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
Wheat field is a short moving image work made in response to the rural landscape of Suffolk. Through the act of walking and listening, seeking a relationship between places of increasing marginalisation and the body, the artist documents the length of time it takes to walk a local public right of way across a field of industrial mono-cropped wheat.
The protagonist moves through the landscape their presence inferred. The swing of the microphone catches the momentum of walking, buffeted by the discomforting wind. The whispered voice of foreboding recounts the health and safety guidelines of Trooper® the herbicide used to dress these fields.
Wheat field is the culmination of several years of spontaneous, intermittent filming and sound recording while walking the local footpaths, reflecting on: the profligate use of chemicals; genetically engineered technologies turning fields into labs, blurring the boundaries between natural and synthetic; the impact on our environment, wildlife, human health; the fragility of the Suffolk landscape; the monotony of walking footpaths that cross acres of mono-crop.
Wheat field aims to embody this lonely, silent place of disquiet, sharing a bewildered disbelief at the damage we wreak on the natural world.
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.
landscape, rural, environment, marginalisation, walking, listening,
© Sophie Standford