An audiovisual installation focusing on North East England’s last boatyard in the weeks before its closure. Featuring a two-screen video and stereo sound installation, The Endeavour is an immersive evocation of the craft of shipbuilding which defined the recent industrial past of the region, and an homage to its historical protest. Karikis observes in intimate detail the old boatbuilder’s choreographed craftsmanship, the unfamiliar tools of his trade, the textures of the boatyard after years of exposure to the tides, and the community of retired shipbuilders gathering around the make-shift stove. The cacophony of the boatyard is juxtaposed with a local choir reciting a roll call of seemingly “nonsense” words corresponding to the names of obsolete professions, while a harmonica player performs the minstrel song Swanee River that was played by the local shipyard workers of the iconic Jarrow Crusade on their long march to London in 1936.
