This body of work continues my exploration into mountain landscape and a consideration of how we experience, encounter and inhabit wild spaces. I’m interested in how the prolonged gaze, and active, physical engagement with place might alter and deepen our relationship with the land.

Much of this work is concerned with the stretching out of two different experiences of time – lived-time whilst walking, where an awareness of time passing, twilight, and the rhythms of the seasons are made tangible; and the deep time of geology where time stretches out in ways difficult to imagine on a human scale.

The title of the show “Below, the rocks plunged into darkness” comes from WH Murray’s book Mountaineering in Scotland. Whilst in a German prison camp during World War II, Murray secretly wrote his memories of climbing in Scotland. In the first chapter, he recalls spending twenty-four hours on the Cuillin where he describes the sublime beauty of a dawn cloud inversion, followed by a glorious day climbing the ridge and the sensation of body moving in perfect harmony with rock, then wild swimming in Loch Coruisk - these riches mentally sustaining him during his ordeal.

For me, landscape isn’t simply a thing to passively view and admire; it’s something to be with, to be a part of. That we might begin to understand ourselves and the land we occupy through an embodied knowledge gained through a slow, quiet attentiveness, respect, and care for such places seems to me to be of great value.

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Works in the exhibition:

Collection, 2018 - Vitrine Box containing various rocks, wall based map/diagram with text, and A2 poster

Coloured hills - text paintings, 2016-2017 :

Meall Buidhe - oil on board, Sgurr Dubh Mor - oil on board, Geal Charn - silverpoint on board , Beinn a’ Ghlo - oil on board , Blah Bheinn - oil on board, Carn Liath - oil on board

A Glossary of coloured hills - 2016 inkjet print/text piece

Signs of spring – 2018 inkjet print/text piece

Schaft/chas – 2018 Light-jet photographic print

Last light, first light – 2018 (the last daylight of 2016 and the first daylight of 2017) Light-jet photographic print

Nightfall, Daybreak - 2018 Unique Platinum print (text)

Remoteness is a medium of clarification - 2018 Unique Platinum print (text)

The Hide – 2016-18 Digital super 16mm film

A Darkening - 2015-18 Digital super 16mm film

Dark Mountain: Schiehallion - 2017 Graphite on paper

Malmberget/Fe - 2009 Cyanotype from polaroid negative

Strontian/Pb - 2000/2018, Silver gelatin print from polaroid negative

Sgurr - 2017, Silicon carbide & plywood