CALLUM WALLIS

The movement of stone and water plays a significant part in governing our movement on the surface of this planet. These two masses move in perpetual conversation with one another, water by turn obscuring and revealing stone and always wearing it down, transporting it grain by grain to be remade in another place. When a person puts themselves in the midst of this elemental conversation, the will and character of each is brought into sharp focus. Our hurrying, scuttling human activity serves to mask the great pace at which the earth moves around us.

During the North Atlantic Islands Residency, I was acutely aware of the push and pull of stone and water. Between Shetland and the Faroe Islands is the stretch of ocean which the Excelsior crossed - crew struggling against wind and rain to bridge this small gap between two vastly different landscapes. There is also a stretch of land obscured beneath. A deep rift lies beneath this stretch of sea, where the surface of the earth pulls in opposite directions, and were the sea to be drained a person walking on the sea floor would see that these are not different worlds.