Scientific Rambles

Iain Davidson

Ailsa Holland

Martyn Stonehouse

Becca Smith

Friday 5^th March to 20^th March Wednesday- Saturday 10am-4pm and Mondays and Tuesday by appointment.

Exhibition launch party Saturday 8^th March 5pm-7pm

Silk Museum, Park Lane, Macclesfield.

An exhibition of work by four artist-antiquarians, inspired by the archaeology, cartography and storytelling from our landscape of the three shires, interwoven with the Victorian text 'Scientific Rambles Around Macclesfield' by J. D. Sainter

The exhibition includes poetry, sound, assemblage pieces, painting and textiles, based on the four artists' individual and joint rambles around Macclesfield, from the high and lonely Bullstones to the ancient copper mines of Engine Vein, tracing the Salt Ways, honouring the glorious Bridestones, telling stories of ghosts and goddesses of Macclesfield Forest and exploring the secret depths of Danes Moss

About the artists:

Iain Davidson is a multi-disciplinary artist with a printmaking background. He is currently completing an MA in Contemporary Art & Archaeology and has been researching the deep past of Cheshire's salt production industry. Iain's fascination is with the spirit our lives imbue places with, and his pieces for this show map the journeys he has followed through the county's saline history and its folk practice, myth, and legend.

Ailsa Holland is a poet and artist with a varied practice. She is constantly looking for new ways to make poems and stories which tell of our physical lives and the shape and history of the places we call home. For this exhibition she has created poetry about vibrant, magical places: old stones, big trees and cold water. 

Martyn Stonehouse is a musician and graphic designer. He created the Megalithic Transport Network project in 2023, an imaginary pseudo- historical train network connecting standing stones, barrows and sites of archaeological and folkloric interest across the Peak District and East Cheshire. This project uses sounds and maps to evoke the transport network and its stations at specific ancient sites.

Becca Smith works with drawing, painting and printmaking, recently moving into textile-based materials and processes. The pieces Becca has created for this show are forms of cartography and of dowsing around, between and under special sites; stones, trees and alignments; in ink and thread, using paper-as-cloth-as landscape. She has been drawn to the antiquities of our land since she was a child, and since then has always been stone hunting, ley-dowsing and dreaming of unearthing secrets.