Pleased to announce that Out/Side/Film founder Ian Nesbitt is working, in collaboration with Ruth Levene, towards a new two screen video installation for the Harris Museum in Preston, which re-opens later this year.

For the new work, entitled ‘A Measure of Care’, the artists take a ledger written in the late 19th century out of the Harris Museum archives and return it to the place where it was written, asking local farmers, birders, residents, ornithologists, conservationists and historians to reflect on what they read.

John Weld (1813 – 1888) was a Victorian landowner, antiquarian, naturalist, and amateur painter who lived at Leagram Hall near Chipping. During his lifetime, he made detailed records of many aspects of his local area and beyond. In the ledger entitled ‘Flora and Fauna of Leagram and neighbourhood’, he writes of ‘A list of birds observed or taken in the neighbourhood of Leagram within a radius of 4 or 5 miles from the hall.’, a detailed set of observations relating to 112 bird species over a fifty year period from 1836 until his death in 1888.

A Measure of Care charts expressions of love, care and grief across three moments in time. The ledger itself, completed in 1888, is on display accompanied by an audio recording read by John’s descendant. Stepping forward 137 years to the present day, we meet local farmers, birders, residents, ornithologists, conservationists and historians reflecting on the many changes that have taken place since that time and the rapid decline of bird species. Stepping another 137 years into a speculative future, we find a lone archivist engaged in the care of skins of now extinct bird species.