FLORIAN HOULKER

Shaft: (1). A long narrow typically long vertical hole giving access to a mine, accommodating a lift. (2). Informal harsh or unfair treatment. (3). A long narrow part or section forming the handle of a tool or club. (4). A long cylindrical rotating rod for the transmission of motive power in a machine. (5). vulgar slang A man's Penis (6). A witty, wounding or provoking remark. (7). To treat harshly or unfairly.

Derivatives: Shafted (Adjective).

'Shafted' is a sculptural installation which has derived from my investigations in the local post-industrial landscape in East-Lancashire throughout lock-down. Using the allotted hour for exercise, I cycled to the local areas which used to be collieries. One of the interesting and mainly accessible pits was Martholme. I started to go off the paths and into the undergrowth, to explore this site, it was freedom from the restrictions of being home-bound, exploring these relics of the ruin; imagining what these places were like as a hive of industry, busy, noisy, but now like everything else in the world, quiet and forgotten.

Through the explorations I could see the bricked foundations of the structures which housed the mining equipment, and the train sidings for the carriages of coal, these parts were easy to see, unlike the shaft itself; which had been capped off and back filled with the slag heaps from the side of the colliery, then a final capping of the shaft with a webbing of girders and concrete.

As I was exploring the undergrowth I kept coming across the Accrington Nori bricks, which were made up the road next to another colliery. I started to collect these bricks as there was different shapes, forms and internal identities of bricks; such as lettering and makers marks which are a cursor to their time of creation. I travelled back and forth for a couple of weeks, reclaiming the bricks by searching and exploring the undergrowth.

Returning to the studio, I sought to cast the bricks in terracotta slip, another common quarried substrate, to imagine the illusive and hidden shaft which was fenced off and impenetrable due to the trees growing over it. The repetitive process of making is similar to the repetitive work of industry, giving a purpose, a skill, a narrative to the local post-industrial landscape.

The process of firing the bricks seemed irresponsible, as I didn't want to emit more carbon in to the atmosphere, as seeing these spaces as regenerative sites of potential, I realised that the cast terracotta in its raw form did exactly what I wanted it to do as an object; which was to hold a form, a state of non-permanence, a state of entropy.

I sprayed the bricks black, a reference to the charred bricks of the furnaces and soot also the graffiti which is prominent at the post industrial landscape. I crushed the coal to destroy it so that it couldn't be used, then pored in to the shaft, an action of retuning, restoring and reverting actions, away from the shafted position we're in with our climate, an action of fettling it.