KATHRYN MARTIN

“The land knows you, even when you are lost.”

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Any consideration of our relation to the land we inhabit is at once political, geographic, historical, and economic. How does the land shape our conception of personal space and collective place? Where does it start and end, what are its boundaries? How has this changed over time and why? And of course, who possesses the land? Who profits from the things that may grow from it or be built upon it?

To consider ourselves a part of the land – and the land as a part of us – requires other, hazier, questions. How does the land inhabit us? How do its contours and the elements shape our bodies? How can its rhythms regulate, reflect or heighten our emotions? What stories do we tell together?

In A Land Within, a group of female artists engage with both distinct geographical places – from a forgotten Bronze Age settlement to the moon – and imagined landscapes – interior fantasies or possible futures. Often steeped in history and research, their projects are linked by psychological vigilance, whimsical force and a spirit of exploration and adventure.

Kathryn Martin’s studio, in the South Downs, overlooks Itford Hill. Once a Bronze Age settlement excavated in the 1950s, its layers of chalk have long since resettled. For the project Come, See Real Flowers of This Painful World (2020), Martin collected and photographed 49 native wildflowers. Isolated against a graph paper backdrop, their thin stalks and delicate features belie their persistence. Her most recent project, Ossa (2023), draws together archival imagery from the original excavation with new photographs of the land’s contemporary rhythms. Flocks of birds fly across decades, and the moon shines and wanes. Like the tweedy archeologist, we long to stick our head in the dirt and know its secrets.

Véronique Rolland gives us exact coordinates for the geographical centre of Britain: 54°0’13.176”N 2°32’52.278”W. Set in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire, it is a protected Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, accessible only by a 6-hour hike. Rolland’s long trek pitted her against harsh elements, and she was at first unable to carry out the photographic survey she’d intended to make. She returned later, to a more peaceful reception, while the looming Scottish referendum threatened to decentre its symbolic meaning. Her images take multiple forms, offering undulating and immersive views of the heart of this uncertain collection of nations. In Memories of an Unknown Island, Rolland inverts her quest, looking inward to create a place full of lush natural textures and surfaces that become connected by the force of imagination.

Alison Lloyd forensically recorded her walks. In an approach she called contouring, she endeavoured “to follow the contours in the land, to enact a more sympathetic relation to landscape.” Through rugged wildernesses and urban centres, Lloyd set out alone, armed with tools for mapping and documenting. In 144 x 30 Seconds (2016-2022), a chronologically sequenced selection of iPhone recordings show snippets of observation over time, a kind of landscape journal that includes moments from pandemic isolation when she was unable to reach the Moors. Lloyd’s quiet journeys were a commitment to her connection to the landscape.

The recently cancelled project dearMoon sought to bring a group of artists, including Rhiannon Adam, on a trip to circumnavigate the moon. Funded by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maesawa, the idea was to offer a new perspective to inspire new work and ideas among the civilian passengers. Adam would have been the only woman and one of eight selected travellers selected from over a million applicants. In Rhi-Entry, Adam pieces together images and ephemera to explore the dream of this journey, the intense physical and psychological commitment it required, and ultimately the grief of its failure.

A Land Within rounds out with a few smaller ancillary projects in the Atrium space, including selections from wildlife photographer Eric Hosking’s images of Len Howard’s communal life with birds in the 1950s, found images of women reading in the landscape from Sara Knelman’s collection Lady Readers, and Molly Maltman’s poetic reading of Cosmic Certainties with an accompanying film. An interactive area invites visitors of all ages to reflect on the meaning of nature. Participants can examine objects from nature and create their own book, while a reading room curated by Photoworks invites viewers to linger and contemplate, reflect and dream.

A Land Within formed part of the 2024 Photo Fringe Festival.