Artcore Gallery visited Haarlem Studios in Wirksworth. Fascinated by the building we went through it history with the two studios directors: Geoff Litherland and Olivia Punnett. We discovered that thought to be the Roman Town of Lutudarum, Wirksworth was already well known around the world as a thriving lead mining centre and later a key quarrying town. Haarlem Mill was constructed in 1777 by Richard Arkwright producing the ubiquitous red tape used for legal documents. It is considered to be the first coal powered mill.
You can still feel a strong sense of place that exists at Haarlem Artspace as well a unique environment where artists and creatives can flourish.
Haarlem Studios is part of Artcore monthly visit to local experimental exhibition and artists space.
For this special occasion we did a studio visit with the artist Conor Hurford, who has exhibited at Artcore in February 2018.
Conor’s work centres on ideas regarding ruin; in form, and in the duration of making. He seeks to play with the idea of the natural and unnatural, through proposing forms which could have been eroded and subtracted by man and nature. He often carves directly into the shapes he casts, as well as into more organic sources such as stone.
As well as carving cast forms, Conor leave others intact, eluding to natural fossilisation, caused alternatively by our industrial processes. Material exploration continues to push these ideas, in exciting and interesting ways.
