Arthur Boothby
September 7, 2022.
The residency at the Fish Factory gave me the time and space to connect with myself and the landscape around me. The unprecedented time and isolation acted as a lens on feelings of melancholy and loneliness, two themes current in my work.
I felt a connection with the landscape. Iceland is a land torn asunder at its centre, resulting in two plates drifting apart. I especially sympathised with the glaciers and their visible traces; the fjords. I thought in geological time and used geological time as a metaphor for my own sloth.
I tend to work in oil, but here I worked mainly in pencil and also in video. The shading required in a pencil drawing is very labour intensive and slow, mirroring the slowly grinding landscape.
I didn’t make massive amounts of work whilst in Iceland, but rather learned about myself, and found a footing and a route in my practice.
Thank you Arthur, it was a pleasure having you here, we will miss your humour. Until the next time