Catalogue

1 Feel The Weight  Phil Barton (2024):

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Lindow Moss was formed as glaciers 300m high covering the site began to melt some 10,000 years ago. This work, 300m long, invites you to visualise the same distance of ice piled way above your head

2 Lindow Series – Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn  Phil Barton (2023/24): 

A series of eight screenprints will be found at intervals around the Art Trail:

2a Frost on the Moss: Compartment 7 

2b Frost on the Moss: Rushes

2c Spring Moss: Sugar Brook outflow 

2d Frost on the Moss: Foxglove

2e Summertime Moss: Sunset Foxglove

2f Autumnal Moss: Fungal Fruit

2g Autumnal Moss: Broom and Birch in low sunshine

2h Summertime Moss: Canopy in Compartment 10

3 Lindow Inspiration – Iron Age & Bog Habitat  Phil Barton and 700+ Primary School Collaborators (2024): 

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School visits by Professor Melanie Giles presented Iron Age culture and drawings by Gee McCrory of artefacts and natural history provided inspiration for each pupil to make a banner to form part of this multiple artwork. Pupils and teachers from St Anne’s Fulshaw, Lindow, Gorsey Bank, Ashdene & Wilmslow Academy contributed to this work, with thanks.  Note: This work will be installed by the pupils between 24th June & 12th July.

4 Bog Bodies  Juliette Hamilton (2002/24):

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The figures are open to personal interpretation. They could be other worldly figures rising from the peat, menacing, or welcoming? Or gods that people worshipped, the spirits of the bog? Or maybe the humans who lived near the bogs and made the place their home?

5 [Re]Cycling Tree ll  Phil Barton (2017 & 2024):

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A two-part work reminding us all to value trees for the various forms of life support they provide.   

5a The banner shows some of these processes – photosynthesis, soil creation & enrichment and flood management 

5b [Re]Cycling Tree ll represents the photosynthetic process with 12 hydrogen atoms, 18 oxygen and 6 carbon atoms catalysed by chlorophyl:  

C6H12O6 + 6CO2            

C6H12O6 + 6H2O

6 Easels (Still Life) Steve Sutton (2024):

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6a Easel l - presents a model of an ancient hand tool for cutting peat, an accurate replica of the unique style of hand operated peat cutter used at Lindow Moss

6b Easel ll “Forty” – Forty marks suggesting dates on a calendar, forty years, the mark of time since Lindow II, (Lindow Man) was discovered in the peat.

7 Homage to Lindow Man  Phil Barton with Wilmslow High School art students (2024):

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Sited close to the spot where Lindow Man was found on 1st August 1984, the decoration of this piece was determined by the students inspired by Lindow and various works made by Phil on The Moss in 2022. Cyanotype Iron Age designs symbolise Lindow Man and his culture, leaf prints reflect the natural history of Lindow and the wind drawings represent the natural forces which have shaped Lindow Moss. 

8 Ferric Fox   Liz Ellis  (2004):

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Having been born and brought up, as had multiple generations of my family, in sight of Lindow Moss and Common, and of having ‘Fox’ as my family name, this project was very personal indeed.

8a Ferric Fox - Hand built, life sized, 2D oxidised iron wire fox. Mounted on Perspex rods set into a scorched, stained and waxed oak block. 

8b Ferric Fox (Fleet) - Life sized fox built from oxidised iron wire as part of a body of work (16 pieces) made to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the discovery of Lindow Man.

9 Window on Lindow  Phil Barton (2024):

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The viewer is invited to reflect on our relationship to the natural world. How often do we confine our view of nature with a window, whether from our home, our cars or the ICT windows on the World in our pockets? And how does nature see us; the outsider looking in?  Or the invaded viewing the invader?

10 Bog Warrior  Steve Sutton  (2024):

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This work is a reconstruction of tree roots to realise a mysterious, apparently living, lurking unidentifiable being - a visceral response to the artist’s experience of this landscape which bears the marks of human activity over many years. The links between people and the natural resources of this environment provide a poetic and metaphorical comment on the past and the environmental challenges of today.

11 Caractacus Waving  Rupert Randall  (2024):

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Randall has previously made replica wooden items from the iron age - the same time period that Lindow Man was walking around Wilmslow, well, before he got bogged down. He made this figure from a willow trunk as a homage to Lindow Man and his discovery forty years ago. It is sited within hailing distance of the find site across The Moss.

12 Lindow Line Drawing  Phil Barton (2024):

Isobars from the scientific study of Lindow Man shortly after his discovery reveal a shadowy, simplified image of a complex human being who had been through 2,000 years incarcerated in a living eco-system. The reality is complex, so western culture reduces, labels and abstracts.  This drawing is a rumination; the reduction of an amazing natural phenomenon, which preserved skin, nails and hair, developed into a self-sustaining system in the Cheshire landscape over millennia, has come to be simplified to lines and data.

13 Reaching Towards the Sun after J C Prestwich (1884)  Phil Barton (2024):

This drawing is derived - 140 years on – from Prestwich’s Section of Peat Bog on Lindow Commondepicting of substrate sitting on a clay basin with 8 inches of “Sand” below 4½ feet of “Pine Forest Original Surface”, 3 feet of “Sphagnum Begins to Appear” and 7 feet of “Grey Turf Sphagnum” grading into “Modern Formation”. You can see the top three layers in the peat cliff before you.  As the bog grew, it reached up towards the sun!

 13a Reaching Towards the Sun (Print)  and   

13b Reaching Towards the Sun (Paint)

14 Lindow V  Steve Sutton  (2024):

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The making of this site-specific installation is heavily influenced by past discoveries of human remains found in the 1980’s. In this new work referencing the bodies found in the peat bog the principal form is lying on a raised circular platform to engage the onlooker. Many fragments of the ancient Scots pine forest found here are arranged to lead the focus towards the dais.

15 The Second Elizabethan Age - all that glistens is not gold  Phil Barton  (2023):

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The Second Elizabethan Age (1953 – 2023) has just drawn to a close in the UK.  Elizabeth ll's 70 year reign coincided with unprecedented growth in prosperity, but at a cost - a sustained rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 310ppm in 1953 to 427ppm in May 2024 and intense, mechanised removal of peat from this place. The drained Lindow Moss is releasing CO2into the atmosphere. Once rewetted and restored, it will again be a significant carbon sink.

16 Six Chimneys  Steve Sutton (2023)

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The use of peat dug from Lindow Moss bog as fuel for burning is referenced in this evocative piece. As early as 1421 peat was extracted from the Moss, and much later the process was mechanised with mechanical diggers. These ‘chimneys’ reference industrial scenes, but here the product is no longer toxic and nature has taken over.