled, painstaking process of print, the act of making the final work, becomes a way of ‘going to the place’.
The central pivot of Jo’s work is emotion and memory held within a language of place, landscape and the mapping of intimate geographical details. A new landscape is created as a reflection of herself within a place, reframing the landscape to better understand herself within it.
The landscape for Jo is a sentient place, an interface and a balancing system for self. The work contains parallel preoccupations where explorations co exist.
Diminish is a series which captures an energetic rushing of breath, the fine tension of quietly observing and waiting as life ebbs.
Scission and Incise emerged from ‘Fieldworks’, a commission to create a land art work for a ten acre field in the South Pennines. The work reflects the rhythm of the land threaded through with silent tracks, underground streams and the pattern of growth.