Output details

The Atlantic Basin Project

The project is the collective result of on-going, long term practice-led research that has been undertaken for the last 25 years. It comprises a photographic, multi-phasic, exploratory set of field circumnavigations – attempting to compile research and completed work from all the major terrestrial cardinal land-points, from all the continental land-masses, surrounding the entire Atlantic Ocean. Reflective and thematic sea-pictures have been undertaken which investigate current debate and problems concerning both the actual ‘physical condition’ of the Atlantic basin itself, whist using these investigations to parallel an investigation into the human condition. What is the effect of place in the human condition? How is the idea of the ‘edge’ defined and communicated through the pictorial?

The research methodology consists of philosophical issues developed out of the physical act of mapping territory. The method for gathering the field research is consistent across various segments of this project. Studies of historical geography and contemporary cartography locate the visual locales and one single picture is made and accumulated with others across the particular site map that has been constructed.

The project aims to contribute to the fields of artistic practice and cultural geography. Negotiating problems facing 15th – through 19th century maritime navigators and explorers and, on parallel with contemporary cultural concerns surrounding the effects of the actual beginnings of globalization and contextualizing them within the inquiry that the new geographies and post-modern cartography, the project addresses issues regarding the study of the consequences of maps and atlases. Whereas in the age of digital representation cartography aims to describe formal qualities through visual simulation, the project aims to simultaneously photographically describe and interpret specific locations, whilst negotiating the conceptual and philosophical implications of “the edge” – both as geographical attribute and as metaphor of a cultural and human condition.