Venue 1 Warley Phone Box Museum

The Venue (and the People)

In the town of Warley in the Calder Valley can be found the Warley Phone Box Museum. Opened in 2016 by the town’s Community Association, it’s now curated by local artists, Paul and Chris Czainski, who create new exhibitions for the Museum around every three months, often on local history. 

The box is just across the road from The Grange, where Patrick Brontë (father of Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell) lived for a while. The Czainskis’ own house is next door, an old congressional church replete with Chris and Paul’s (and others’) work. 

Pushing through the metal gates to the house, we gave a couple of strikes on the heavy metal knocker. The arched doors opened and Paul invited us in past a life-size dummy salvaged from a skip on Brick Lane. We were whisked into a kitchen adorned with the couple’s own work - Chris has a special interest in icons, and Paul is a celebrated trompe l’oeil painter (we knew none of this before we’d asked about the venue by the way). We were then treated to Chris’ homemade sourdough scones set out on a table with a ‘tablecloth’ made from a huge roll of artist’s paper covered in sketches for ideas. 

Paul and Chris’ work has a touch of the fantastical about it – a dark whimsy and a gently twisted sense of humour, is present in many of the pieces. Explore their websites to find out more (Chris’ is here and Paul’s is here.) They also work together as The Fabulous Czainskis (see this Guardian article.)

Meeting them made us realise that not only would the venues become part of the Wuthering Heights Rediscovered story, but the people behind them, too. Our hosts had an immense generosity of spirit which we knew would feed into the project. 

The Exhibition.

What kind of exhibits should we put into a phone box? The writer Andrew Sinclair made a series of ‘film boxes’ – rough and ready collages in relief, set into deep wooden frames, that explored his fascination with cinema. These in turn had been inspired by the collages of the reclusive New York artist Joseph Cornell. Well, what would be better than putting our own (miniature) film boxes in a telephone box? 

This idea was combined with more factual exhibits – mini-information panels on the film for the windows, plus a larger main board to go inside. I also created some small pictures featuring quotations from the book. There has been an industry that has grown up around Emily Brontë’s novel, which is genteel, well-spoken, refined. However, the book itself is dark and wild. Playing with that tension, the pictures I created featured floral backgrounds (as if they were souvenirs sold in a gift shop in Haworth) with quotations that were more typical of the brutality of the characters (‘The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails!’) These along with various other pieces, went into the exhibition.

My partner, Tracie, had seen my initial attempt at putting an image into a box (actually, a small tin) and worried at my, admittedly poor, result. She ended up designing small wooden boxes which she laser cut and filled with lights and to which she attached small velvet curtains, to create a series of mini-cinemas (mini-cines) and billboard hoardings. In short, she transformed them into something quite lovely. 

Aside from the main information board, we managed to fit the whole exhibition into a hamper, which we drove to Warley Town and installed (which mostly Tracie installed) in the Telephone Box Museum.

These pieces will be worked on and developed as the tour progresses. But we stepped back from what we’d done, and we were pretty pleased with it. Chris and Paul seemed happy, too. 

From June 6th for the following four weeks, you can take a look at the exhibition (to look inside, you can ask for the keys from Chris and Paul in the church next door.)

We hope you enjoy the first showing of Wuthering Heights Rediscovered.