2024
A collage commissioned by Professor Melanie Giles, Creative Manchester and Jodrell Bank to celebrate the life and work of Alan Garner on his ninetieth birthday.
The iconic radio telescope at Jodrell Bank was described as ‘not an eye but an ear’, listening out into the universe. And living just a few fields away at Blackden, Alan Garner too has spent his life listening to the land and the sky, the past and the present. His books explore and weave together ancient myths and stories with the archaeology and local histories of Alderney Edge in Cheshire. The imaginative worlds he has created have inspired so many people, with many archaeologists amongst them, sparked by the power of curiosity and possibility that his stories bring to the land.
As one of those greatly influenced by his writing, Rose was honoured to make a piece of artwork to celebrate his life and work. A visit to Toad Hall with Professor Melanie Giles, where Alan lives with his wife Griselda, was an opportunity to find resonances between the marks and patterns in the house (which have found there way into many stories) and the forms and fissures of the radio telescope at Jodrell. The collage brings together many of these elements: the seen and unseen, past and present, and a sense of the deep, ongoing listening of Alan and the dish.
