Terrye Teverson

As an artist and researcher I spend a lot of time in archives searching for long-forgotten stories. The start of my practice may be from a throwaway comment or remembered thought from my childhood in Cornwall. The research is a vital part of finding characters who struggled from social injustice in their lives. My current body of work focuses on the by-product arsenic mined from the tin and copper mines prevalent in Cornwall's history until its last tin mine shut in 1998. During my research I visited Botallack tin mine on the cliffs in West Cornwall. Young boys used to scrape the arsenic powder from the roofs of the arsenic labyrinths (1tsp kills 6 men) while covering their face and mouths with kerchiefs and clay. Life was short and hard. At the same time William Morris the designer used the strong green pigments gained by using arsenic in his wallpaper designs. "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful" is attributed to William Morris. As a shareholder in a tin mine I wonder if he gave thought to the child labour used to extract this deadly poison that was used in the making of something beautiful.