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Onya McCausland's (Slade) Six Bells Red paint, co-produced with members of the local Wales ex-mining community, proposes new ways of perceiving landscape through the materiality of place
Six Bells Red Limited edition of 100 1L tins of mineral based emulsion paint made from recycled ochre residues forming as a result of the treatment of polluting mine water. Made in Six Bells, Abertillery Blaenau Gwent South Wales.
51°43 33.56 N 3°07 58.63 W : site of Six Bells Mine Water Treatment Scheme; source of Six Bells Red.
Six Bells Red 51°43 33.56 N 3°07 58.63 W is part of a larger body of work developing research into how waste materials emanating from former-coal mining sites in the UK can be used as, and for painting. By examining the waste matter different sites produce, waste materials are explored – given value – as indexes of places and the material variations of Earth. Six Bells Red mineral based wall emulsion paint presents a distinct optical characteristic inherent in the material composition of the environment. It proposes new ways of perceiving and conceiving of landscape through materiality of place, and the overlap and conflation of human and geological time frames.
The work has developed a Community Interest Company with not-for-profit circular economic structure; TurningLandscape CIC is based in the old miners pub in Six Bells where a small scale artisan paint making facility is set up to collect, dry and grind materials into fine grained power and used to make paint. In this way the legacies inflicted on this particular landscape are coopted and re-conceived by and for people living in the area who recall and are affected by the aftermath of extensive coal mining activity.
Further information and the shop can be found here: www.turninglandscape.com
Onya McCausland, 2021