Rhys Morgan: Seaweed in the Fruit Locker documents the LGBTQIA+ Sea Shanty choir of the same name created by Plymouth-based queer artist, Rhys Morgan. The project explores lost histories and queer motifs through the tradition of shanty singing. Morgan and the choir use their lived experiences to rework existing shanties and inspire new ones, responding to personal stories and local histories. As Seaweed in the Fruit Locker has developed, it has become a project of co-creation, with members of the choir workshopping and contributing their own shanties to their growing repertoire, continuing the tradition of these hybrid folk songs being adapted time and again through generations and across cultures. 

Seaweed In The Fruit Locker works as both an art project, and as a functioning choir. The project has enabled artist Rhys Morgan to bring his singing practice to his art practice in a socially-engaged way. Sea shanties traditionally narrate maritime stories, and Rhys and the choir members both celebrate and subvert this tradition by weaving in stories of contemporary queer lived experiences, highlighting the queer narratives found within the historical form of shanties. In this form, shanties bring people together, allow for a collaborative space, and celebrate queer communities and queer joy. 

For the performance at Kingsbridge Celebrates Christmas, Harbour House have commissioned the Seaweed In The Fruit Locker choir to create a new sea shanty exploring local seafaring histories around the lost village of Hallsands. On 26th January 1917, the village collapsed into the sea, destroying the entire village. The damage was so catastrophic due to gales, extremely high tides, and because of dredging work completed at the end of the 1890s along the coast of Hallsands and Beesands. The dredging was carried out to collect shingle for the expansion of the naval dockyard at Keyham, Plymouth, and subsequently caused incremental damage to the coastline at Hallsands and Beesands. In the storm of 1917, none of the villagers died, but many lost their homes and livelihoods, including Hallsands residents the Trout sisters: fisherwomen who subsequently ran the hotel next to the lost village.  Also in 1917, Ella Trout helped rescue nine men from a sinking ship when SS Newholm hit a German naval mine just off Start Point.

In the first room of the exhibition, you can watch a documentary film showing Morgan and the choir performing at Kingsbridge Celebrates Christmas and documenting his research in Kingsbridge as part of the project. For the first few days after the performance, while we finish making the film you will instead be able to view Seaweed In The Fruit Locker filmed in Plymouth for the exhibition We Are Floating In Space at Newlyn and The Exchange.

The exhibition and the choir both take their name from their titular shanty, Seaweed in the Fruitlocker, which is written in the secret language Polari, adopted by the queer community as a means of communicating during times of societal oppression. Before this, the language had been used by many marginalised communities, such as traveler communities and sailors. Throughout the project Morgan explores the importance of language in constructions of identity, how language shifts and changes, and how it can be used to create both visibility and invisibility. You can learn more about Polari and write your own shanty in the resource area at the back of the gallery. 

Harbour House is dedicated to creating a safe and welcoming space for LGBTQIA+ communities in Kingsbridge and beyond, and for showing artwork which celebrates queer voices/centres on queer lived experiences. These have been shared aims with the young people we have been working with at Kingsbridge Community College.