The Unearthings
A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
Photomontage
Performative Drawing
Act of Listening
About
@hortus_silvam
2022-2025
performative action; moving image; sound
Unearthing the ‘rural’ in a local East Anglian landscape, where the wild and industrial intersect and elide.
Single channel HD video | short film | colour | 8’28” | sound
Gallery | Site specific exhibition: projection of moving image as continuous loop, to fill the wall of a space, bringing the rural into the city, immersive sound, no chairs
The protagonist follows a fugitive, formless footpath across a monocropped field of wheat. Moving through the landscape, their presence is inferred. A rhythm and repetition of each pause for breath and ominous distant rumble, reflects the uncompromising demands of industrial farming. The discomforting distortion of the wind against footsteps evokes heartbeat fluctuations; an aleatory effect caught by the swing of the microphone in the momentum of walking. The voice whispers a foreboding to the proximity of this forlorn landscape, contemplating the irreparable chemical effects.
Location: Suffolk, UK
A rural idyll is a theme the artist keeps returning to, concerned with the concept of ‘nature’, and questioning the perceived ‘rural idyll’ of the East Anglian landscape. Wheat field builds on the tradition of walking as art practice, with particular interest in local, liminal rural-industrial landscapes.
landscape, rural, environment, marginalisation, walking, listening,
© Sophie Standford