UNFOUND

‘UNFOUND’ is an art work addressing the landscape of the Somme for the centenary of the Battle of the Somme July 1916 – November 1916. The work takes the form of a 23’00 film with sound and was made in response to an invitation from Diaphane. The work addresses the landscape of the Somme in the present through a series of durational visual and sound episodes which eschew narrative development and denoument, instead focusing upon everyday details of seasonal change, light and industrial presences which encroach upon the Somme cemeteries.The framing of the film acknowledges that what is seen is overdetermined by the history of the site as a ‘theatre of war’, and that landscape photography in this context, as with institutionalised memorials, tends to conceal as much as it reveals. The film therefore focuses on fragments of personal text inscriptions on individual cemetery headstones which require constant re-engraving against the erosion of time, and suggests that it is the act of reinscription of these fragile texts which has the capacity to call up the past into the present. The work was premiered at Diaphane’s annual Photaumnales festival at Le Quadralitere, Beauvais, France in October 2016 and again in 2018. It was also screened in November 2016, at Fabrica as part of the Brighton Film Festival. A paper presentation "Territories of Remembrance' was given and screenings of the film took place at ‘Being in Place: On the Highs and Lows of Situated Practice’, conference and exhibition organized by PLACE International, Dept. of Art and Humanities, University of Dundee 2016, and at 'Territories' Land/Water Annual Symposium Plymouth University 2017. An accompanying illustrated catalogue published by Diaphane contains a text by the artist, a commissioned essay from Yves Abrioux and a DVD of the film ISBN 978-2-919077-39-7