Aggregate: Glittery stumbles around Blackhill Quarry with Edna Lumb in hand

Fritha Jenkins

In this conversation I extend research which first took shape in the exhibition, Aggregate: Fritha Jenkins and Edna Lumb, curated by Catrionia McCara at Leeds Arts University in 2018. Aggregate constituted an experimental curation open to the public in a constant state of flux. The show explored potential intersections between industrial sites and quarries, feminism, queer sexualities and northern industrial archeology. Using the metaphor of aggregate, stories were cut from the quarried waste glitter rocks brought back into the gallery, performative field trips to quarries painted by Lumb accumulated across the space as video projection, conversations unfolded and folded back into the work, and fragments of archived Lumb communications with industrial site owners, interviews and personal letters tumbled together to propose alternative stoney narratives.

5 years on, for Rocky Futures conversation, I used a similar methodology. The conversation took place on the Thames foreshore, as a means to open up alternative ecologies of the site and connections to the quarry. Stumbling around, under, and through, Lumbs archive material (including her interests in quarrying, feminism and industrial archeology), glittering qualities of the waste material of Blackhill quarry stone, queer quarryings, sandy resource fullness and neurodivergent rocky instabilities, the conversation will speculate upon and propose gritty new ways of aggregating.

With thanks to Keziah Hodgson who performed in the work.