A Feld in England
Selected for inclusion in the Westmoreland Landscape Prize at the The Rheged Centre, Penrith, Cumbria - opening Friday the 13 September until Sunday 10 November 2019. I am often asked, ‘where is this?’ At the risk of sounding arrogant my answer is ‘in front of you’, meaning that it is what you see and not a representation of a specific place. I have been interested in the growing industrialisation of our countryside and in particular the landscape at the centre our food production. Fields are now producing crops 24/7, which can only be achieved with the help of the agrochemical industry. By portraying the familiar landscape and then overlaying an implied narrative that is ambiguous, possibly disconcerting but definitely ‘of our time’, our ‘green and pleasant land’ has the look of dystopia. As a genre in fiction dystopian societies are often characterized by dehumanisation, autocratic governments and environmental disaster, and are often used to...
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