Points Estate, 2023
I arrived at Points Estate on a cold, gray day in March 2018. The estate was located in a remote corner of the North East of England, though I am unable to share the exact location. It was surrounded by rolling hills, fields, and forests and the only sign of life was a small cluster of sheep and a small farmhouse in the distance.
I was met at the door by Alice Castroe, the reclusive sculptor who, along with her partner and collaborator Ted Vallum, has lived on the estate since 1957. Vallum greeted me at the door. She was tall, dressed in a burgundy suit and black tie, and wore a pair of thick-rimmed yellow acrylic reading glasses. Beside her was Ted—also tall—dressed in a forest green double-breasted suit, embroidered throughout with a leaf motif. Both were barefoot. Ted was holding a stack of notecards he later told me he’d recently finished embossing using a weighted stone press.
They led me through their sparsely decorated house and out to the studio, a stone hand-built outhouse with vast doors and a trackmarked dirt path greeting it. The studio was filled with large, abstract sculptures made of concrete and steel. The sculptures were all black and white, and while they had stark, geometric appearances, the room felt warm and welcoming.
Vallum told me that they had been working on many of these sculptures for over 50 years. He said that they were inspired by the industrial landscape of Northern England, and he wanted the sculptures to reflect the harsh beauty of the region and until now, they’d just never felt sure they could share them with others.
I spent the next few hours photographing Castroe and Vallum’s works. While I was not allowed to touch any of the sculptures, I was able to get close enough to some to capture details. When I was finished, they took me for a drive around the estate, with Castroe behind the wheel of a white Porsche Macan—a prototype of the first generation model which he claimed to have received in trade from a fabricator friend he had attended engineering trade school in the early 1950s. We drove past fields, forests, and rivers, each peppered with their otherworldly works. They pointed out some of their favorite spots on the estate, and told me stories about the making of the sculptures while Northern Soul classics played at a low volume over the car’s speakers.
As we drove, I took a photograph of Vallum in silhouette. At time of printing it’s the only recorded portrait of the artist.
This was the first time their work had been documented photographically by an outside source. Upon departing, I asked why me, and why now? Castroe said she would write to me to tell me exactly why. She never did write, and nor did I discover the why, but Vallum passed away a few months later. The estate remains private but their sculptures can live on through these photos. They are a testament to their talent and quiet, private vision.
The photographs I took of Castroe and Vallum's sculptures are all black and white, per Vallum's request. They believed that black and white photography was the best way to capture the stark, geometric beauty of his work and made it a requirement of the commission.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have visited Points Estate and to have photographed the sculptures. It was a unique and unforgettable experience, the memory of which equally thrills and haunts me.
Limited edition archival prints are available of these works in the Editions store.
An accompanying zine, Points Estate, was published in September 2023 by Brown Griffin. Order a copy here.
Points Estate is a work of autofiction photographed on location in Cumbria, England.