DAVID KEMP
FOUR

9TH MAY UNTIL 1ST JUNE

For more than 20 years, David Kemp has lived and worked on the exposed Atlantic coast of West Cornwall - inspired by the natural landscape, and by the remains of the tin-mining industry carried out there since medieval times. Living among the ruins, he collects fragments, piecing together curious connections between past and emergent mythologies and technologies

There was once a clever tribe
Whose knowledge tied the four corners of the world together.
Their sorcerers had many powers.
They made great poles that held the sky up.
They had great cunning with fire
They could make the night like day.
They could send pictures in the wind
Their long tongues could speak over many miles
Their warriors were fierce and powerful.
They rose in the air, over land and sea.
They overcame all the other tribes of the earth.
One day the smoke from their many clevernesses grew thick,
Great flames licked up the poles blocking out the sun and burning a hole in the sky.
Slowly, the sky started to fall.
Fearing the dreadful weight of the clouds
The tribe dug deep holes in the ground.
Here they hide with all their clever things
Awaiting the day when the sky is pushed back up.