http://www.helensargeant.co.uk/

Motherhood, Magic and the Mên-an-Tol, 1 Stones Road, Todmorden (2026)

30/06/2023

"I danced myself into the tomb
I danced myself into the tomb
Is it strange to dance so soon? (Oh)
I danced myself into the tomb" - Marc Bolan Cosmic Dancer

Images 1-4, Helen Sargeant, Cosmic Dancer, MMM, May 2023, Photography Patrick & Naoise Ward

28/06/2023

After all those actions I thought I better give the Men An Tol a good bath !!

Helen Sargeant, Cleaning the Men An Tol & Washing Hair with Water from.Madron Well, 13/06/23, Performance to camera stills X 6 ©️

19/06/2023

What is invisible ? What is unknown ? Once known how does the knowing change a path or journey? Unexpected outcomes are generative. I need to wait a while to process the words that I have read and to understand how best I might respond. Its a conversation between my body and my place within it. Within the stone and water and sky..and the burning embers of a fire.

I am back home in Todmorden with my family but in my dreams I am forever being called back to the Penwith.

There is so much material to sift through and process. This is but the beginning.

16/06/2023

“I would weigh love in feathers” - Claire Burnett

The car park is full.I pull the blue dress on one more time. The man in the mobile camper next to my car is surprised to see my transformation. His friends turn up with a car full of dogs and chaos ensues. I wait a little while gather my tripod and makeup and camera.

Up the lane one more time. The Tinners Way. The sun is burning off the sea mist that surrounds. Pinkcampion. Blue Scabius. Then to my delight a hummingbird hawk moth.

A see a lone women with a jack russel dog ahead who appears to be carrying a painting. As we get nearer she enquires if the painting is mine ? She has found it at the Men An Tol.

She comments on my dress and asks if I am performing some sort of ritual. I speak with her a while we discuss our ages both women of the 1970’s, we compare wrinkles and the freedom that comes with being over 50 and not giving a dam about what anyone thinks anymore. She tells me that she often walks her dog up here and that she loves this place and the peace to be found in it. She tells me she is sensitive and too has felt the presence of spirits and identifies with my sensation of being followed and watched by a heavy set man. I discuss how busy the site is and she then tells me that when I get to the Men An Tol there will be no one there and I will have the place all to myself to perform my last rite.

Images 1 -4 “ I would weigh love in feathers” - Performance to Camera 11/06/23, Men An Tol

13/06/2023

Stone and sea and things that belong to the dead get washed up in charity shops.

Counted five choughs at Porth Naven. Sadly no peregrine falcon, last time when I was here with my family it flew right close over the top of our heads. Peregrines can fly up to speeds of 200 miles per hour.

Cobalt blue iridescent dragonfly at the Merry Maidens. Swim in the sea at Lamorna and at Porth Chapel. Pick dandelion heads.

Green beetle trundling up the rock. Sea Carrot. Scabious. Fox Glove. Pinkcampion. Plantain. Baby rabbit. Thrift is almost gone as are the hawthorn flowers and the bluebells are keeling over in the heat of the sun. Vetch. Oxeye Daisy. Honeysuckle in yellow and pink. Ferns completely unfolded.

“What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the w**ds and the wilderness yet.”

Ithell Colqhoun, The Living Stones, Page 22

12/06/2023

The love doves rest on the ridges of the chimney stacks of the stone roof. I see the black cat he has long legs, a magnificent supermodel male, who will not be coaxed nearer. Once feral he will not be tamed, at least not by a stranger.

I count six buzzards encircling, hunting for small mammals in the iggle, piggle patchwork of fields below.

The day is interspersed with mundane tasks of collecting up belongings, ordering, cleaning, and packing up clothes and the mess of my mobile studio. A dear friend of mine tells me that these tasks can be magical, but I struggle to find that in these things that have to be done. I forever dream of art rather than ordering and controlling the life laundry. In a sense though this project has been just that. What I mean is I have been putting certain parts of my psychic landscape to bed. Not burying or hiding, simply gently folding them away.

