Judith Tucker and Harriet Tarlo
Hideaway: poetry and painting from the salt marsh
Hideaway: painting and poetry from the saltmarsh the exhibition which is part of our ACE funded project is at
2021 Visual Arts Centre 2 April to 18 June 2022
Hideaway has been supported by Arts Council England.
The Humberston Fitties is a historic area of holiday cottages and dwellings just west of Cleethorpes promenade in Northern Lincolnshire. Declared a conservation area in 1996; the area has been in use as a holiday resort since the 1920s.
There are over 320 chalets, and the organic development of the site on the former salt-marsh area along the Humber Estuary, has led to a wide variety of distinctive buildings built on small adjacent plots, from ramshackle shacks to traditional holiday chalets and architect designed modern constructions.
This exhibition is a collaboration between painter Judith Tucker and poet Harriet Tarlo, and documents this unique location and its surrounding landscape, and is accompanied by photographs gathered from the artists’ interaction with the residents and guests. ‘Hideaway: poetry and painting from the salt marsh’ includes two separate groupings of works: ’Night Fitties’, showing the buildings at a changing time of day, and ‘Dark marsh’, focussing on the plants and vegetation found on the adjacent Tetney Marshes - both vulnerable to sea level rise, but also helping protect the land from it.
The results are a series of stunning figurative paintings, accompanied by evocative poems, which include names of the chalets from all eras, and the voices and memories of residents of the Humberston Fitties, old and young.
Harriet Tarlo reads two sets of poems here. Recordings by Kitty Turner.
