An English Landscape
Date uploaded: June 4, 2014
In collaboration with Media Space and The Science Museum, Art on the Underground present Trevor Paglen in conversation with Ossian Ward at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre, London - on Thursday 19th of June 2014, from 7pm to 9pm. The American artist comes together with Ossian Ward to discuss his new Art on the Underground commission An English Landscape (American Surveillance Base near Harrogate, Yorkshire) for Gloucester Road station in the context of his broader practice.
An English Landscape, is a large, panoramic photograph installed across the length of a disused station platform at Gloucester Road Tube station. The installation is evocative of a long history of art made in response to the British landscape. The artwork seeks to give the impression of looking through the platform’s brick arches onto a bucolic English landscape. Specifically, this is the North Yorkshire countryside around Menwith Hill. In the middle of the scene there is a cluster of white, geodesic dome structures used by the United States in communications and intelligence gathering operations.
Paglen's photographic work explores ways of seeing and interpreting the world around us, and An English Landscape is the latest in a series of work that seeks to expand the visual vocabulary we use to “see” the phenomena of global surveillance, most recently with night-time pictures of National Security Agency (NSA) sites in the United States.
Ossian Ward is Head of Content at Lisson Gallery and a writer on contemporary art. Until 2013, he was the chief art critic and Visual Arts Editor at Time Out London. His new book, Ways of Looking: How to Experience Contemporary Art is due to be published in September 2014 by Laurence King.
This event is a collaboration between Media Space, Science Museum and Art on the Underground.
To book tickets click here.
