“On Margate Sands. I can connect Nothing with nothing.” T.S.Eliot
Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’ is an exhibition exploring the significance of T.S. Eliot’s poem 'The Waste Land' through the visual arts; an innovative three-year project, bringing members of the community (The Waste Land Research Group) and Turner Contemporary together to develop and create this exhibition.The starting point is T. S. Eliot’s famous poem, 'The Waste Land' (1922), parts of which were written whilst Eliot was convalescing in Margate. He arrived in a fragile state, physically and mentally, and worked on 'The Waste Land' sitting in the Nayland Rock shelter on Margate sands looking out to sea.
The poem was published the following year, and proved to be a pivotal and influential modernist work, reflecting on the fractured world in the aftermath of the First World War as well as Eliot’s own personal crisis. The Waste Land Research Group was formed through an open call by Turner Contemporary.
Through weekly meetings, discussions, talks, workshops, walks, research trips, studio visits and individual inquiry, the group developed their own methods for making decisions together, deciding on content and artworks. The exhibition foregrounds the multiple perspectives of those involved. In doing so, it mirrors the form of the poem, where Eliot juxtaposes many different voices and references; discussing personal connections between art, poetry and life.This series of artworks created in Margate for ‘Journeys with the ‘Waste Land’ at Turner Contemporary and developed during the project research period from 2015 to 2018 explores T.S. Eliot the person and The Waste Land poem from a range of different perspectives including the exhibition and performance of four works that address this complex poem and the quixotic poet.
