The Nature of a Finding
The timber plantation is made up of simplified columnar trunks embellished with intricate minutiae that are brought into visibility by the light that steals into the densely planted space. Insight grows through the sensing and contemplation of things to become a physical embodied knowing and constancy: the nature of a finding.
The video sequence 'Finding' that sought to capture the feeling of being within ecological space, was filmed at Marrival, on the Isle of North Uist in 2011. An experimental Forestry Commission plantation of twenty-two North American varieties of Sitka Spruce and Lodgepole Pine, it was planted as an experiment by the Forestry Commission (1969), to investigate the challenging conditions of the Outer Hebrides for future forestry. The video sequence records the movement of early spring sunlight passing through a dense, decaying pine wood.
The viewer experiences the power of rhythmic and continuous movement created by the uncanny swaying of the gangly trees in the pappy, unstable, peat soil they are growing in. Even the softest of winds cause the whole plantation to careen. This experience is brought into the large 10m x 1.5m drawing ' The Nature of a Finding', presented in a suspended spiral form as a portal to 'experience' the eight dry days that afforded the possibility of making the drawing in the early summer of 2011.
