Ways and Meanings

How do we make sense of a land and of ourselves? The far north of Scotland is a mythic landscape, very much bound up with a sense of self and of cultural identity.The search for what is "really there" is bound to be an endless circle, as we chase one illusion after another. But we can't help doing it... so on we go. 150 years of romanticism have so shaped our conception of the land that we are often unable to realise the highly coded and commodified nature of the environment. Yet the land and its signs resist simple deconstruction. Whether visualised as a transcendental thing of beauty or an economic proposition, the land engages us as participants as well as observers.

Faced with the discrepancy between the actual and the idealised, our gaze becomes increasingly selective; we reframe the land by a complex process of editing "intrusive" items, finding a sense of the natural in a small area underfoot or in a view beyond roads. As well as addressing some of the socio-political factors which are at work in our systems of perception, I would like to question what it means to apply the concept of aesthetics in a damaged land. I try to find a way by including, not excluding.