Labor Intensive (feat. charcoal)

Matthew Kellison

There are three ingredients that constitute gunpowder: saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. Even with only three ingredients, gunpowder manufacturing was quite labor intensive. The work at Oare Gunpowder Works was no exception. I revisit this labor intensive process as well as exert and embody the spectrum of emotions that existed, and still exist, as ghosts, at the gunpowder works.

A marathon drawing session took place in a performative fashion. I symbolically replicate the process of gunpowder manufacture as I move from ruin to ruin in the order in which the gunpowder was produced. I use charcoal made from local alder, a reference to one of the ingredients in gunpowder manufacture.

To navigate the complex emotional aspects of the history of Oare Gunpowder Works and gunpowder production in general, I have allowed myself to be encumbered/restrained, observed, ridiculed, and freed. I imbibed and processed the energies of this place and its history in an emotionally and psychologically exhausting performance via the marathon drawing session. The muds and dusts of the ruins and land surround me, overtake me. I wrestle with it. I have given myself wholly to this land and the comfortable and uncomfortable histories and emotions of the Oare Gunpowder Works country park. The end result is numerous books of drawings, a white boiler suit covered in charcoal and dirt, another record of the labor, and a video of a portion of the performance.