Ten Journeys

REVIEW

Ashburton Gifts and Gallery, Ashburton, Dartmoor 15 – 27 September

Reviewed by: Deborah Robinson

Suky Best's current work forms part of an ongoing project organised by DA2 and Aune Head Arts – a non-profit organisation whose aim is to record contemporary Dartmoor.

Commonplace details of daily travel undertaken by local residents provided the artist with a starting point for work currently on show at Ashburton, a small market town located on the southern edge of the moor. Retracing each journey, Best took extensive video footage that investigated her surroundings and then edited this to provide a visual transcript of the experience. Printed out on an inkjet printer, individual journeys are represented by twenty-five consecutive images each the size of a large postage stamp. These linear strips elegantly choreograph movement through the landscape and can be read either from left to right or by making more random connections within the sequence. The speed of an early evening car journey is registered in images where horizon lines shift, recede and blur. There are points at which the flow of the images is punctuated by a detail brought into sharp focus. Journeys undertaken on foot have a slower, more reflective feel to them. Walking through a farmyard the artist has lingered over her surroundings capturing and stretching out small passages of time.

The original journeys described to the artist included those made on horseback and by tractor – transport well suited to the moorland environment. Best's work arrives at the essence of her personal experience of each resident's journey but draws the line at repeating tractor or horse rides. It is interesting to consider what the impact might have been had the artist explored the transport originally used. Video taken from the elevated level of a rider on horseback, or the slow vibrating interior of a tractor might have brought the finished work closer to the original experience that informed it.

INTERFACE

REVIEW

Ten Journeys

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