Excerpt from Night Fitties

We have worked since 2013 on and with a contested coastal community on one of the U.K.'s last existing plotlands, the Humberston Fitties in North East Lincolnshire. Here, since between the wars, local people and visitors have erected their diverse dwellings, in order to enjoy the simple, restorative pleasures of seaside life. This painting and poems are from the series Night Fitties They explore the play of light and dark and the uncanny transformations of the chalets that take place after hours as well as notions of vulnerability, occupation and emptiness. The work considers, in the shadow of recent dramatic political changes, how notions of place and identity are constructed on domestic and larger scales, as reflected by the play on flags and other indications of Englishness. Our cross-disciplinary collaborative practice between poetry and visual art explores open, environmentally-aware engagements and methodologies with landscape and place. We investigate the relation of social, environmental and energy politics on micro and macro scales, looking out to land and sea and back to the community. We are interested in the effects of radical open form text and paintings presented innovatively together and how this challenges audiences' assumptions.