When I was 19 and visiting this area as part of an end-of-year study trip together with a small group of students from Wi******er School of Art I went completely cuckoo. I did not know and neither did my dear friends that my strange behavior, lack of sleep, appetite, and sudden weight loss, were all symptoms of a nervous breakdown. Not sure what did cause it, certainly no hedonistic drug taking was involved though all the medical professionals wanted to pin my illness upon just that, I have always worked hard at life and maybe that is all that had gone wrong not enough breathing and dreaming and far to far away from my home to run back to the comfort of mother.

Photo Credit - Chris Leftbridge

11/06/2023

Driving up the lane a fox jumps in front of the car and into the thick hedgerow. I am going to visit Kestral Barton in Helston a place that was suggested to me by Anna Best some seven years back when completing the PLAY AWAY residency at the Mothership in Dorset.

Being mother makes being artist slower. It is best to take the long look. I do not regret being more mother than artist when my sons were younger and they needed me more.

Slow to emerge, slow to find my way. I am happy to be slow like the snails that appear in the long grass and dew in the morning.

Kestral Barton is a beautifful place, the gallery is showing work by David Batchelor. As well as the gallery. there is a garden and a hay meadow and an apple orchard and places to stay.

I speak to the gorgeous women whose minding the exhibition space. We discuss art and life, mothers the moon and lost ones. Like the woman in the charity shop she too is from New York and has long made Cornwall her home. She makes some elderflower cordial in-between managing the space. Steeping the flower heads in a slow cooker and adding the lemon juice and sugar. She knows of Delpha. It is an intimate interconnected artist community here.

Back at my uncles farm I make mushrooms on toast, a delicious lunch that was a childhood favourite of mine. My mum often jokes that when I declared myself a vegetarian she did worry as it was only mushrooms and nothing green that I would eat.

I prepare the camera and all the items that I will require for the evening stint at the Men An Tol.

I revisit the well at Madron to collect water for the last rite. Repurposing a plastic bottle to fill, as I bend down to gather water, I can hear the sound of the birds wings in the dense surrounding folliage. Walking the overgrown path I notice that there are many ancient trees; yew, blackthorn, hawthorn and elder.

10/06/2023

It is dawn on my uncles farm. I have fed the doves and the cats. The cats are no longer allusive. The female cat is now my friend and she purrs and rubs up against my legs. its taken me one whole week to befriend her. The black male cat is around but he dashes out of the cat flap as soon as I am in sight.

The weather has changed and it is wet and overcast. Scorching hot is on its way but right now it is grey, foggy and extremly humid. I noticed that the St Just locals talk about wind direction in the same way that the locals in Todmorden talk about all the rain.

I recently attended a talk by Kerri ní Dochartaigh at Tate St Ives, where she spoke of the origins of the word Mother and how it is one of the oldest words that exists. I google It and discover references from a study by Mark Pagel of Reading University, These are 23 of the oldest words in the English Language dating back some 15,000 years:

“mother, thou, I, not, that, we, to give, who, this, what, man/male, ye, old, to hear, hand, fire, to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit, worm”

I am being called back to my role as mother though in spirit I do not feel I have ever left it, having made calls to my youngest each day to check he is ok. It is impossible to escape the pull of love.

I see things all in twos, two doves, two baby pigs, two snails, two cats.

I meet an artist at the exhibition opening who is also a drummer. He tells me that his sculptural installation consisting of black painted rocks collected from an ancient site near to his childhood home in Redruth carefully placed on metal shelves denoting the stave in a musical score represents a primal beat.

What came first the mark, the music, the dancing, the story and what does it matter?

I am knitting a long thin light blue jumper for my Stone. A baby Stone. Stones. Living Stones.

I am more Living than Stone.

