The indoor exhibition is still contained within the same large modern shed as before, but the former has now been renamed as ‘the High Hall’. Of course it is right to stress the importance of the Hall in Anglo-Saxon life but any illusion that this building might seem like a 7th century timber hall inside is destroyed by the placing of a large circular exhibition gallery in its centre. So a visitor goes around the outside of this structure and then its interior, hardly what one does when visiting a long rectangular building such as an Anglo-Saxon hall. The point is not perhaps all that important, but invoking a ‘High Hall’ seems rather pointless when it is immediately negated.

That said, I thought the exhibition was excellent – innovative, full of interest and with objects of such magnificence that one forgot that almost all are reproductions (the original material is in the British Museum).

The Hall is themed on three principal topics – the people in the royal court, the royal connections overseas and the technical skills needed in war and peace.

The ‘people’ section is about individuals, dominated by women, so very much in the fashion of our own times. The introductory video is of two women, an old retainer and a new slave-girl, chatting as they prepare for the funeral of a king. It vividly brings out the dilemma at individual level of tradition v. the new, and specifically of pagan beliefs and this incoming new religion called Christianity.

The first of numerous photographs of well-made models continues these ideas with panels on the ‘Wise Woman’ and the ‘Slave Girl’, both emphasising the importance of women in Anglo-Saxon society and also introducing the idea of social hierarchy within that society.

Personally, I was particularly glad to see the prominence given to  the second theme, the Anglo-Saxons’ far-reaching connections to worlds far beyond East Angle:

A set of excellent distribution maps illustrates this largely unappreciated dimension of our supposedly ‘primitive’ forebears. As exemplars, the first shows the generality of connections with the Eastern Roman Empire centred on Byzantium, the second how far away one of the specialist materials on the site, bitumen, had to be sourced.

Acknowledgement is given to the skill of the various crafts-people actually making the many extraordinary objects created in England from materials brought from afar. One such craftsman is illustrated:

Among the many objects, one decorated brooch is picked out for analytical treatment:

That’s quite enough for one post. I’ll add a Sutton Hoo exhibited III post shortly.

As some previous posts have indicated, I have been visiting Sutton Hoo throughout the summer out of interest to note how the £4 million+ -worth of revamping of the site for visitors has developed. I have not been involved in the scheme in any way other than to observe. All is now complete and open, except for the new observation tower overlooking the site of the burial mounds.

A much-hyped part of the scheme has been to open-up the whole site by encouraging visitors to participate in a ‘new and exciting’ ‘landscape experience.’ Essentially this means going on one or more prescribed walks, some along newly-made paths, and looking at a few new information structures dotted around the landscape. One of them is illustrated below: an information panel and a concrete ‘map.’

The panel reflects a theme throughout the new presentation – exhorting visitors to use their imagination. All well and good but quite a lot is known about the Anglo-Saxon landscape and its seems a pity not to tell people about that as a foundation on which to use their imagination. The concrete slab beside the panel has some marks in it and both bumps and a coloured area on it. The former include but six mounds representing, without explanation, the (minimum) 17 which actually exist or existed. The last, somewhat enlarged by rainwater when I took the photograph, is meant to show the River Deben, whence the ‘royal ship’ was towed uphill (in imagination); for the graphic is meant to be a map of the area, acting as both a guide – it shows modern paths – and a background on which to embroider the viewer’s imagination. I asked several people on different occasions what they made of this visual – some didn’t even realise it was a map – and they found it difficult to use. Not surprising really, since without a scale or a North point it is indeed difficult to use.

Unfortunately, this is the case with all the maps and graphics on site: the cartography is poor throughout. And though the walks themselves are attractive, there seems to be a mismatch between the laudable intention to lead people healthily and educatively by roundabout ways to the burial mounds and what most people actually do; which is of course to follow their desire lines along the most direct route to the mounds. Perhaps they will follow the sinuous route to the barrows when the observation tower is open and best-approached from below.

I know that a site is constantly evolving in terms of its presentation and use; but management should be able to mitigate some of the more obvious flaws. Here, a walker around the whole site will encounter at least five different styles of information media/panels. Some of them are relics from much earlier presentations of Sutton Hoo, indeed from last century. As a result, what the visitor sees today bears a hint of stinginess and shoddiness, not exactly the impression you want from a £4 million refurbishment; and of course overall there is a lack of coherence in the presentation because different interpreters have wanted to make different points at different times in the past. Maybe all the interpretive clutter around the mounds will be cleared away once the observation tower is open; but that begs the question of how and where you inform all the visitors who will still walk directly to the mounds, whether or not they then climb the tower.

Meanwhile we have experienced a wet autumn; and such has been the wear and tear along the desire line to and at Mound 1 that visitors have had to be roped off on to other lines and taken off Mound 1 altogether. There were 700 visitors on the day in late September when I asked about visitor numbers. Doubtless many people have been attracted by sustained publicity about the newness of Sutton Hoo’s presentation throughout the year.

I’m going to stop there but a part II will follow idc. Two further photographs serve as tasters.

If you do nothing else, do go and see the Antony Gormley exhibition at the Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. It’s stunning, and it closes on 3 December. I’ve been once and hope very much to make a return visit before then.

With but brief commentary, let me just illustrate selectively some of its richness and diversity:

Among several visual ‘tricks’, One Apple is a line of 53 lead cases each containing the remains of an apple as the fruit grows. At the far end, the case contains the the dried remains of the first petal to fall from the blossom; at the near end is the dried, mature fruit. The whole, we are told, ‘reveals Gormley’s preoccupation with ideas of expansion in time and space.’

The artist calls this a ‘drawing in space’. It is made from c8 kms ‘of square section aluminium tube, coiled and allowed to expand until restricted by the floor, walls and ceiling.’ Visitors have to clamber through it to reach the other door, and clearly enjoy doing so.

Matrix III 2019 is a ‘vast cloud’ of ‘a mesmerising visual labyrinth,’ made up of ’21 suspended room-size cages  …  surrounding a small concentrated chamber’, in effect a void. The airiness of the whole becomes a solid challenging one to walk beneath it – as one in fact does with complete confidence that it will not crash down. An amazing work, described by Gormley as ‘the ghost of the environment we’ve all chosen to accept as our primary habitat.’ Maybe …

Meet the Gormleys, standing upright slightly larger than normal life-size, protruding from the walls in defiance of gravity

and standing upside-down on the ceilings:

The figures are of course iron casts of Gormley’s body, well-known from outdoor works in many places throughout the world. Locally, Another Place on Crosby Beach, Merseyside, is a classic example. Here, this room is visually quite remarkable; but prosaically, I couldn’t help wondering how the engineering to create this effect had been carried out in what is presumably a Grade 1 Listed Building.

This caveat applies just as much to the next image. Room 13 is called ‘Host‘ 2019. In what is just an ordinary gallery of the RA, the floor has been covered with clay and filled with seawater:

The effect is transformative, not least in its reflections, mental as well as visual. Is this a flood bringing destruction? Or is this where life began, a construct of the primordial soup?

Alongside the visual drama from room to room, ordinary workbooks, sketches and even drawings and paintings are also exhibited. ‘Home‘ 1990, a work in blood on paper, seems somehow to be their appropriate representative.

GO