julian rowe
julian rowe
visual artist
visual artist
… ends of the earth [2003]
In
September
2002,
in
a
rather
unplanned
way,
I
visited
Orfordness
in
Suffolk;
just
two
or
three
days
after
that
I
made
a
trip
to
County
Clare
in
the
West
of
Ireland.
Whilst
in
Ireland
I
explored
several
early
monastic
sites,
including
those
on
the
island
of
Inishmore.
The
short
space
of
time
that
had
elapsed
between
the
two
visits
made
them
seem
like
the
beginning
and
end
of
a
single
journey,
and
the
two
places,
one
in
the
most
easterly
part
of
the
British
Isles,
the
other
in
the
farthest
west,
represented
extremes
in
other
ways.
The
Irish
monasteries
had
once
preserved
a
vestige
of
learning
and
literacy
when
the
West
had
fallen
into
barbarism,
and
it
was
through
their
missionaries
that
the
arts
of
civilisation
were
revived
in
Northern
Europe;
by
contrast
the
atomic
weapons
testing
laboratories
at
Orfordness
represent
the
potential
for
a
new
dark
age.
The
primitive
little
stone
buildings
and
the
sinister
concrete
bunkers
in
one
sense
represent
opposite
ends
of
an
era
of
human
history;
in
another
sense
they
are
both
remnants
of
times
when
the
very
survival
of
Western
culture
has
been in question.
This
train
of
thought
led
me
to
embark
on
a
project
to
develop
these
ideas
further.
I
have
called
the
project
Ends
of
the
Earth.
Its
first
manifestation
has
been
as
part
of
an
experimental
arts
event
at
Hastings
Museum,
during
which
I
constructed
two
miniature
landscapes
in
the
gallery
there.
One
of
these,
based
on
the
limestone
landscape
of
County
Clare,
contained
a
Celtic
monastery
of
around
the
7th
Century;
the
other
set
the
two
"pagodas" in a space reminiscent of the shingle bank at Orfordness.
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