Bleeding constantly from the womb has made me re-question and re-evaluate everything I do. I am not dying, its not cancer but it does affect my energy levels and how I feel. Since being down here the bleeding has subsided. I put it all down to the healing properties of the Men An Tol.

09/06/2023

St Just Charity Shop is so rich with the local detritus and treasures. I find a jumper, some cotton napkins with a pink rose applique and six tiny glasses made with thin thin glass. I laugh with the women at the counter about what I could put in them. I ask what 70’s drink, and they suggest egg nogg with brandy and a cherry in a cocktail stick balanced on the edge.

“Over the earths surface are to be found localities which the ancients called “Fountains out of Hecate”. To tap these chthonic power-centres it is essential to be near the at times when they erupt as geysers of energy” Colquhoun,

‘Pilgrimage.’ Sangreal 2 no , 1979.pp29-31

Find Tregeseal Stone Circle suggested by Delpha….and it is so very wild and beauftiful and less through traffic more silent and alone. Yet it really is not silent, it is full of the sound of the east wind, the sky larks, the planes flying low, seagulls and swifts and bees. The butterfly wings are silent.

Look at each of the 19 stones.

Dance, Dance, Dance to Cosmic Dancer. Feel more free, more attuned, less concious of movements. I am not a dancer more mum dancer than dancer dancer. But I do it all the same and it feels good. I care less what I think and just do and enjoy. I record the dancing over and over the stones become tripod for the phone camera.

Dog Rose, Common Vetch, Burnet Rose, Yellow Iris, Common Vetch, Pinkcampion, Cowslip, Brisley Oxtongue, Honeysuckle, Ribwort, Hogw**d, Sheeps-bit, Sea Carrot, Hemlock, Foxglove.

Swim into Zawn Pyg (Song of the Sea) the Ithell Colqhoun painting at Nanjizel beach. The sun spills into the pool and it is warm and safe and shallow. Swimming with sea w**d of so many colours and types from dark green to light and pink inbetween, types I have no idea of there names, and welks and urchins, muscles, and probably some fish near the sand bellow, silver slivers of creatures that hide in the depths.

I watch the three bikini clad young women with concern. I don’t say anything about the tide, the strength of it.I wish I had as I hear screams as I see that they almost loose all their bags to the sea.

Above the beach four black wild ponies wafting tails, neighing, stamping their feet.

08/06/2023

Sisters. We awomen. Daughters. We women. Mother's

Yellow of the unknown plant.

We are wild.

We will not be tamed.

Hemlock, Thrift, Bladder Campion, Foxglove, Oxeye Daisy, Cookoo flower, Tufted Vetch, Ribus Plantain, Common Cow Wheat

Yellow of urine
Yellow of buttercup
Yellow of lichen on stone
Yellow of sand under foot
Yellow and the lightest of blue
Yellow of dandelions

Crawl through the hay meadow
Collect water from madron well and spill over joint head.
Ring bells
Make tea in the shiny cups and saucers.

Rest and remember to breathe

Go to Tregaseal Stone Circle
Beloved Portheras
Collect cuttle fish shells
Sit on the open top bus to St Ives
Listen to the wind
Listen to the birds
Listen to the sea
Walk the cliff top path

Revisit the charity shop at st just and Penzance

The stones in the potatoe field at Thrift. All the cars speeding past on the A30 and the silent standing stones.

Snails stuck on stone.

Stuck.

Scones thrice made out of love. First batch burned, second accidently got into a bag with soil, the third perfect and travelled in an ice-cream box from Truro to Penzance by train.

We picked strawberries me and my mums cousin. We drink tea and talk about our kin and our bodies. We are full of clotted cream and jam. The fat of love.

After dropping my kind kin back at the station at Penzance I swim at the sea in Sennen. In the sea I speak to a gentle man from Skipton. We are in paradise. He tells me his wife is eight weeks pregnant.He is slightly anxious about if it will all work out. I see him watching her with concern.

