Songs My Mother Taught Me
An interactive sculpture that played a recording of Bobby’s bass through a cassette which is powered by the rotation of a wheel. The sculpture exists as a social archive and metaphor for music and traditions born from the labour of miners.
Nan and Bobby’s Mining Archive
My Gran, Nan Hendrie, and my Papa, Bobbie Hendrie, reflecting on the importance of the Miner’s Welfare Band to their community. Whilst my Gran shows me around the former Polkemmet Pug, the very train that passed her everyday as a child, my Papa plays ‘Songs My Mother Taught me’ on his double bass in the Whitburn band hall, the song played through the interactive sculpture.
‘The Dardanelles’ was a name given to Polkemmet Colliery after the campaign during the First World War, when the second shaft of the pit was sunk. The colliery supplied coking coal for the Ravenscraig steelworks in Motherwell, but closed due to flooding during the 1984 miners strikes.
