Title: Teignmouth Electron
Author/Artist: Tacita Dean
Publisher: Bookworks
Media: Book
Reviewer: James Marriott
This is a remarkable book. Tacita Dean was shortlisted for the Turner prize last year for an exhibition of large-scale drawings and video installations dealing with Donald Crowhurst and the issues raised by his journey - how man copes with isolation, obsession with time, and the theme of being lost at sea. I went to the exhibition and have to admit I was less than impressed - I’ve never been a fan of video installation art, and I wasn’t aware of the broader context of Dean’s work. It looked a little dull, especially when seen alongside Cathy de Monchaux’s eroticised metal mandalas, but this book makes me want to see it again.
The story of Donald Crowhurst has been well documented in at least one non-fiction book, two films and a novel, Robert Stone’s Outerbridge Reach. It has a resonance which continues to attract attention - a CD given away at part of Labradford’s second Festival of Drifting was illustrated with one of the photos from this book. The Crowhurst saga is also cited as being the starting point for Chris Mikul’s obsession in the new Critical Vision book Bizarrism - so I won’t recap the story itself here. Teignmouth Electron is, in Dean’s words, ‘the culmination of a personal research and involvement with the voyage of Donald Crowhurst which has been part of my life now for over four years.’ It is a slim hardback volume which is profusely illustrated, principally with photos taken by Dean of Crowhurst’s eponymous boat, derelict, stripped and bleached by sun and surrounded by lush foliage in Cayman Brac. The photos are haunting and unusual, especially juxtaposed with the other images in the book - film stills from Crowhurst’s journey itself, stills from the films made about Crowhurst, and a postcard commemorating Crowhurst’s departure. This last points to a staggering tale of petty-minded England. It is widely believed that Crowhurst realised that his boat would not survive the journey, but that he felt under so much pressure from his local community, the Council of which was using the voyage to promote tourism in Teignmouth, that he didn’t feel he could back out. One of the Councillers is reported to have said, after Crowhurst’s boat was found, abandoned, that ‘The voyage has brought us more publicity than this Committee has managed in fifty years. We have had this extremely cheaply, and I hope the town appreciates it.’ Dean’s comments regarding this are worth quoting in full:
‘It is astounding with what ease they could pitch a man’s life against the revenue brought into their seaside resort by tourism. The language they wildly disproportionate to the hugeness of Crowhurst’s ordeal and human failing. You imagine that if you met Crowhurst in the Teignmouth Yachting Club, you might find him a bit arrogant, but as a human being, alone in an unremitting seascape trying to come to terms with his deteriorating psychological state and his monumental deception, his story is genuinely tragic and existential, and leaves the aspirations of Teignmouth Council and little England way, way behind.’
Dean’s angle on the Crowhurst tale, as portrayed here, reminded me of Alan Moore’s epilogue to his superb psychogeographical Jack the Ripper work, From Hell. The epilogue deals with the peripheral issues surrounding the case - it’s a document about the documentation rather than the events themselves, and comes across as being all the more interesting for it. Dean’s book, similarly, constructs a tangential framework around the journey itself, with short pieces on the current owner of the boat, time-madness and the works of Ballard, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and the two films, along with very personal recollections of her own journey to Teignmouth to discover more about Crowhurst. It’s a beautifully written and lavishly constructed work, with each short piece providing a novel yet relevant context for the rest. It’s an art book, so doesn’t come cheap - but highly recommended nonetheless.