Grant Lambie
We are looking downward more and more to the ground, from mobile phones, GPS, or road maps. This stops us looking at where the light is coming from or where the Cosmos (natural order) is formed. The boundaries between us and the sky are visual lies in time and space, as some of the stars we see are dead and no more, we are only looking at the remains of them though the light they gave off millions of years ago. So looking down into the darkness, (the Chaos) will only lead us to become blind, seeing shadows which are also copies of the truth. Unlike our ancestors who looked up to the heavens for inspiration to move forward.
These works are looking up from the surface of an atlas into space, to see what could be there once the time lapse has stabilised. If what we see now is from the past, how can we see a future, as artists we can make this vision possible. What we see or think is ahead of us is in constant flux, moving and changing out of our control. The work questions how this flux can be a representation of something that is so fluid, and is under continuous questioning of where this lies.
The map maker decides what becomes visible; contours, churches, speed cameras, and what is invisible. The voyage I’m on searches for this unseen, untold or covered-up histories of people in different relationships with space and time. These relationships may be technological, exploitive, (ex)colonial, each of which interplay with each other still further, leaving complex networks to be reread. Clocks, once for sea navigation, are now the timers for car bombs; the projector, the making of Dutch great masters; the internet gave us online grooming. This is the noir of design, or the noir of ‘progress’. From the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, to young people striking about schooling in Britain,1911, we see brutal suppression by the police and military. This systemic violence seeps out of the cracks in history, for their stories to be told again. With the advent of radio, news of the collapsing British Empire travelled the world at the speed of sound, now there are speed of light weapons. Speed is taking on history to see how fast it remembers and forgets. Will maps keep-up, what will be erased from future maps?