Artist Ben Edge on being part of the folklore renaissance and the importance of community and connection

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“There’s a few that I love, but the one that I keep going back to is the Burryman in Queensferry, Scotland. He’s this man covered head-to-toe in these sticky bur seeds doing a long walk through the town. The whole concept is that he’s bringing good luck to the people and taking away the evil spirits and bad energy through this act of self-sacrifice.

“The burs would really uncomfortable, they scratch and irritate your skin, and you can’t sit down, you can’t go to the toilet and so the locals bring him whiskey to ease the burden.

“Just following it round for this nine-hour period, you kind of forget everything and it just feels like a really therapeutic experience.”

Artist Ben Edge has travelled the length and breadth of Britain recording the weird and wonderful folklore customs alive in communities all over the country for his new book Folklore Rising.

Having created more than 200 artworks representing his experiences, Ben was present for mass events that are attended by thousands such as the solstices at Stonehenge, the Padstow ‘Obby ‘Oss parade and the Straw Bear of Whittlesea. He also documents the practices to celebrate the turning wheel of the year, from wassailing to May Day fertility rites to fire festivals to Mumming Plays.

It’s something of a culmination of 10 years of work studying and creating art around the folklore that remains embedded in UK communities. There is, of course, something of a renaissance in the world of folklore and tradition. Perhaps it’s as people continue to try to find ways to reconnect with each other and the Earth in opposition to an online and social media stranglehold? But in 2015, when Ben’s journey into folklore began, few could have seen it coming.

Born in Croydon in 1985, Ben split his childhood between his parents’ houses in east London and Southborough in Kent.

“It’s a passed-down experience, an ancestral experience. And everyone who’s told that story adds to it…”

— Ben Edge

As a teenager, he became interested in punk rock, folk music and art, leading him to study fine art at West Kent College and later at London Metropolitan University. Continuing to write and perform, he toured Europe in bands such as The Ideots and Thee Spivs before things came to an abrupt end.

“I was growing out of it, I could feel it,” says Ben. “I got really lost and a few other things were happening in my life that were quite tragic, like losing my grandfather in a house fire. It all just became a bit much and I had a real low period – a depressive episode, shall we say.”

It wasn’t until a serendipitous moment in central London when Ben stumbled upon a druid ceremony taking place on Tower Hill that a new obsession would reveal itself.

“I called it an epiphany because that day I wasn’t even meaning to see this druid ceremony,” he recalls. “I was on my way to the Tower of London to meet the Raven Master because I’d started trying to reconnect with the folklore of London just to, I suppose, bring a bit of magic back into my life.

“I came out of the station that day, saw the druids in a line and just ran over and listened in. It was just talk of something much bigger than me and my problems. It was all about plugging into the whole universe and the seasons.

“It was such a weird experience that seemed to just snap me out of it and start something new.

“I started researching what the druids were, initially, and then through that discovered all these different community rituals taking place that I had no idea about. In 2017 I really got obsessed with it and started painting.”

This new focus culminated in an exhibition of 20 paintings called the Frontline Folklore series that has been part of a countless number of exhibitions, including that of Ritual Britain, a show at the Crypt Gallery of the St Pancras New Church that attracted more than 10,000 visitors.

“When you look at what’s happening in America with Trump, even back then, I was having this thought that we’re putting way too much energy into praising money-making, personal ambition,” says Ben. “And I suppose I was trying to draw the attention back to the individual. I call it ‘the extraordinary lives of ordinary people’ because it was like this idea of bringing back the folk hero, the everyday person, and how we all have an impact on the world and we’re all shaped by our lives and the experiences.”

Another series, entitled Folk Renaissance poked at the idea of a new wave of people both participating in and contributing to these community rituals and folklore. And Ben was amazed to see how many more people were interested in the same topics as himself but also creating things in their own way.

“I don’t feel this is a folk revival because a folk revival implies that it wasn’t happening, and then all of a sudden, everybody’s revived things.I was actually walking among the beating heartbeat of the people that have been doing this for generations.

“The renaissance element is a whole new generation of people who are inspired by what it means within a wider context, as artists, as writers, in multi-disciplinary creative fields.

“For me, it is an art movement. I believe that it will one day be looked back on as an art movement.

“Other people I’m meeting, who I didn’t know at that point, were all out there doing their thing and they were equally going down this path of trying to re-engage with something more earthy and more folky-based.”

No doubt, Instagram has played its part in bringing the folklore family together, with artists and enthusiastic onlookers connecting with each other, as well as through journals like the Weird Walk Zine.

“You kind of create your own tribe through it and all of a sudden you felt like you were part of something growing and growing in a very organic way.”

THE TRUTH DOESN’T MATTER

The world is full of myths and legends, from Robin Hood through to the Greek gods, often repurposing startlingly similar stories of life, death and rebirth. And while historians and scientists will forever look for the truth, the timeline and the evidence, the facts are not always the most important element.

Generation upon generation of friends, families and communities have passed down these tales and traditions – a very powerful bond. So if the roots of the story get blurred or the concepts evolve over a certain period of time, does it matter?

“For me, the mystery attracts me to it,” says Ben. “Mythology has always played a part in humanity since the beginning of time, and people need mythology. One of the reasons, I think, that people like me, who have depressive experiences, is that they’ve lost that connection to that side of humanity, the myths of the Earth, the mystery and the spirituality that comes with that.

“These are archetypal stories that happen all over the world in their own way, so there’s something coming from us as human beings that isn’t necessarily about a lived experience we’ve had. It’s a passed-down experience, an ancestral experience. And everyone who’s told that story adds to it and it just becomes this collective of culture and force and story. And that’s what fascinates me.”

The Padstow ‘Obby’ Oss parade on May Day is one such ritual that captures the imagination of numerous generations.

“It’s this huge cylinder-like creature with a mask, based on a hobby horse originally, but it’s been mongrelised with so many other ideas that it’s become its own kind of wild thing and it has a tribal look to it,” says Ben.

“The mask looks very similar to some masks from Papua New Guinea, so it’s quite possible that the mask was brought back from sailors from the area and introduced locally.

“That festival is just remarkable because it matters so much to the town. A lot of people come out for it and it’s really emotional. It means a lot to the people. You see tears and, you know, it’s just one of those things that remind you of the magic of life.”

Ben, who is regularly asked to contribute to expert panels on UK folklore, as well as art-directing music videos for the likes of Fat White Family, Elijah Minnelli and Tamar Aphek, has also returned to music, releasing new album Children of Albion – a piece of work that he loved creating because he wasn’t trying to appease anyone with it.

“I suppose it was just realising that even though the world can sometimes feel like it’s gone too far away from being connected to the natural order of things, with capitalism and the monoculture that comes with that, if you go out and actively seek it, there’s this amazing world that you can plug into and use as a positive force.”

INFO: www.benedge.co.uk