Back at my uncles farm I watch the gallows pole but I only catch the beginning and end as I fall asleep in-between.

07/06/2023

A collaborative performance by Delpha Hudson & Helen Sargeant 6/6/23, Men An Tol, Madron Moor

Packed in the car sea w**d. sea water from porthcurno, sour milk, mother and daughter sized ironing boards, an egg stone, a jug, a bucket, an axe, a lampshade, blue transparent cloth, a picnic and flask , feathers a saucepan,an oversized lampshade, new born baby clothes...we take what we can carry.

What do you carry ? Who do you care for ? How do we carry care and how do we carry the weight of it all? What is the weight of love? The weight of love is measured by feathers.

Up the lane.....

The cookoo hear the cookoo sing.

To be wrapped and unwrapped.To stand with the stones and setting sun and the breeze and all the orchestra of creatures and the sun streaming through the fabric and the orchestra of creatures. To be like a chrysalis.

To be held and comforted by wrapping. To unwrap. To drape. To cover. To cover up the body. The cloth becomes a river. The cloth becomes a shroud and Tomb. The cloth becomes a veil. Bed sheet. The body is still. Standing. Body. Stone.

Tender holding my hair against the granite. Against the board. Ironing hair. Ironing sky and grass and stone. Ironing dreams flat.

Listening.Listening to all the creatures of the moor. Wild creatures...butterflies, moths seagulls larks white throat perched on top of gorse bush passing through.

And all the humans all in twos, mirrors of us. Running middle aged women couple. Polite Americans. The couple that passed by but didn't bat an eye.The German couple and the man with his Joseph Beuys hat.

At the end the axe cutting and chopping up foxglove and red rattle, and bluebell all the prettiness destroyed.

The midges begin to feast on our faces so we retreat back down the tinners way.

Watching the sun go down over Pendeen lighthouse laughing over tea and chunks of ginger cake. Talking about life and art, stones and loved ones and lovers and dreaming up future adventures.

Thank you so much to Delpha Hudson for your amazing company, care and collaboration.

06/06/2023

A strange day...there is some confusion or tiredness or simply grief...the unknown of this project is leading me to ever stranger places and tighter hedgerows and paths brimming with butterflies and bees and pink campions and cow slip so much growth and so much life..and delirium with the heat of the sun.

Drawn into the medival church at St Just I speak to the kind vicar with his two sheep dogs. We talk about happy valley and the gallowd pole he knows where Todmorden and Hebden are as he once had a girlfriend there. He shows me the medival paintings on the wall and I like the Christ with all the work tools...I drive to Penzance and visit my favourite charity shop to buy more linen for making cyanotypes and a mirror....The women at the counter with the american accent recognises me she tells me she is originally from New York and She has been I'm Cornwall now for 24 years and raised her children here but she doesn't like beaches and she isnt interested in stones...she is kind and open hearted and when she tells about baking cakes and cookies I think of Sylvia Plath.

Ithell Colqhouns paintings and drawings in the exhibition about Lamorna at Penlee House lead me on journey to Boscawen-ûn..."elder tree of the downs"....and I'm blown away by it's beauty and all the hawthorn and blubells and buttercups...I'm not alone a man and women he takes off his shoes to walk bare foot she leans against a stone and smokes a joint...She tells me of the mother stone that's made of quartz and that the centre stone faces in the direction of the midsummer solstice sunrise towards an outlying standing stone, and the rising sun at midsummer illuminates a carving of two axe heads that lie towards the bottom base of the stone.

Later I drive back to St Just to collect my friend for dinner back at my uncles farm. He tells me that Crows An Wra means witches crossing.

Motherhood, Magic and the Mên-an-Tol

30/06/2023

28/06/2023

19/06/2023

16/06/2023

13/06/2023

12/06/2023

11/06/2023

10/06/2023

09/06/2023

08/06/2023

07/06/2023

06/06/2023

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