Disrupted Landscapes

About

Disrupted Landscapes examines three representations of landscape by Colin Pantall, Dawn Rodgers and Mandy Williams, in which personal history, family trauma, and political narratives combine with the geology, geography, and the topographical uniqueness of England’s thin places.

In this vision, the past bleeds into the present, feet leave their imprints in the earth, but traces are also picked up from the earth. In Disrupted Landscapes, the earth holds knowledge, holds histories, and provides pathways between different strata of being and selfhood. 

Colin Pantall, a writer, lecturer and photographer based in Bath, is exhibiting 3 Valleys, which looks at the landscape around his home in Bath through the repeated walks he took where echoes of the past resonate through the contours of the land. Through these walks repeated over 20 years, different histories emerge; geological, economic, botanical, physical, and family histories. 

Dawn Rodgers, a visual artist and educator based in Berkshire, navigates the landscape of the Ridgeway in Dorset, Berkshire and Oxfordshire, using photography, mythology, and folklore as a means of exploring and expressing grief, loss and absence. Sorrow is a book and exhibition that focuses on the death of her brother 30 years ago, an expression of the absolute sorrow of un-reconciled grief, and the desolation of absence. 

Mandy Williams, a London-based artist working with photography, video and sound, is exhibiting a short video and photographs from her series Disrupted Landscapes (2020 - ), which distort and displace images of the white cliffs of Dover and Kent coastal landscape to suggest the increasingly hostile environment of a country divided by class, geography, and wealth in the post-Brexit age.