All Paths Lead to The River, a new installation by Camille Smithwick at Birkenhead Priory is packed full of character, and characters. The sprites hiding around the Priory and in the gardens of St Mary’s Church are captivating in the first instance, and provoking in the second.
I’ll admit that I forgot to read up about the installation before I visited. I just wandered over and learned later. Every few metres, Camille Smithwick’s creations glare out ominously from the ruins of Birkenhead Priory. Ruins that are fairly ominous in themselves.
The ruins are shrouded in folklore, with no concrete history of the priory’s original foundation. Parts have been built, demolished and rebuilt, but what remains represents the oldest building in Merseyside, a region founded on a river.
And the stones that once protected early travellers, the founders of Liverpool and Birkenhead, lay heavily on the ground around their foundations.
Today, and until the end of August, those stones are adorned by the creations of Camille Smithwick, who seeks to open up our imagination around the potential of folklore surrounding the river Mersey, the priory, and founding of Birkenhead.
Everything about this installation is playful, but it inspires so much more than play. And just like the repurposed materials, lovingly shaped into characters representing creation, destruction and exploration, it earned its place here by unlocking a history that most of us (myself included) have largely forgotten.
Those red sandstone bricks are a defining part of Merseyside. They line our streets, support our homes, and welcome us through gouged out tunnels into Lime Street and Birkenhead Park. The priory is one of the oldest records of that stone being taken from the earth and built into a dwelling.
I didn’t know that before. I do now. It’s nice when an exhibition inspires you. This did.
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Camille Smithwick: All Paths Lead to the River is open at Birkenhead Priory until 30th August
Find out more at www.conveniencegallery.org
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith