Go Back with Me & The Dark Store

South Square was pleased to present Go Back With Me, a compelling collection of multi-sensory artworks commissioned by the Brontë Parsonage Museum for Anne Brontë’s Bicentenary in 2020.

Anne Brontë first visited Scarborough in June 1840, making the trip annually until 1845. Her first journey to the coast was through her imagination, which is reflected in her drawings of the sea. Her last visit was in the hope of recovering from illness in 1849; she died within days of her arrival and was buried in Scarborough that same year.

Textile artist Lindsey Tyson and sonic artist Sarah Dew collaborated to present a portfolio of work based on Anne Brontë’s significant trips to the seaside town.

The sensory exhibition invited visitors to touch stunning textile pieces documenting the landmarks Anne would have seen, and listen to church bells and crashing waves alluding to her fight to stay alive as she slipped calmly into death.

Alongside these works, we also showcased The Dark Store, a new audio work by artist Sarah Dew following on from her work on Anne Brontë, with collaborator Charlotte Oliver.

The Dark Store is an Arts Council-funded, hour-long radio ballad: a collection of spoken word and nine original folk songs, highlighting the significance of hidden labour and the lives of essential workers throughout history to the present day. Woven out of many threads, from historical texts to testimonies gathered during online writing sessions in lockdown, the stories told include that of a governess, the herring girls and miners, as well as contemporary supermarket and ‘dark store’ workers, a Glaswegian lorry driver, and NHS nurses in the pandemic.

The piece was aired on Chapel FM, in May 2022.