Laura Skehan

Tecnica: Photo

Anno: 2021

Dimensione: 90 x 60 cm

Descrizione: What We’ve Seen was taken during my first visit to Reynisfjara Beach in Iceland while on residency SIM Residency in 2021. I look to the stories of the land and how they are translated to us, a dynamic language that is performed through movement, making, watching, listening.

The beach is a famous volcanic black sand beach with ferociously strong waves… tourists have been known to tread too closely to the water and be pulled in by the combination of the heavy coarse sand and the power of the ocean. The landscape is phenomenal, and the dramatic power of the Atlantic Ocean allows the beach sheltered by the basalt formations to become a natural amphitheatre. My focus was of course on the rock face… Towering, undulating basalt columns, similar to the Giant Causeway, familiar to us at home. I thought about the stories this one had seen. The tragedies the rock face had witnessed in both human and more than human… the changing landscape, the influx of transient people to the south Icelandic coast. The damage that might do.. the reminder that the waves and the earth must be respected. I spent quite a bit of time in the freezing cold, watching and listening to how other people interacted with the landscape and dramatic exchanges between the human, the ocean and the rock face.

While the work is about the exquisite detail and history of the geological phenomenon, I also like to think of it as a portrait of the rock as it watches the drama unfold in front of it, or behind the camera.