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about | exhibitions | artists | venues | workspaces
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Aaron Watson | UK
As artist and archaeologist, my work creatively explores how landscapes are experienced by people in the past and the present.
While every archaeologist's sensory experience of a place is subjective and fluid, their experiences are ultimately translated by field method into an objective account, map, or diagram. These give precedence to the recording of visual data that can be easily be reproduced on the printed page. The past becomes manifest in the image of archaeological method and publication: colourless, static and silent. Archaeological interpretation becomes constrained by its methods of representation.
My work considers how unfamiliar and creative approaches might manifest new pasts, and expand the possibilities for interpretation. My focus is on the Neolithic and Bronze Age of the British Isles, with a particular emphasis on the landscape setting, materiality, and multisensory experience of monuments.
Recent work includes multimedia performance, landscape installation, painting, photocollage, film and animation.
I am currently collaborating with Kilmartin House Museum and Southampton University to investigate and communicate the prehistoric landscapes of south-west Scotland, as well as conducting experimental fieldwork in Wales and north-west England.
-Aaron Watson, May 2008
More information on Aaron's work can be found at: http://www.monumental.uk.com
'Pentre Ifan 001' (digital collage, 2005).
Juxtaposition between an arrangement of Neolithic stone axes from north-west England, and my own academic paper concerning stone axes (mounted in slide frames and nailed to a wall). Exhibited at 'Stones : Circles : Landscape : Art', hosted by Penrith Museum (2005)
Stills from 'Instruments of Ritual' (2004), a short film expressing the intense acoustic qualities of Neolithic monuments.
'Kilmartin Eye', landscape installation in Kilmartin Glen (2007).
'Carneddau', an ongoing experimental field project in north Wales with a particular emphasis upon ambiguities between nature and culture, and the multisensory qualities of stone.
Stills from 'Ormaig: a walk to a rock art panel in August 2006', a short film edited on location during fieldwork in the Kilmartin landscape, south-west Scotland.
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Ábhar agus Meon, Sixth World Archaeological Congress, School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland
(@) http://www.ucd.ie/wac-6 (@) http://www.amexhibition.com (e) info(at)amexhibition.com
(t) +353 (0)87 654 8301 (f) + 353 (0)1 716 1184
Designed by iArchitectures (2008).