A Darkroom project travel residency 2020/2021
Handprinted 35mm
At the start of 2020 I was awarded a supported travel residency through the Darkroom.ie to explore the landscapes around me. It was a simple idea of capturing landforms across changing counties and bring them back to the studio to tie them into my sculptural practice. This project was negotiated through the rolling lockdowns as county borders closed around me. In making this epic journey I took heed from Dr. William Dyer of Miskatonic University and was to discern one can never have too many note books of sketching paper or film to capture what might unfold. (At The Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft)
SCALING THE UNTOLD: AN EXPEDITION OF A MAKING
The following is a collection of observations regarding the makings of an expedition.
I write this by the intermittent flare of my camera flash. Forgive me in advance, I hope I do not make too much of the daunting task of venturing forth.
I had spent some time massaging the minutiae and myriad details proceeding my journey. I planned where I was to arrive and by what means of transit. When the time came I armed myself with a strong canvas bag containing a good multi-purpose tool to gouge a path forward, fillers in all shapes and sizes, a good knife, samples of soft rock I could carve if I found a moment, some stakes to hold firm the turf, and notebooks to jot down my observations. Lastly, but most importantly, I would take a good number of cameras including a phone to capture a visual record. The latter two objects on my list hewed to the past and multiple regrets of Dr. William Dyer. Films and notebooks had been in short supply on the Miskatonic University engineering departments expedition to Antartica.
After constant changes of mind and struggles with the inevitable practicalities that arose, I found some chaotic way forward to reach the edge of the valley to plug into that glorious light that I was told about. The time had at last come to put the show on the road and set out into this vast vista and meet its challenges, even if it would mean several repeat expeditions.
I gasped at my first observations… Could there be any place more natural and alive than what my eyes beheld? The length and the breadth of the scene was something I had never thought I would envision on such a scale in my lifetime.
I advanced with my tools clearing a path as I went. Tiring slightly, I took the opportunity to rest. I perched myself comfortably behind the softly molded boulders and unloaded a flask of cold coffee with dry crackers and a hard cheese.
Taking up one of the cameras around my neck, I busied focusing a wide-angle lens to make the most of the spread of earthy soft clays warm under a light tinted like a late afternoon, the sharp cut of the valley forced upwards in its forming. One could pick out through the viewfinder the evolving layers and mayhem of the forever changing landscape through its forming phases, the eons and the epochs of folded time.
Cascading hills gently fell away from the once Corry lake, which was now a hole in the rough-hewn rock that stretched out to a half-recognizable world. I clicked away winding on film after film; there could never be enough rolls to capture this.
I had intended to venture as far as the distant mountains and trek to the hidden shadowy valley beyond it. In their far-awayness the mountains were massed in a jumbled haphazard manner, I couldn’t quite place what range they could be even from my scrawled pre-fabricated notes, but their somewhat majestic lofty peaks stood out against a dense wall of scummelled clouds. I was, I remember, vaguely reminded of the fairly high mountains of the Great World ranges and continents of other explorers but I wasn’t quite sure. For future expeditions I noted I would need several more batteries than I had thought to bring. BRING MORE BATTERIES I wrote boldly, AND EVEN MORE FILM. My notebooks, I knew, would eventually run out as the lists were getting longer. To go the full distance would require greater supplies. And when I did go I knew connecting to other worlds might be impossible as technical devices might go on the blink with the definite possibility of only receiving intermittent signals.
Still perched drinking my coffee, my crackers concomitantly gnawed, my eye followed the outline of the valley and the boggy grounds on the valley floor. Along the route rising to the hills there looked to be an unfinished track. I hoped the tools I had with me could help maneuver a path over the rough patch, though it might take some time.
I moved on to the next set of boulders. An abandoned crude structure jutted out just within my line of sight. I deduced it was most likely an Un-noun: an anomaly and by-product of our time, less rare now and found more and more plentifully scattered and populating the most remote places, once-worldly objects associated with a practical use, now lost.
The valley had settled after a violent formative period. I had read something about it in an international geographical periodical, holiday brochure, or antique leaflet. It would, I later learned, remain as it lay only for a few months more before impending violent parting eruptions would draw and quarter it once again.
As I rested, there was a comforting sound of whirring in the distance below the high mountains billowing out heat waves that could be felt in the air and landscape around me. I nodded off to the flapping of abominable gulls high above my head.
It was late in the day now and there was a growing reluctance on my part to continue; not because of the impending lack of light making the stark, sharply-cut and steep mountainsides unworkable, but my unsureness of my usual assuredness. I feared stumbling into the chiseled cracks and crazed fissures in the surface skirting the rock formations. On another page I sketched their extraordinary patterns. What geologist would recognize these twisted renderings? The un-imaginable was too vast: it was only the imaginable that I could grasp.
In my gut I despaired of sinkholes, landslides, and loose debris. This un-hinged land was not created with the practicality of a scientist or architect. But then how could I not marvel at such soft splendiferous colours blending so seamlessly into one another? My doubt was assuaged. A mere watercolour artist could appreciate the subtleties surrounding me. Note to self was my final entry…
Written by Wendy Judge
Edited by Antonio Beecroft