Marc Wilson's 'The Last Stand' exhibits jointly with Brian David Stevens 'They That Are Left'
-- Exhibition opening days and times can be found at the end of this page --
Since 2010 Marc has been photographing the images that make up The Last Stand. This photographic work aims to reflect the histories and stories of military conflict and the memories held in the landscape itself.
The series is made up of images documenting some of the physical remnants of the Second World War on the coastlines of the British Isles and northern Europe, focusing on military defence structures that remain and their place in the shifting landscape that surrounds them. Some of these locations are no longer in sight, either subsumed or submerged by the changing sands and waters or by more human intervention. At the same time others have re-emerged from their shrouds.
Studland Bay I, Dorset, England. 2011 ©Marc Wilson
Over these four years Marc has travelled 23,000 miles to 143 locations to capture these images along the costlines of the UK, The Channel Islands, Northern & Western France, Denmark, Belgium and Norway.
Sainte-Marguerite-sur-Mer, Upper Normandy, France. 2012 ©Marc Wilson
The idea for this work came out of an older project of his which had contained some locations involving wartime history. His European background and (like many others) own family histories drew him towards a project on this subject matter. Marc has always been interested in the idea of the landscape and the objects we place in it as holding the stories, histories and memories of the past. As the time beyond an event or era grows further these memories, accounts, or documents are sometimes all that we are left with.
There is something quite compelling about finding old war defences on the British coastline. Without even looking for them, you stumble on bunkers, radar stations and old radio bases, curious constructions that were never quite put to their fullest possible use and have been left to decay in the face of the sea and the salt and the wind.
The Last Stand is as multi-layered as the landscapes which it features; there's historical detail wrapped folded over into a chronotopia of functional brutalism, mixed with local touches that feeds into the geological, panoramic and tactical. All the boxes are ticked in Robert Adams traditional landscape list: there's geography, autobiography, and metaphor. But on top of that, Wilson gives us a politicised view of landscape and power that ties back to survey photography of Timothy O'Sullivan and the work of Mitch Epstein.
Layered into that is an Arcadian vision. With its focus on Northern Europe it's a dystopian Arcadia; there is a pagan feel to Wilson's pictures, a syncretic vision where geology, flora, climate and war find a single expression. And it's beautiful.
Review of The Last Stand – Colin Pantell
Marc Wilson is currently working a new project 'A Wounded Landscape' More information can be found on Marc's website at marcwilson.co.uk
Oriel Colwyn is proud to facilitate the inaugural pairing of Marc's 'The Last Stand' with Brian David Steven's 'They That Are Left' to form a unique joint exhibition based around the theme of war and remembrance.