Lab 1

In the First World War research and trials took place to find effective camouflage colour palettes and patterns on day and night flying machines on Orford Ness, including painted aeroplane body work and wings. Experiments were largely based on observation, trial and error in relation to the landscape and viewpoints from above and below.

I will spend my time around, and in, the Power House drawing and painting to observe and record the colour palette of the shingle and vegetation found below the horizon line. I hope to make a series of works that are inspired by experimental abstract mark-making and colour combinations of the landscape.  This builds on work that I undertook last year called Flora Spectrum Orford Ness that charts the a seasonal colour palette of fifty-five common and rare plants recorded on Orford Ness.

I hope to use some of the original 1917 Orford Ness colour ‘recipes’ found in archival research carried out by Roland Edwards, National Trust volunteer and IRGON (International Research Group Orford Ness). My colour mixing and observations will inform largescale painted work that I hope to record in the Power House and back in the landscape.

Lab 2

After a visit to Orford Ness, I was struck by the vast 360-degree horizon landscape and the lines, grids and tracings it contained. In particular, how different ordnance surveillance mediums (aerial photography, drawings, maps and plotting) were utilised by the MOD for recording bomb trajectories and flight paths. Also, I was intrigued by the Manby Mortar lines that were used by The Coast Guard Lookout - the throwing out of a line and the dragging and pulling back. The vegetated shingle also holds repeated lines ‘drawn’ over thousands of years as well as the discarded cables and tracks used for large camera recordings.

Using the Power House and surrounding area as a base, I plan to set up a series of simple experiments that respond to these ‘line’ elements, including the wind and light which are an integral part of the changing landscape here. Using chance and autonomous tracing/ tracking as part of the working process I will create connections between physical/ active drawing, pinhole photography, and the original plotting of the North/ South and West/ East bomb ballistic trajectory paths and their points of impact.

Lab 3

My attention has been caught by a number of ideas I want to explore during this Research Art Lab residency on Orford Ness.  One of these is around NIVO, abbreviated from Night Invisible Varnish Orfordness. This overall paint finish was applied to British night bomber aircraft in the inter-war period (1918–1939). Developed in 1918 by the experimental station at Orford Ness as a low-visibility colouring for the Royal Air Force, it had a sheen to match that of ‘open water on a moonlit night’. I am intrigued by such a poetic origin employed towards military utility.

This has also led to an interest in early aviation activity and the skies above Orford Ness. My focus currently lies, in particular, with the omnipresent line of the horizon. It becomes a reference point, but one of shifting scale, rife with illusion and inaccuracy, often resulting in misjudgement of location and distance. These errors are those of idiosyncratic sight, invisibility that lurks within a ubiquitous visibility.

Using camera lucida drawings and NIVO painted objects, and employing homemade camera rigs with which to record the horizon, I plan to spend my residency testing out the parameters of a kind of ‘skewed visible’.

Lab 4

My plan for the Research Art Lab is to develop a series of experimental works on paper and fabric, using photographic studies, rubbings and drawings of the surrounding landscape as a starting point. I aim to integrate selected sources derived from my current practice within this, to create a visual dialogue with the context of the site, its history and the work generated there and beyond. One of these sources is a small group of painted wooden birds made by artisans from Hyderabad, India – which I intend to photograph using the accessible areas of the site as a backdrop. I am interested in how this activity might be ‘read’ in relation to observing the existing migratory patterns of birds at Orford Ness; and the potential for this to be developed as a visual metaphor for my concerns around cultural hybridity. As an additional layer to this, I would like to integrate my current interests in lightness, shimmer, colour and repetition. Specifically, to explore the potential overlap between the stylistic qualities of shell suits and the patterns used in the visual aesthetics of disruptive camouflage.

Lab 5

During my time at the Power House I will make preliminary work focused on fluid dynamics by integrating Orford Ness’s environmental features with its legacy of ballistics testing and radar experimentation. Drawing on my interest in scientific and artistic visual practices, I will explore how fluid flows—such as air and water currents—intersect with historical practices of tracking, targeting, and measuring movement. Engaging in field-based drawing, research in relevant archives at the Hold, Suffolk Archives and the Tate, I will delve into parallels between natural flows and the engineered trajectories once tested on site. I may sketch shifting clouds, water movements, ballistic arcs and radar signals, exploring patterns in natural and technical systems and examining how fluid dynamics can reflect larger systems of control, uncertainty, and environmental transformation.

