Statement, January 2015

shetland war ruins project

My recent work has centred on a set of photographs taken at the remote site of Skaw, the Shetland Isles, Scotland, in mid-2014. At this barren, lonely headland lies a strange collection of ruinous World War II defence buildings, their brutal, utilitarian architecture surprising and eerie in this place of wild nature.

In investigating these buildings at Skaw, I’ve been considering the ruin and its significance. The ruin allows us to sense the conflicting forces of humans and nature - and to sense our own fragility. We are strangely drawn to this destruction however, giving ruins ‘sublime’ qualities, as seen in the other-worldly and grandiose work of Romantic artists such as Samuel Palmer and J.M.W. Turner. These artists have influenced my own drawing practise where I’ve approached the Skaw ruins with ethereality, romanticising their harsh brutal architecture with use of delicate pencil work, soft colour and translucent paper. Together with this, I’ve used more modern media such as installation and moving image, experimenting with projecting the Skaw photographs in darkened, cinematic and immersive installations. This meeting of the traditional and the technological is strange and at times uneasy, the materiality and hand-made qualities of drawing contrasting with projection’s illuminated, screen-like, virtual presence. In creating immersive installations using both these media, I aim to evoke an atmosphere of the ‘sublime’, drawing the viewer into an environment both enthralling and unnerving. Through this I hope to question changing meanings of the sublime ruin for us today, exploring its significance in light of today’s complex material environment and new unprecedented levels of destruction and ruination.