Ron Haselden is one of the many contributing artists to our magazine. Born in Britain, he lives partly in London, and partly near the French coast of Brittany in Plouër-sur-Rance.
Too modest to assume such definitions personally, Ron is something of a modern day Uomo Universale. A polymath who works with sculpture, film, light, sound, video, site specific installations as well as his frequently published two dimensional photographic collages – which he refers to as ‘The Postcard Series’.
We will be featuring some of his exclusive postcard pieces in the forthcoming pages of In Search of Taste magazine as well as the provision of a limited edition print.
Ron is also a beekeeper.
His most recent graphic work has just been published as a pamphlet entitled ‘Go Talk to the Bees’. The piece not only celebrates the potent form used by the revolutionary pamphleteers of the 17th and 18th century, but lifts the work and library of a 19th century British eccentric into the social firmament that is a 21st century concern to us all – that of the plight of our pollinators.
The pamphlet features a collection of illustrations, which have in turn garnered imagery from the former book and photographic collection of Alfred Watkins (1855-1935). Watkins was a photographer, writer, inventor and dubious adherent of ‘ley’ lines. He was also the inventor of the light meter, to assist him in his photographic pursuits.
Alfred Watkins was a beekeeper too.
A resident of Herefordshire here in the UK, Watkins lived in an era spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. Amongst other laudable diversions during his lifetime, he founded the Herefordshire Beekeepers Association; an organization created solely to improve the knowledge and understanding of beekeeping. There was even the provision of the famous ‘Bee Van’, a horse drawn wagon converted to tour local villages exalting the role of pollinating bees in an increasingly mechanized, agricultural environment. The ‘apiarist’s mobile library’ toured with messianic zeal. Such an outlook finds contemporary resonance more than 100 years later as we now begin to grasp that around a third of our food depends entirely on the bee. Honey remains a by-product of our survival.
Haseleden’s work extends this thread – a thread that has demonstrably held concerns across centuries – linking man’s continued dependency on crop pollination. The recent survey by the World Wildlife Fund (2014 Living Planet Report) shows that over 50% of all creatures living on our planet (with the exception of Homo Sapiens, of course) have been lost in the last 40 years. Such precipitous decline indicates the need for vigilant reference of all creatures. Such is the engagement of this pamphlet.
Ron Haselden’s work is part of series of artists’ commissions exploring various aspects of Alfred Watkins collection of books and photographs, presently held in the Hereford Library.
www.ronhaselden.com