Lab 6

During my time at the Research Art Lab, I am interested in exploring the flora of Orford Ness, in a series of works exploring floriography - the language of flowers, which was popularised in the 19th century, and in Victorian England in particular. I am intrigued in how this coded form of communication might relate to the history of codes and official secrets surrounding the site at Orford Ness as a military testing site. I aim to make a series of collages incorporating pressed flowers, and photographs using 35mm colour film. Building upon the well-known Victorian vernacular, I hope to add new flowers and new meanings in order to build my own personal lexicon of floriography that is specific to Orford Ness.

Lab 7

Whilst here, I am considering the word ‘exposure’ and also a second word, ‘focus’. I am proposing to be on The Ness each month, over the course of one year, to determine the changes and constants that I note in relation to these two words and to see what emerges from this. 

Keeping to the prescribed routes on the Ness is beginning to yield unexpected visual opportunities. My behaviour as an artist here feels more akin to that of a naturalist - waiting, looking, spotting, tracking, retracing steps and staking out vantage points. Being patient, slow thought and small advances becoming allied. 

 The Ness has been described to me as ‘curated decay’ and for this reason I have set myself a rule of not picking anything up. This goes against my nature as an artist and requires all my will power. 

Endurance, as a quality, feels aligned to the particular hazards and potentials that this extreme environment brings to all living things. The fact that living things are set apart by their differences and adapt to function alongside one another embodies an ethical tension where humans are concerned and especially in light of the workforce, six hundred plus, that once occupied The Ness.

The MOD first utilised this isolated location and its natural resources in 1913 with far less concern, perhaps, for the fragility of its mineral, liquid, plant and animal ecosystem. Exposure and focus appear to be vital forces here, physically and metaphorically, whether under or over, soft or sharp.

Lab 8

I would like to take this opportunity to look a little closer at the flora that is able to survive and thrive in Europe's largest vegetated shingle spit. As a visitor, you are immediately struck by the seemingly barren landscape of the Ness, littered with disused military structures. It can be easy to miss the life that's growing right underneath our feet. I hope that my drawings will allow me, and other visitors, to pay attention to Orford Ness as a Nature Reserve, and appreciate the work the Rangers are doing to monitor and maintain the site.

Lab 9

During my time at the Research Art Lab on Orford Ness I will be attempting some experiments using high speed photography and film, a technique used on the Ness during its military occupation. Filming at high frame rates allowed fast moving projectiles to be captured in slow motion to precisely record their trajectory. Rather than capturing the flight of a projectile as was done on the Model Range, I will attempt to capture a projectile recording its own view as it is launched from the ground. The history of the Ness includes many failed attempts, and this may add another to this history. I will keep an observation diary recording these experiments which will be on view in the Power House during my residency alongside photographs documenting this process and clips from the attempts.

Lab 10

I am interested in how we ascribe value – to objects, endeavours, actions and ways of being. How do we manage loss, and what do we choose to keep and hold and what to pass by? Understanding an altering, shifting place in my own experience, walking on the land, now swimming over it, drives the need to make work that examines loss, and change, how that frames an identity.

Knowing that Orford Ness is a site where there has been a conscious decision to allow buildings to return to nature, I am interested in continuing my research into loss and resilience/accommodation of change, particularly looking to the writing of Caitlin de Silvey, Doreen Massey, Merleau Ponty and W G Sebald.

I hope to start my time on Orford Ness by making a large frottage drawing of the land of the Ness, and investigate the architectural and landscape surfaces through drawings and conducting experiments with sound.

Lab 11

On the Ness we walk within a strictly delineated area, outside these lines lies fragile habitat and residual danger, a landscape that shifts and drifts. Materials that we can touch are mostly limited to: fragments of glass; building and road rubble; scraps of rusted metal; fallen debris from the pioneer plants; 2-200mm shingles.

Leading up to and during my time in the Power House I’ll be working with the idea of the ‘drift’ or ‘derivé’ as embodied research and as a way of encountering this restricted landscape. I’ll be defining my ‘drift line’ as the military road between the Power House and the Laboratories with particular attention on the road edges where transient plant communities lead unstable lives between the shingle and scatter of historic litter.

I will be bringing this research together by making experimental ‘books’ that invite or contain a listening experience. An invitation to listen or perhaps a sounding object.

I’m hoping some of you will join me on the Ness to explore these books as objects to listen with, think with and drift with.

