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Shona Illingworth is known for her powerful
and evocative video and sound installations. In this,
her most ambitious work to date, the artist returns to
the place in which she grew up - the remote community
and
former radar base of Balnakiel, on the North West Coast
of Scotland.
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The film work at the centre
of the exhibition offers a vivid portrait of this remarkable
location, situated at the furthermost edge of Britain.
Here, the extremes and vicissitudes of weather are echoed
by the intermittent thunder of RAF and Royal Navy manoeuvres,
as the area remains an active bombing range. Balnakiel
reveals this brooding, melancholy landscape and the lives
of successive residents, both of Balnakiel and the nearby,
older clearance village of Durness, which has its own
violent legacy dating from the time of the Highland Clearances.
The personal journeys of a young girl and the voices
and recollections of other local inhabitants build a captivating
picture of this community situated at the forefront of
social and cultural change.
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The work considers the complex interaction between individual
and collective memory, informed by a series of exchanges
with cognitive psychologist Martin A. Conway.
Through these conversations, the artist has produced a
range of scientific drawings that, alongside the film,
attempt to map a new understanding of the experience and
behaviour of human memory in the face of trauma.
The exhibition also features a powerful collection of
photographic portraits of the Balnakiel community, taken
by Illingworth. Celebrating the resilience of these isolated
settlements, while noting the slow and progressive history
of depopulation that haunts this landscape, Balnakiel
gives voice to contrasting perceptions and constructions
of the past.
Download
exhibition guide (pdf)
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Shona Illingworth
has exhibited extensively in Europe, Canada and the UK
and has received a number of high profile awards, including
commissions for Channel 4, the Hayward Gallery and the
Wellcome Trust. She lives and works in London.
Professor Martin A. Conway is a neuro-psychologist
and one of the foremost international experts in the field
of Autobiographical Memory. He currently holds a prestigious
ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) Professorial
Fellowship at Leeds University.
Film and Video Umbrella is the UK’s
leading agency for the commissioning and production of
artists’ film and
video work. For over twenty years the organisation has
presented an ambitious and engaging programme of contemporary
moving image commissions, delivered in collaboration with
galleries and venues across England. Projects of the last
decade include commissions by Tacita Dean, Dryden Goodwin,
Isaac Julien, Mark Leckey, Gillian Wearing and Jane &
Louise Wilson. FVU is funded by Arts
Council England. www.fvu.co.uk
Balnakiel is commissioned by Film
and Video Umbrella in association with John
Hansard Gallery and Wolverhampton Art
Gallery. Funded by Arts Council England
and an Arts Award from the Wellcome
Trust. |
