Inspired by Stonehenge and Its World

Interesting online discussion from the British Museum looking at how Stonehenge has inspired artists in the past and now.

Chaired by David Dawson of Salisbury Museum the event brought together another curator, Harriet Still from Wessex Museums and two contemporary artists, Rose Ferraby and Jeremy Deller to discuss how the monument has provided inspiration. The discussion got philosophical at times.

Still mainly talked about Thomas Hardy and Tess of the D’Urbervilles including how he was an amateur archaeologist and had a standing stone in his garden. She also looked at how the stone circle has appeared in other literature and 19th century painting including Turner.

Ferraby is interested in how archaeologists see and imagine the world and how this can be represented in museums. She had been commissioned by the British Museum to produce a piece on Seahenge for the current exhibition and she talked us through her creative process for this. I was interested to hear her mention Piper and Ravilious as inspirations for it.

Finally Deller, a Turner Prize winner in 2204, talked about how Stonehenge is a blank canvas on which people project their ideas. He showed us pieces he made for a 2019 exhibition “Wiltshire before Christ” and a wonderful, fun, inflatable reproduction of the stones which he toured around the country as part of the Cultural Olympian and encouraged people to use it like a bouncy castle.

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