Surveillance: Down, Between, Up

Description

2024
Drawings, graphite on paper
Triptych
Three panels, each 70 x 50 cm
70 x 160 cm total

I first encountered Durlston, Dorset on a coast path walk, skirting the land’s edge and feeling an abruptness to this jutting peninsula. The sense of divide between water and land is visceral.

I felt like a sentinel at this crossing point (the castle is pure theatre), a gathering stage for birds migrating between Africa and the northern Tundra. It’s hard for me to ignore its allegorical subtext, being the child of an immigrant. Humans are more mobile now than ever, and a different sense of watchfulness and guardianship is in the air.

I created this trio of drawings thinking about that and the kind of England that we’ve made.

This work was first shown in Convergence, a show by twenty3 art collective, at the Fine Foundation Gallery, Durlston Country Park, Swanage in April 2024. It is currently touring in the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 exhibition as a shortlisted work.