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

cyanotype prints on paper, 14 x21cm each

These prints have emerged from a multi-layer process. They started as rubbings taken from the floor in the Power House, they then became ink drawings, the ink drawings then became a digital file, the digital file then became a negative and positive set of acetate sheets, the acetate sheets then became the cyanotype print.

Power House Landscape

Black & white kodak print, 240 x 50cm

SE Barnet worked with Jane Watt and Lawrence Woolston to turn the Power House into a pinhole camera. They documented this fleeting moment of light passing through the pinhole as a negative image of the horizon line looking east.

Curated Decay

Digital text on paper, dimensions variable

Curated Decay is, at present, a two-part text written as a speculative response to Orford Ness and intended for display in the space of-and perhaps as-art.

Martello Tower

Oil can, acrylic paint 35 x 20 cm

Kayleigh Brooks explores the idea of the past and present. Inspired by corrosion and military history, her collection of readymade sculptures are an unrestrained projection of the events that happened on site. By constructing eerie work, she manifests a chaotic relationship between nature and man.

Grounds of the Ness

Drypoint etching on paper, 14.8 x 21cm (each)

Inspired by the mark making on the original maps of the Ness, each line etched into the plate tells the story of windswept landscapes, abandoned military structures and delicate ecosystems all inhabiting this coastal environment. Through fine detail and careful shading, she invites the viewer to immerse themselves in the mysterious allure of Orford Ness, where history and nature intertwine in a mesmerising dance.

Negative/Mirorred

Plaster, silver leaf, found object (mirror) 50 x 50 x 11cm

Belinda Downing’s sculpture tests the boundaries of space around an object, whether negative or positive, or in an illusory manner, and to alter the way a viewer might see and perceive space and architecture.

Hare of the Ness

Packing tape, expandable foam, 85 x 70 x 100cm

During the Orford Ness residency, Matthew saw many hares running around on the shingle. He started to capture their form whilst on the Ness using his preferred medium of packing tape. The shingle texture contrasts the smooth artificiality of the packing tape suggesting the context of this hare's natural habitat.

Among the Shingle

Oil on paper, 27.9 x 21cm

This painting is based on one of the many photographs the artist took while in residence on Orford Ness. The work captures the now everyday sight of plastic mixed in with shingle which is so prevalent with our reliance on plastic use.

Inside Nature

Digital print on acrylic, 29.7 x 42cm

Inside Nature is a series of X-ray scans of small pieces of nature found washed up on Orford Ness. On an island with such a painful history, nature is still at the heart of everything. Though shells and sea weeds are things we see very often, we never think about them much, but we can always push deeper. What is inside them? What does the structure truly look like?

Untitled

Plaster, glue, photo image transfer, ink on canvas

Carl Khan's work aims to capture his experience of being on Orford Ness, its many textures and visual imagery, alongside hidden narratives and layers of time that are forgotten and kept secret. In this work he blends natural elements with human traces to evoke a sense of intrigue and discovery.

Flora Perspectives

Collage on acrylic panel. 56 x 40 cm each

Orford Ness, a witness to groundbreaking scientific research in a bid to defeat an enemy is now being reclaimed by nature, a force that is both friend and foe. Viewing two different perspectives simultaneously creates a sense of disorientation and unease, which resonates with the dystopian surroundings of this unique place.

How I See the Ness

Ink and charcoal on the paper of a repurposed library book, 13 x 20cm

Diane Legg's sketchbook is repurposed from a second­hand disused library book The Ness by Robert MacFarlane. It offers a personal reflection on the Ness. Through the images and language, it offers a glimpse into its diverse landscape, where nature has been allowed to readjust the balance of nature and human impact.

Untitled

Digital print on paper and board, 20 x 25.4cm (each)

This series of photographs explores in macro the cost to marine life as it attempts to escape waste products often dumped at sea. A kaleidoscope of colour invites the viewer to reflect on the beauty of the natural world and the challenges it faces, often in the face of gaudy detritus purchased for our entertainment.

Shingle Wonder

Perspex acrylic, wood, stone, and moss 42 x 59cm

Mel Palmer was inspired by what seemed like endless shingle and areas of concrete intrusions that are now dotted with moss which suggest that the land is healing.

Flora Spectrum Orford Ness

Digital print on wood, 54 x 14 x 205cm

For over 30 years, data has been collected about the common and rare fauna on Orford Ness. Jane Watt has started to devise a spectrum that charts the colours of plants found on the Ness throughout the seasons. This will be used in ongoing works that record the colours of this particular landscape and references early camouflage research that took place here in the early 20th century.