Anya Gallaccio's - Large scale photographic works installed at Snape Maltings and Orford Ness
Date uploaded: June 16, 2014
Anya Gallaccio has been commissioned by Aldeburgh Music and 14-18 NOW to create new works for SNAP 2014. These works are inspired by the early experiments in aerial photography and the air bombing tests that took place during World War One on Orford Ness.
Now an unusual National Trust nature reserve, Orford Ness is a remote shingle spit on the Suffolk coast, with a mysterious military past that has resulted in a landscape formed of strange derelict buildings and debris as well as the huge reserve of vegetated shingle for which it is famous. Orford Ness is an extraordinary place that is constantly changing and eroding – it has qualities that are at the heart of Anya Gallaccio’s art.
Her installations on Orford Ness and at Snape Maltings will comprise images made using extreme magnification to depict the inner structures of imploded material taken from the site of those early experiments. Working from a small sample bag of material taken from the Orford Ness site she has almost magically produced a series of large photographic ‘landscapes’ from its content.
These images have been printed and stretched onto metal structures so that they can be viewed at an angle and in the outdoor landscape. The works reference the almost abstract quality of early war photographs and their perspectives of land from the air and also her interest in the painted camouflage flats that were employed during wartime to disguise the land from above.
Given that the images will be extracted from the constantly shifting landscape of shingle at Orford Ness, the installations address the site’s mysterious military past as well as its unique geological being. This new project, like much of Anya Gallaccio’s work develops her explorations of organic matter - its structure and the forces of decay and destruction.
This project has been co-commissioned by Aldeburgh Music and 14-18 NOW, WW1 Centenary Art Commissions supported using public funding by the National Lottery through the Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and with the support of the National Trust.
SNAP is the ambitious contemporary visual arts component of the Aldeburgh Festival, founded in June 2011 by artists Abigail Lane and Sarah Lucas, with the integral involvement of Sadie Coles and Michael Craig Martin. The shows are developed and coordinated by Abigail Lane in association with Aldeburgh Music. This is the first time SNAP has developed a project with a solo artist. In 2015, SNAP will return to its original format as group exhibition and plans are currently underway for an exhibition that incorporates the village of Snape for the 2015 Aldeburgh Festival.
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