'Dig in the Ribs'

About

Troughton is interested in the lineage of particular raw materials and their usage, throughout history, in the development of new technologies and the language we use to describe them. A flint mine becomes research site for a series of works that collectively map the trails of ancient and modern data compressed over time.

Over the past few months, Troughton has been working at Grimes Graves, a Neolithic flint mine in Norfolk, which contains over 400 lunar-like pits believed to have been dug around 5,000 years ago. The artist describes the Neolithic period as being of particular influence: “It’s often cited as the beginning of place and the end of nomadism. With the Neolithic age came the beginning of agriculture. Land and soil, earth and body became synonymous.”

Troughton’s presentation, minimal by design, often belies the time-intensive nature of her research. The two installations she has created here, in the main gallery and in the shed space, while alluding to the landscape as complex site and art historical trope, appear derived from more ephemeral, possibly ritualistic practices. Troughton is interested in the representation of time that different means of documenting the site might describe. Through her imagery and actions in the gallery we are delivered between the dense layers of the physical world and digital realm, neither in one place or another.