The self-taught singer and sculptor from Alabama exists in a state of constant, spontaneous creativity. He talks about his roots and his new project with Artangel, inspired by Orford Ness
In his elaborately discursive way, Lonnie Holley is telling me about the first time he set foot on Orford Ness, a 10-mile-long shingle spit on the Suffolk coast earlier this year. Now a protected nature reserve, it is an austere, windblown landscape of deserted roads and the shells of military buildings, the residue of its former use as a military testing site during the first and second world wars.
“Stepping off the boat and walking over the levee to encounter all these strange structures, my brain was taking me all over the place,” he says, his eyes widening at the memory. “I’ve always wandered deep into ruins, but this was something different. I could feel the energy. I could feel it.”
