black - gold (黒い金)
performance/sound work - 12'57" - Coal pieces, granit, medium, japanese mandam 156gsm paper, brushes, speakers, microphone, mixer.
The industrial mining of coal began on the Hokkaido island in 1870 and lasted for around 130 years until the closure of the last major mine in Kushiro in 2002.
From the early stages of State-led frontier industrialisation through to the privatisation of heavy industrial capitalism, conglomerate control of the mines and finally the post-industrial collapse and effective abandonment of the region and its people, the mining industry on Hokkaido may be viewed as a compressed case study of industrial capitalism, from extraction boom to obsolescence, within roughly a century.
This process parallels that of other former coal mining areas around the world, such as in South Yorkshire, England, the home region of the artist Ross Alexander Payne, whose acute relationship to the industry includes an extended line of family members who worked as coal miners or steel factory workers, placing him as the first in his patrilineal family line not to have been employed in coal mining or associated industries for many generations past.
It is this direct connection which led him to investigate Hokkaido’s history of coal and industry on a recent artist residency visit to Sapporo and to develop the interdisciplinary work ‘black gold’ as part of this investigation.
The work comprises several stages and mediums in order to create a series of abstract paintings.
Beginning with a research trip to the region in order to gather coal pieces and audio field-recordings from the area Ross expanded the project with the presentation of a performance work in which a piece of Hokkaido coal was ground by hand using granite stone. The resulting fine coal powder was mixed with medium in order to create a series of simple abstract paintings as the amplified sound of the crushing and processing of the coal was played back to the audience over a background collage of field recorded sound from around the Yubari area.
The resulting paintings are viewed as by the artist as a symbolic and representative gesture, a semiotic reference to the physical and labour process involved in the act of making, a process which places the properties of the material as it’s core whilst reflecting on the social and cultural significance relevant in its history.
