Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson: In the Family of the Carbons, Turnpike Gallery, Leigh

The first object seen by visitors to ‘In the Family of the Carbons’, Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson’s show at the Turnpike Gallery, is, at first sight, out of place. Henry VIII Cannel Coal Bust, 1756, was borrowed from a museum in Wigan. It stands at the entrance, depicting the monarch in refined, stately detail, and appears more suited to a local heritage display than a contemporary art exhibition. Although it might seem a mere curio, this portrait sets up many of the themes explored in the show, from the materiality of coal and the ways it has been processed, used, valued and perceived over time, to knowledge, wealth and power. It is also the first of several found and borrowed artefacts which Crowe and Rawlinson present in new juxtapositions, transforming both their appearance and meaning, and forging new connections between local context and global issues.

The bust was commissioned by the Earl of Crawford, owner of Haigh Hall in Wigan, and created by the artist Robert Towne using the rare process of cannel coal carving, using coal mined from the grounds of the hall. Cannel coal is prized both for its bright, clean flame and its decorative uses; at Haigh Hall it was used as a substitute for black marble.

Crowe and Rawlinson have returned to the process of cannel coal carving, working with material from the local area to create a series of figurines, Darkness, Weakness, Poverty and Barbarism, 2018. In contrast with the precision of Towne’s royal bust, they appear amorphous, unfinished, and still a part of the material from which they are being formed. Displayed collectively, they resemble a huddled mass, depicting weary workers emerging at the end of the day, perhaps, or the hunger marches of the 1930s, or religious pilgrims. The title is borrowed from The Coal Catechism, a 19th-century educational pamphlet by William Jasper Nichols, which reads like industrial propaganda: ‘With coal, we have light, strength, power, wealth and civilisation; without Coal, we have darkness, weakness, poverty and barbarism.’ If Crowe and Rawlinson want to highlight the powerful vested interests which influence our understandings of industry, work, politics and the environment, this becomes explicit in The Koch Brothers, 2018, two coal powder and resin souvenirs from the Arctic, depicting Inuit figures, which are here reimagined as the American millionaires, lobbyists and climate change deniers. That artefacts are transformed through context – or the information we are given about them – is again demonstrated by Hammock, 2018, a repurposed climbing rope that once suspended Greenpeace protesters beneath a deep-water Arctic oil rig.

The tension between the natural world and human exploitation underpins much of Crowe and Rawlinson’s work. Shown here for the first time, ‘The Host’, 2009, is a striking series of photographic prints, each showing a close-up of a tulip, taken from a bunch of flowers into which burning matches have been dropped. This process has rendered the flowers unrecognisable; each has been transformed to take on an insect-like appearance, suggesting a grotesquely hybrid mutant species. Displayed alongside it, Spent, 2018, simply presents a pile of burnt matches, signalling both a finite resource and a repeated act of destruction.

The centrepiece of ‘In the Family of the Carbons’ is Crowe and Rawlinson’s video installation Song for Coal, 2015. Originally shown in an imposing 18th-century chapel in the rolling grounds of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, it created an immersive experience; its setting in Leigh is somewhat different, installed in a modernist, purpose-built art gallery dating from the tail-end of the postwar era, yet the work’s effect is no less impressive. Combining archival and contemporary footage, and taking the words of its libretto from The Coal Catechism, Song for Coal builds with mysterious power, as pictures and sound slowly emerge from a darkened room. As a stained glass window begins to appear, flickering images of work, transport, industry, art and science together create a constantly shifting kaleidoscope. It is difficult to pick out or follow a single thread, the effect being impressionistic rather than narrative, sensational rather than informative.

Although it was commissioned for the 30th anniversary of the miners’ strike, Song for Coal still feels eminently relevant in the age of President Trump, Brexit and fake news, as well as local and international debates about the future of energy. The overall effect is mesmerising, yet its beauty is paradoxical: Song for Coal is based on the apocalyptic rose window of Saint-Chapelle in Paris, and its inclusion here alongside the oozing, tar-like sculpture Black Dog, 2017, can’t help but reinforce a sense of foreboding, both for us and for the environment.

Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson: In the Family of the Carbons, Turnpike Gallery, Leigh

The first object seen by visitors to ‘In the Family of the Carbons’, Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson’s show at the Turnpike Gallery, is, at first sight, out of place. Henry VIII Cannel Coal Bust, 1756, was borrowed from a museum in Wigan. It stands at the entrance, depicting the monarch in refined, stately detail, and appears more suited to a local heritage display than a contemporary art exhibition. Although it might seem a mere curio, this portrait sets up many of the themes explored in the show, from the materiality of coal and the ways it has been processed, used, valued and perceived over time, to knowledge, wealth and power. It is also the first of several found and borrowed artefacts which Crowe and Rawlinson present in new juxtapositions, transforming both their appearance and meaning, and forging new connections between local context and global issues.

The bust was commissioned by the Earl of Crawford, owner of Haigh Hall in Wigan, and created by the artist Robert Towne using the rare process of cannel coal carving, using coal mined from the grounds of the hall. Cannel coal is prized both for its bright, clean flame and its decorative uses; at Haigh Hall it was used as a substitute for black marble.

Crowe and Rawlinson have returned to the process of cannel coal carving, working with material from the local area to create a series of figurines, Darkness, Weakness, Poverty and Barbarism, 2018. In contrast with the precision of Towne’s royal bust, they appear amorphous, unfinished, and still a part of the material from which they are being formed. Displayed collectively, they resemble a huddled mass, depicting weary workers emerging at the end of the day, perhaps, or the hunger marches of the 1930s, or religious pilgrims. The title is borrowed from The Coal Catechism, a 19th-century educational pamphlet by William Jasper Nichols, which reads like industrial propaganda: ‘With coal, we have light, strength, power, wealth and civilisation; without Coal, we have darkness, weakness, poverty and barbarism.’ If Crowe and Rawlinson want to highlight the powerful vested interests which influence our understandings of industry, work, politics and the environment, this becomes explicit in The Koch Brothers, 2018, two coal powder and resin souvenirs from the Arctic, depicting Inuit figures, which are here reimagined as the American millionaires, lobbyists and climate change deniers. That artefacts are transformed through context – or the information we are given about them – is again demonstrated by Hammock, 2018, a repurposed climbing rope that once suspended Greenpeace protesters beneath a deep-water Arctic oil rig.

The tension between the natural world and human exploitation underpins much of Crowe and Rawlinson’s work. Shown here for the first time, ‘The Host’, 2009, is a striking series of photographic prints, each showing a close-up of a tulip, taken from a bunch of flowers into which burning matches have been dropped. This process has rendered the flowers unrecognisable; each has been transformed to take on an insect-like appearance, suggesting a grotesquely hybrid mutant species. Displayed alongside it, Spent, 2018, simply presents a pile of burnt matches, signalling both a finite resource and a repeated act of destruction.

The centrepiece of ‘In the Family of the Carbons’ is Crowe and Rawlinson’s video installation Song for Coal, 2015. Originally shown in an imposing 18th-century chapel in the rolling grounds of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, it created an immersive experience; its setting in Leigh is somewhat different, installed in a modernist, purpose-built art gallery dating from the tail-end of the postwar era, yet the work’s effect is no less impressive. Combining archival and contemporary footage, and taking the words of its libretto from The Coal Catechism, Song for Coal builds with mysterious power, as pictures and sound slowly emerge from a darkened room. As a stained glass window begins to appear, flickering images of work, transport, industry, art and science together create a constantly shifting kaleidoscope. It is difficult to pick out or follow a single thread, the effect being impressionistic rather than narrative, sensational rather than informative.

Although it was commissioned for the 30th anniversary of the miners’ strike, Song for Coal still feels eminently relevant in the age of President Trump, Brexit and fake news, as well as local and international debates about the future of energy. The overall effect is mesmerising, yet its beauty is paradoxical: Song for Coal is based on the apocalyptic rose window of Saint-Chapelle in Paris, and its inclusion here alongside the oozing, tar-like sculpture Black Dog, 2017, can’t help but reinforce a sense of foreboding, both for us and for the environment.