During the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak, Devon farmer and sculptor Marcus Vergette was imprisoned on his property for three months. Unable to leave the farm even to buy food, Vergette and his partner were confined to collecting goods hung in a carrier bag over their fence. After more than 20 years of creating sculpture, installation and performance, Vergette decided to pick up a camera to film the mass slaughter of animals going on around him, as a way to deal with the atrocities.
‘When my sheep were diagnosed with Foot and Mouth, I began filming as a way to understand what was happening,’ Vergette recalls. ‘It was such a stressful period… We weren’t even allowed to move from our yards – it was like being under house arrest.’
The result is two films, Case 66 and Beginning Again, currently exhibiting at Spacex Gallery in Exeter, and in Clerkenwell, London.
Case 66, representing the national case number assigned to Vergette’s North Devon property, is a film created from the footage he shot during the months confined to the farm. After the piece evoked a positive response during Spacex Gallery’s East of Eden, the Exeter galley decided to commission Vergette to produce another film documenting the year after FMD, as his farm began to restock.
This second film, Beginning Again, traces the life of the farm through the process of renewal, and the return to some kind of normality, as seasonal duties resumed.
‘I wanted to make the film about the relationship between myself, the animals and the land. I felt a lot had already been done about the personal dramas, and the terrible emotional journey of the [FMD] event,’ comments Vergette. ‘What resulted was this rather positive, upbeat film, which I think certainly surprised me. I mean, it was such a dark place during Foot and Mouth.’
Beginning Again is a video and sound installation, incorporating floor-to-ceiling projections and multiple-track surround sound. According to Vergette, the soundtrack for the film was a crucial aspect of the feeling he wanted to convey. It is composed of sounds captured in the same way as the film, and despite the documentary-style footage, Vergette purposefully avoided commentary or narrative.
‘I was so tired of being told how it is,’ he says passionately. ‘I didn’t want to have a voice-over or some kind of emotional music in the background. So I made a composite of sound and used it just like the camera – as a witness.’
A village silver band is the only music on the soundtrack, and Vergette affirms that this complements the composition because is a local sound. The same band also played at the opening of the exhibition at Spacex Gallery.
Interestingly, he believes that due to the nature of the films, the exhibition at Spacex has attracted an audience who would not normally visit contemporary art spaces. ‘From the gallery’s point of view, it’s brought in a whole lot of people who don’t go to modern art galleries… My neighbours, the farmers, they’re interested to see if they are in the film!’
Although farming, sculpture and filmmaking seem like an unusual combination, Vergette is very matter-of-fact about it all. His career has spanned solo and group exhibitions, as well as commissioned sculptures in the UK and abroad. Out of a desire for more space to create sculpture, Vergette and his partner moved to Devon about 15 years ago. He immediately developed a fascination for the relationship between the animals and the land – a theme underpinning his two films.
On arriving, he remembers, he discovered rare butterflies on the property. While realising the need for animals to keep the grass down, he admits he initially grazed only to protect the butterflies.
But now, Vergette has become just as attached to the sheep – and he’s happy to have them back, after the FMD culling.
‘It’s just wonderful to have the animals again’, he enthuses. ‘I’m not alone in feeling stained by the slaughter and waste, the terrible waste of energy, effort, food, and life itself.’
‘Country’, the exhibition featuring Marcus Vergette’s two films, is showing at 2nd Floor, 61 Exmouth Market, Clerkenwell, London, EC1, November 21-30 (12-7pm Mon-Fri, 12-5pm Sat); and at Spacex Gallery in Exeter, until November 30.