Output details

The Quarry

Research towards the production of six new artefacts, sometimes comprised of image or material clusters, each with a shared methodology and exhibited as group. Preliminary research included detailed site explorations of Oxted Quarry, Surrey, in response to Robert Smithson’s 'Chalk-Mirror Displacement' produced for the ICA London exhibition of ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ (1969), and a further response to its later mis-archiving in public records (artefact 4. Caption, 2013).

The Quarry re-evaluated Smithson’s site/nonsite dialectic in relation to current technologies and to new considerations of the document and archive within the production and presentation of contemporary works (artefact 3. Leave Stone, 2013). Two further artefacts re-evaluated Smithson’s proposal of entropy, proposing instead that land sites are ‘succeeded’ by vegetation following industrial use (artefacts 2. Quarry 1 / Discovering Neptune, 2012; 6. Mirror Travel, 2013).

Research began in October 2011 with three site visits to the Quarry - the location of Smithson’s 1969 work. Sound recordings and photographs were made and further documented walking surveys. In 2012 five additional site visits included filming and the first triangulation photographs. Initial research, entitled ‘Oxted England’, was exhibited at Two Queens, Leicester, July 2012. In October 2012 further related site visits were made to three chalk quarries in Yorkshire and red chalk was collected from Norfolk. In January 2013, 1,350 photographs were produced (artefact 2. Quarry 1 / Orbital, 2013) contextualised by 65 triangulation photographs and film material (artefact 1. The Quarry Trailer, 2013).

This research revealed the post-production paradox of Smithson’s proposal of site/non-site, in that recent UK exhibitions have excluded Smithson's site work (Firstsite, 2011, John Hansard Gallery, 2013). In July 2013 Danby (and his collaborator) photographed Smithson’s work at John Hansard Gallery creating an archival document of its installation and developed the body of research outcomes towards presentation at a symposium.